 you know, in the last 12 months. So we want to, you know, to have you come face to face with us and just spend some time with us. So ED Chat, our goal here is to bring executive directors together to have a discussion, also talk about how we use technology to advance our mission. And hi everybody, for those of you didn't catch me earlier, my name is Erika Simons. I am the webinar producer here at ED Chat and I'm so excited to be here with you today. I'm gonna share with you, I know a lot of you know about TechSoup, but a lot of you probably were invited and this is your first time here at TechSoup, again, welcome. But I want you to know TechSoup is much more than a place where you can get some awesome deals on technology, hardware, computers. We have courses, a lot of the courses are free. We have webinars, you're actually in a webinar right now. We have grant writing webinars, there's so many webinars coming up. Make sure you check those out on our events pages, right on the community. We have IT consultants, we can consult with you, we help you build your website and so much more. There's blogs, there's lots of free things. And just to give you an idea, TechSoup partnered with over a hundred partners that have software and hardware and most of nonprofits, over 70% of the nonprofits say they will check with TechSoup first before they make a purchase. So anytime you're thinking of purchasing software and hardware, make sure you stop by TechSoup.org and check us out. I'm sure we can help you. So just a little bit of housekeeping and you slow down a little bit, because this is important. Everybody is on mute. If you remain on mute, that would be great. There is a reaction button where I will ask you a question and you'll just open that up and raise your hand and then I'll call on you. This kind of helps keep everybody from talking over each other. You will get this recording within a couple of hours after ED chat, excuse me. Did I say a couple of hours? Scratch that. At least 48 hours. It might be a couple of hours. I don't know, you know, technology. We try to make it work, but at least 48 hours and there will be a link to the chat. So you'll be able to connect. Everybody that says they're from Texas, you'll be able to connect with your other friends in Texas. And again, all over the world, because I know there are some synergies in here. There's some connections that need to be made. So just before I go into a little bit about ED chat, I want you to know that we are all in this together. Like you, I've been an executive director. I've been a board member. I've been a grant writer. I've been a grant reviewer. We've all at TechSoup worn so many different hats and we are a nonprofit ourselves here at TechSoup. So as I said, we are in this together. We want you to invite other executive directors, your board members to ED chat because we all need to share this information. We all need to hear from each other and we learn from each other. I want you to become a featured nonprofit. Become a guest. I know on the website it says featured nonprofit, but I want you to come on it and be my co-host. Next month we're gonna be talking about grants. So if any of you are a grant reviewer, specialize in grant writing, stay on this link afterwards and we'll chat with you so you can be one of our featured nonprofits. And I wanna hear some of your topics. Type in the chat rooms some of the topics that you would like to discuss during ED chat. Why don't you go ahead and type in before, people said board development, but type in some of your ideas that you would like to hear on ED chat. So today we wanted to talk with specifically small nonprofits. Maybe you're just starting, maybe you started this year, maybe you started two years ago and you really haven't moved the needle and you say, look, I need some help. This is the place you have that conversation. So I'm gonna open it up in just a moment. I'm gonna stop, share my screen and open this up, give me one second. So I can come over to you and we will have our conversation. So I wanted to see in the chat room, let's see what we have some of the topics that you want to hear about. Grants, yes. That's the number one, how to write grants for us newbies, yes. We have a couple of grant workshops coming out. We have, actually there's one on TechSoupConnect Florida. It is a virtual platform. So you can be anywhere in the US and come to this event. It's gonna be in a couple of weeks. And then there's another one here on the TechSoup platform on June 15th. So we'll put those links in the chat room shortly. I'm a startup and we'll need help of any kind. I feel you, I feel you. Collective impact, I love that. Secession planning, very, very important. And I want to talk about secession planning because that happened to me. I had a nonprofit, was in the reserve, got recalled during 9-11. And I didn't have a secession plan. So you can imagine what happened. Strategic planning and team building, good. I love this, collaborations, new ways of working. That is a big one. I don't want to open up with that because with COVID and now that everybody's virtual, we know we need to collaborate. I see churches collaborating with each other. I see other nonprofits collaborating with each other. So would you do me a favor? Raise your hand if you're working with another nonprofit to collaborate and tell us how you're doing and what's that process like? Jennifer, please share with us. And first, and tell us about your organization as you're coming on, Jennifer. You can unmute yourself. Jennifer, I think you're still on mute. Okay, I'm gonna come back to you. How about Mary? Would you unmute yourself and share with us? Hi, can you hear me okay? Yes, we can hear you. And welcome. Thank you. I am the executive director and co-founder of the Thrive & Joy Nick Fagnano Foundation. And it's a foundation in memory of our son. We do character development for teens, strength of character workshops, and we do two trips a year to the Dominican Republic to do service work over there. So we partnered with an organization called Multiplying Good, which has a leadership workshops for teens or a national organization. They have a Los Angeles chapter. And so we were able to first launch our character development program with them kind of helped us develop it, fine tune it, get feedback. So we started to build some data from the ability to use their audience, if you will, of young people that they were bringing together. So we didn't have to create that ourselves and create that first network. Now we're doing that on our own, but it was really great to get the confidence working with them. And then for our trips to the Dominican Republic, we partner with an organization called Vision Trust that has leadership Dominican, native Dominican people that are running their programs in the Dominican Republic so that when we go over there, we're actually working with those who live there and who know the community and the culture and the people that were there to serve. Nice. So lots of collaboration going on there. Thank you so much for sharing that. Melissa Roberts, how are you? I'm well, how are you? Good. Thank you for being here. Yeah. So I'm with Bristol's Promise, which is a nonprofit organization down here on the Bristol, Tennessee, Virginia state line. And so we cross the state line and we look into the community to see where the gaps are, where the supports are and create initiatives to meet those needs. And so we currently have eight initiatives all around children, youth and families. And they all intermingle. So it's adverse childhood experiences, but we also have parenting education network, those kinds of things. And we do take a collective impact approach to everything that we do. So we don't do anything in a bubble, right? Like we constantly reach out and see who's doing the work and can we come alongside to support them or it's nobody doing the work and do we need to start something? And so for instance, our most recent initiative that we've started is the Diversity and Equity Initiative. So we know lots of groups are doing amazing stuff, but some of them stop at the Virginia state line so they can't come into Tennessee. And so we have paid staff who helps facilitate connecting people. So everything that we do is in connection with other folks, but we are hungry for as much information on collective impact and how to do it right as we can get. I love how you just shared that you're connecting with a whole lot. And I know a lot of people in here heard you say that you're paying staff and everybody wants to know where you're getting your funding from. How are you paying your staff? That's a big thing with small nonprofits. Would you mind sharing? Are you getting grants? Do you have a lot of partner donor partners? Would you share with us? So we actually partnered with a group in our area who was applying for a Department of Labor grant, a work grant, which is working opportunities for rural communities. And when we were writing ourselves in as a partner, we said, you know what, this is super important. They're working with people who have barriers to employment. And we felt like this was a good opportunity to fit paid staff into that because, again, a lot of the work in our communities that's being done around diversity and equity is unpaid volunteer work. And that's great and amazing. But we partnered with other places. And so recently a group out of West Virginia who's proposing to cover the entire state of West Virginia reached out to us and said, hey, would you create this here? And so we're writing ourselves in, and that's kind of how we're growing is through these partnerships. Beautiful, beautiful. That's, I mean, that's really, when we're talking about collaboration, that is how you will grow. Find out where you can fill in a gap for another organization, maybe a larger organization that maybe wanna do what you do, but they don't have the capacity to do what you do and you can do it. Say, hey, would you write me into your grant? So that's great. Thanks for sharing that. R.K., would you share with us and welcome? Hi, I'm Rizwana and I represent the Seed of Life Foundation. And we actually started right before COVID in January and then COVID happened in March. So we weren't able to partner with schools. So we were a little confused in what direction to take. We had just begun, so we went international and at that time, Africa didn't have high numbers of COVID and everything was well and they wanted one nonprofit organization in Africa that approached us. And now we're working with them and we planned gardens, school gardens, teach the children the importance of environment and we planned educational school gardens and their educational institution. So it gives empowerment to communities instead of waiting for the funds from the government because thousands of people have lost jobs right now. So this helps build whatever we plant are all fruits and vegetables. So it helps children educate as well as provide food. Well, thank you for sharing that. Jennifer. Yes, hi, I'm sorry about my muting problems earlier. I wanted to share one new partnership that we're working on right now. First of all, Daily Dose of Reading is a early childhood pre-K literacy organization that was started in a pediatrician's office because he saw the need for young children and their families to start reading very early as part of their development. So over the last few years, we developed a program called Play and Learn which is what we use right now in pre-K classrooms and then early head start classrooms. But obviously, as you might imagine, over this last year we didn't have any classrooms to be in so it really forced us to look where else in the community can we provide our curriculum? Can we provide Play and Learn to support other reading book and educational organizations? So over the last couple of months we have started building a relationship with another small nonprofit called the Cleveland Kids Book Bank whose main mission is to distribute books across the community. So whether they are through like employee book drives or other families who want to donate books, they're kind of scattered across the age ranges. So we've been working with them to partner up with some of their community organizations where we work together to build a book list for the different age groups. And then we work with that third community organization to provide the books and for us to provide our literacy curriculum. Awesome, so lots of team building there. Yeah, it's a win-win-win. Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you, Sandra Stanley. Welcome. Hi there, good morning. Good morning. Well, it's afternoon now here in Fort Worth, Texas. So and thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity. Opening doors for women in need is our mission is reentry. We help men and women coming home from prison and also how we help partner and collaborate is sometimes when one nonprofit in our city gets a grant then we reach out to each other to make sure for number one, you have those goals and outcomes you have to reach, those numbers you have to reach. So make sure you're getting referrals from your collaborating partners and people that are doing other resources to give you resources, refer those clients over to make your numbers. And then also, since our building is paid for, we can open up our building for other nonprofits to come in and do services and not charge them and have that service to our community. Like for, we have a computer lab, but we didn't have the teachers. So another nonprofit had a grant from our city and they provided the teacher and we provided the site. And also with the Vita site, where we do free income tax, government does free income tax. We provide the site where it's the government and the city provides them. Beautiful, I think we lost her. I think we lost her, but that was good. So she has a lot of partnerships. So Liz, I see your comment in here, keeping all of our stuff together without an office and a lot of conversation happened outside email. So I'm not sure there's lots of different software here at TechSoup. I'm sure everybody's using Zoom. You can get Zoom at 50% off. But how many of you are using Microsoft Teams to communicate with each other? No. How many of you are using Slack? Some people are like, what about Asana? Asana is a great product here in TechSoup. We'll put a link where you can, basically there's a lot of products here that you can use to communicate with each other. And when I say communicate, when you share ideas, not only that, you can upload your files. You can see how someone is progressing. Say you have a program coming up and Ruth is assigned to do one thing and Kimberly is assigned to do another thing. You can keep track of everybody and what they're doing. So there are lots of communications tools that you can work with. She said, how to keep everybody together, keeping your stuff together. There are lots of ways that you can do that. Janna said, good point, Liz. Dorothea said, great ways to build capacity. We use intern. And I think this is Vista. Oh, so Vista, wow. So interns, again, Asana is another way to manage your interns. How many of you are using a donor-based management system? How are you keeping track of your donors and being able to communicate with them? Because your donors are, if I can say it like this, are your customers and you have to keep them engaged. You have to keep communicating with them. Type in the chat room a number one if you have a customer-relation management system. Good, Dorothea, good. Margo, Devana, excellent. Jan, as you say, you're too small right now. You're never too small. Salesforce, good. People are using Salesforce. Salesforce is a software that we have available here. Ben used Salesforce. I think it's, I don't wanna mess up your name. You used Salesforce, great. Donor perfect, great. Gail, would you come on and tell us about how you use Donor Perfect and kind of explain to everybody the way you use it here. Gail said, we use Donor Perfect and use TechSoup to purchase it, but our four-year limit is expiring. Gail, would you unmute yourself? Kimberly says you use Greenlight. Kelly says she uses a free version of software. Ah, Evangeline says she used DonorBox. Devana uses Donor Perfect too. Would you unmute yourself and share with us how is it working for you? Tell us about Donor Perfect and how it works for you. With constant contact, I love it. So you're able to merge those two together. Go ahead. I actually use Donor Perfect to just track our donors and for reporting. So whenever we get a payment in, I put it into Donor Perfect and I'm also able to produce our tax receipts through Donor Perfect as well. I really like the fact that we can just track all of our donors and get easy reports. I do think Donor Perfect is a little bit too big for our organization. So I would love something that I can downsize to. I'm the executive director of a public high school in the state of Rhode Island. We're the top high school in the state and it's too big. Donor Perfect is really too big for us. Why do you say that? That it's too big? I guess because there's a lot more features in it than I'm using or that I use at this time. Okay, so let me share with you. One of the, a gentleman was on the other day, I was speaking with him. He said that, and even he has for his volunteers, he makes a way for his volunteers to go in and use it as well where they can't see everything as you know, you can not share everything. But he says he makes notes about his donors in Donor Perfect. So if it's, you know, your birthday July and you go in and you call around June and say, you got a birthday coming up. There's, he showed us multiple ways to use that. I'm gonna put a link that's on the TechSoup Florida. There was a link. I'll share that in the chat room a little later, how he uses and he showed us the background. So I know like, like Microsoft, we say we're not using all of the features of Microsoft but eventually you will begin to use it and maybe someone here can share with you other ways that you can use it. Right, right. Yes, so right now I'm the only person that uses it. That's why you say that. Ten person board and it's, I'm the only one that uses it. So that's why it feels humbling to me. There you go. You've got to train your board. And that's a big thing. Everybody has to train your board. And I know with small nonprofits, you start and you're doing everything. All the weight is on your shoulders. But that's what your board is for. Your board is supposed to help keep you healthy, not just financially, but to strengthen you. So you've got to show them the features of it and let them play around. They'll probably say, hey, did you know you can use this feature for this? So you got to share with your board. Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. And I also use the constant contact. As I mentioned, I really sent primarily send our emails through constant contact. Awesome, awesome. Thank you for sharing that. So a lot of people are saying they use donor perfect. What's the best low cost or free CRM? I hope somebody is from AMG that can share that in here. The best or low cost. And maybe some of you can share which ones you're using. A lot of people are using donor perfect, light green light, sales force. Sometimes it feels like the board will go away if their acts are due too much. Oh man, Janice, would you come on? Would you unmute yourself? Sure. So for instance, my board president, it's her birthday today. And she's one of the ones who've been there for a while with me working on this. And she's someone who always is worried that I'm, she says, she's worried that I'm doing too much and what can I do? But she didn't want to, I just raised some money with my birthday, the beginning of the month, we were, you know, as a fundraiser on Facebook. And even though she says she wants to help and understands that she didn't want to do it because she didn't have the time. So even people that have really good intentions and say they want to do stuff and be there for you when it comes down to it, sometimes it just doesn't play out that way. I understand. So what do you do? And this is a question for everybody because I know a lot of times you start boards with people that you trust because you want to keep that trust close, but then everybody's busy. So what do you do in those instances? Do you get interns? Do you get somebody who can volunteer? Because managing social media and things like that when you're a small nonprofit, you kind of need somebody to do that and everything's going digital now. So that's why we wanted to talk with you at TechSoup. Everything is going digital. And we don't want to have you be left behind. So we've got to get connected to the digital world. So what somebody would like to answer that question, what do you do when everybody's busy? We did a SWAT, use your, the raise your hand feature. We did a SWAT analysis at the last ED chat where they talked about their strength, their weakness, opportunities and threats. And one person said that the strength was the board was great and the weakness was everybody was busy. So that can be a weakness as well as a strength. So what do you do when you have situations like that? Anybody want to share? I love this. Everybody says, no, I'm just here to learn today. I look, hi, hi, Dolcey. How are you? Dolcey Parker, my woven friend. Ruth says, your board has to have your back. If they aren't helping you, ask them if they really want to be a part of the organization. If not, plaque them and pack them. Give them a plaque, thank you, and pack them. Bam, did you hear that? How many of you feel that way? Raise your hand. So a lot of people are raising their hand. Janice says, I hear you, Ruth, but it's so hard to recruit members too. So I do that continually. Yes, you do have to always think about in advance. You can't wait to the last minute. You have to think about who can be on your board. Evangeline, your hand is raised. Go ahead, unmute yourself. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I was just agreeing with the plaque I'm unpacking. I love it. Melissa says, give, get or get off. I hear that a lot with board members, give, get or get off. But back to what Ruth said, I think it was Ruth. Janice, it's hard to find people. So again, you have to be proactive. Larry, hi, you can unmute yourself, please. Hi, I hope you can hear me all right. Yes. Okay, yeah, I think we're in the process of updating written board expectations and including that as one person, I think I saw a comment go by, give, get or get out. They don't necessarily have to donate themselves, but they have to understand and in a written format where they are signing this document, saying that they agree, everything is like, I agree too, I pledge to the statements like that. And they need to understand that they're part of that development team. They don't have to write checks themselves. But, and in fact, I told them, the board members, that if I had to make a choice between them writing checks versus them promoting our fundraising drives actively online, I'll take the latter every time. It's all about their powers, influencers and their respective circles of friends and colleagues. That's way more powerful than my voice as the organization is the D saying, oh, we do great things. If they say, give to this organization, they do great things, that's much more believable and impactful, I think. So that's built into that written statement of board expectations that we just overhauled. Beautiful, that is beautiful. I mean, I couldn't have said it better because a lot of people think it's them. I can't raise any money, but you can because everybody knows somebody. So beginning experience, hi. Hi, my name is actually Michelle. Sorry, I didn't change my name. So we have a very tiny but longstanding ministry, and we help those who are grieving the loss of a spouse. And we have always had, as our board members, only people who have been through our programs. And that's because there's a certain, well, we pride ourselves on our peer-to-peer nature. So we're looking at how do we recruit other people because the last thing people wanna hear is if you're in a serious relationship, it's going to end. How many of you love that, right? Because it's gonna be death, maybe divorce, maybe separation if you're not actually married, whatever it happens to be. And so recruiting new people to the board who don't understand that is kind of difficult. So I agree with everything Larry said. It's a wonderful thing, but I just don't know where to go. We've always done it this way, and I'm new as the ED. So the question is, any suggestions or how do you break out of that really insular mentality? That's a good question. Anybody wanna respond to that? And as she said, they have people on the board that's gone through the program. And I know a lot of times someone said board members not a one body. So you're meeting somebody in the elevator and you're feeling their energy. Oh, they have great energy. They got a great smile. They'd be a great board member. And so we don't want that. So anybody, Michelle, thank you for putting your name there. Anybody having any response to Michelle? Great, I love the comments in the chat room. Feel free to use the raise your hand button to respond. Larry, lots of people, you got a lot of interest now. They want you to share what you wrote for your agreement or slash pledge. Great stuff. So let me ask you this. How are you doing during the pandemic? Anybody wanna share with me? Has your funding gone down? Were you able to raise any funds throughout this last 12 months? A lot of people I know, even a lot of nonprofits got the PPP loan. But were you able to raise funds on your own through your donors or grant writing? Raise your hand if you'd like to share. Japan, Japan, yeah. Yeah, our organization has been around 18 years and we actually had our best year ever. So our goal last year was to raise $75,000. And then we had an alumni offer to match us dollar for dollar. We actually raised $125,000. Wow. And he matched us dollar for dollar. Wow. Tell us what you do and then I'll come to you, Mary. I saw your hand up. Put it back up, please. Tell us about your organization again. So I'm the executive director of the number one high school in the state of Rhode Island. It's a public high school, but you have to take a test to get into it. Okay. And basically it's a public school and it's in the city. So our association, we pick up the slack where the city's budget doesn't fund. So we pay for like field trips and we pay for paper and we pay for sports uniforms and things like that. That the families can't necessarily afford or the teachers can't afford and the city's not gonna pay for it. Wow. Thank you for coming on and sharing. Mary, you had your hand up. Did you want to share? Well, actually I was just applauding Chavanya for a good year. So we've also been blessed with a good year as well. We found some new grant opportunities and because we're working with young people and had to transfer everything onto Zoom from being able to be in person, kids really needed, I think the kind of contact that we were able to offer with mentorships and just character strength conversations. So I think we were able to provide a much needed service and our donors recognized that. And so during a difficult time, people definitely supported us. So yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. And Rebecca, thank you for putting in the chat room about GrantStation. I don't know if you all know that TechSoup offers a discounted price on GrantStation. GrantStation is basically a web-based service for you to find grants. I've been a member of an organization that I have to pay $200 a month just to find grants. But GrantStation is normally $6.99 for the year but through TechSoup is $1.99 and we often do discount it. I don't know what's a word I wanna use, Shannon. We do a, we actually usually in September and then in March, we do a special discounted price. It's like $79 or $99. I can't remember off the top of my head but that's when you should grab it because it's such a great deal. Yes, yes, in September. So that'll be coming up in September. But even now at $1.99 for the whole year is a great price. And I've paid $200 just to be able to find grants on one particular website. And I know that is one of the big things a lot of people are searching for grants. They don't know how to write grants. They don't know where to find grants. Well, GrantStation is your source for finding grants. They have government grants, local grants, state grants. So every kind of grant you're looking for, you put in your keyword or you're looking your key area if you're in Virginia, look for all the grants in Virginia. The community foundations, they're all listed through GrantStation. So that's one of the beautiful things that TechSoup has to offer. Kim Johnson, Florida Impact to Inhunger here, trying to multitask. I'm listening over here, Orlando. Hey, how are you, Kim? I have somebody in Orlando from here. Great, thank you so much. A lot of people are putting GrantStation in there. Sure, we can use some information on fundraising events. How are you guys doing on fundraising? Anybody wanna share some of your fundraising ideas? I want to buy people that I donate to. I got an email. They were doing a virtual fundraiser. This is pre-COVID. I clicked on, somebody was, they had a whole DJ and a jazz band there in her house. And I was like, oh my God, I was just so impressed. So what are you doing for funds? Everything was virtual. They did live auctions during the virtual event. So what are you doing for fundraising events? Anybody wanna share some of your fundraising ideas? Carol, hi, Carol. How are you? I'm good, how are you? Good. All I would like to say is I've done a lot of giving this year. And I think it's so important that the nonprofits, especially small ones, look at the perks they're offering with a donation. I don't think many of us need it anymore, swag. I don't think any of us need any of this stuff. And the money, it could stay in the nonprofit. So I always request no perks, no giveaways. But I just did one and we received a bottle of wine and we received alcohol from a high school, which I thought was so inappropriate for their stay at home gala. I was sending us a box of alcohol to make drinks to watch their gala. And I just, it really turned me off. So be careful of your perks. That's, yeah, especially, you know, if you're doing something in recovery, obviously you don't want to use that. Someone said they did a virtual 5K. I just donated to a virtual 5K for my grandson and then put it on Facebook. He raised more money than anybody that they gave him free Disney tickets and it was just wonderful. Carol, I'm gonna ask you to be a co-host with me on the grant session. I'll be looking forward to you being a co-host with me. Carol actually reviews grants for organization as well. Would you share about that? I'm the ED for Find Your Light Foundation, which is Josh Groban, The Singer Foundation. And we give out about 250 to 500,000 a year in grants to grassroots programs. And our grants run between 5,000 and 15,000 because we feel that we want to make an impact at the grassroots level and it's arts education only for youth. So we do inner city youth arts and it doesn't matter what type of arts programs, we fund all types of arts programs. And we have just moved to one grant cycle annually. We were doing two. This year we've had more applications than ever. And I think because of COVID, but it was shocking I put in the question, the grant application about PPPs, the money that so many nonprofits that did receive PPPs and that were forgiven was unbelievable, unbelievable. So I'm happy for those who were able to do that, but they don't, I don't think they need us. You know, it's a small winner getting that type of funds. So, but it was interesting how much money was given and forgiven. Thank you for sharing. And if anybody else is a grant reviewer or a grant writer, I would love for you to co-host with me at our next ED chat on June 17th. Somebody asked, Janice, I'm gonna come to you. When is the discount in the fall? I don't know the exact day it is in the month of September. Pay attention to your emails because we'll be sending out an email. Janice, hi, how are you? I was just interested in what Carol was saying. So Carol, would that, so we provide arts classes, but it's not our sole focus. So that's something I- If it's part of your mission, I think that, I think the mission is the most important thing in any nonprofit is to create a mission and stick to your mission. So if it's part of your mission, then it, then you provide our classes. And yes, then it, it, you'll be eligible. So just make sure your programs are mission-driven because that's what a grantee is looking, a grantor is looking for. Thank you. Awesome. Awesome. Anybody else wanna share what you're doing for fundraiser someone and said that hosted a virtual trivia night on Zoom. That's always fun. Somebody did a comedy night. That was so much fun. I mean, I laughed so hard. It was, and it was only $30, but that was a good one. Reading some of the comments, great. Thank you so much. Not doing anything awesome, Larry says. Yet peer-to-peer promotion is the key for breaking through for our, for our current ceiling. So he's just doing peer-to-peer fundraising. Give big was the same amount last year and this year. Fantastic. So what else are you doing for your fundraising? Anybody wanna share this? Good. This is an opportunity where we learn from each other. I don't know if we lost Sandra, Sandra Stanley. What are you, what kind of fundraising events are you doing this year? Hello there. Yeah, I lost, I thought I had it was collective, but I wasn't. So, but this year we're doing, we did, we're doing our golf tournament and that's what saved us last, at the end of COVID, I mean, not the end of COVID, but we did it back in November. And kind of, we was kind of forced to do it because we had paid our money to the golf course. And, but we did really well because people hadn't been able to play golf, those golfers and they came out and supported us. So we're gonna do that again in October, but COVID made us switch our whole day. We used to do it in May, but we're doing it in the fall. So that works out really well. So we're doing that. So we're looking at doing a tea party, a tea party and then include virtual and in person people. And then getting ready for North Texas Day of Giving here in Texas, we have North Texas Day of Giving and pushing that, we usually bring in like 10,000 for that with that great effort that they do, the foundation, community foundation does that, North Texas Foundation. So that's what we're doing to try to, and then as you were talking about, we had to learn how to do these more, we had to upgrade our website to make sure it was more, we were talking to our donors, what do you think we could do to make this better? And someone would say, we could make it easier for us to donate monthly. So we had to change that up. And then also just communicating, doing some one-on-ones with the donors, calling them and giving them updates on what we're doing. Beautiful. How many of you have more than three ways for your donors to give to you? Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, your website, how many of you have more than three ways? You need to have multiple ways for your donors to donate to you or you're missing an opportunity because I'm like this, somebody just asked me for a donation. If I showed you my phone right now, somebody asked for a donation just before this event. And I said, what's your cash app? I cashed at them because I want it quick or otherwise I'm gonna forget. And that's the way your donors are doing. We're busy these days. Ron Rose, would you come on for me? He says his newsletter has been very effective or fundraiser. I'd love to know your newsletter, more about your newsletter and how often you sit it out. What kind of things are you putting on your newsletter? Are you still with us, Ron? Would you? Yes, I am. Okay, great. Yeah, so my organization is Island Scholars and we provide scholarships to students from my homeland. And so about twice a year, we do a newsletter which features our students, some of our graduates and some students who are still in school. And they talk about the impact the organization is having on their lives. And a lot of it is really about the impact I am having on them. So I think it's been very effective. I get comments from donors that they look forward to reading the newsletter. And I've seen significant increases in the donations from people who get the newsletter. Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Someone asked Venmo, thought it was only for personal transaction. You can use Venmo for your business. Text to donate on my horizon, another one. I haven't heard of that one, see? Text to donate, that's another one. Text to donate, but he uses my horizon, I like that. Some people are doing a virtual fashion show. There are so many ways to raise funds. Norma says digital versus male newsletters. So yes, digital. There's so many ways through TechSoup, through Asana. There's so many platforms or software you can use to create a beautiful looking newsletters. And believe it or not, your donors wanna hear from you. You may think they don't, but they do wanna hear from you. If they're giving you money to be kids at after school and you let them know we were able to be 500 kids this month or even five more kids this month. They wanna hear a story. They like to hear stories because they're making an investment in you. And every funder wants a return on their investment. It may not be you returning the money, but you doing good is what makes a difference. Canva is free for nonprofits. Thank you so much, Digital. That's another platform. Thank you. You guys are sharing a lot of great information. This is great. And this is what I love about ED Chat where everybody comes and shares information with other executive directors. There's a lot of things that I miss here in the chat room. We're getting ready to close out in a few moments, but I wanted to circle back and I'm gonna see this. Thank you so much, Ruth. I'm so glad that you said that. She said, this is amazing. I want to know how you feel about ED Chat a lot. Again, this is a platform for you to share and learn from other nonprofits. And I appreciate it, you guys being here. But tell me, what are you thinking about ED Chat? You want to do this once a month or twice a month? Social media definitely is huge. We are digital. This is our computer. And that's why TechSoup exists because we do not want you to be left behind. If you have not joined TechSoup, if you were invited here by someone and you've never used TechSoup and you have your 501c3 join TechSoup, you can go right on the main page, techsoup.org and join. Again, over 76% of nonprofits say they do come to TechSoup before they look anywhere else for all of their products or software. Once a month, I like that. Good, once a month. Some months said twice a month. Important accountability space for us nonprofits. I'm the only staff in mind. I get it, I get it, I get it. So this is a great place for people who are doing this on your own, especially nonprofits. Again, like I said, this space today was for small nonprofits. You may have been in existence for a while and it's just not going as fast as you thought it would. I've been through that. I started my own nonprofit and said, hey, this is not, I thought I was gonna get grants, but grants aren't magnets, are they? They just don't come to you. You have to work for them. We're learning more about recruiting interns. Good, old CEO, but a new CEO. I like that Kim. Awesome, I love that. Thank you so much. I appreciate the comments. Love the small nonprofits. We will probably, most people have been saying they wanna do this once a month. So we will probably do this once a month and this will be for everybody. But again, this is where you can use your voice. So don't be shy. A lot of you, if you have something to share, if you wanna say something or have a question, there's no silly questions. Yes, and make sure you take the survey before you leave. We wanna know more about your topics. I know you put them here in the chat room, but the more you share with us, the more we can provide information for you. So as I'm getting ready to go out, I just wanna call your name and thank you for being here. Larry, Carol, Sandra, Margo, Shannon, Mido. I hope I said it right this time, Ron, Giovanna. I appreciate you coming on several times to share with us, Eliza, Dulce. I really appreciate you being here. Melissa, Rebecca, Sue, Ann, Mary, Linda, Michelle, Melissa, Janice, Larita, almost like Arita, Arita. Ruth, how are you? Ruth, I've seen you here before. Thank you for coming back. Mary, Marcia, Liz, James, Ben. Thank you for being my co-host again. The last one you guys have to check out the last ED chat, it was very good. We talked about the SWAT analysis and you all should do that. Find out from your board members and from the people you help. What are the strengths of your organization? What are you doing really, really well? What are the weaknesses? What don't you do really, really well? What are the opportunities? Are there opportunities that you need to take advantage of or that you miss? And then what are the threats? If something happened to your organization, your succession plan, as we mentioned, you need that in place. Thank you again, Kimberly, Noel, excuse me, Noel, Kara, Laura, I see all the, thank you, Ben. And there's a lot of people you're here chatting with each other. Yes, this recording will be available within 48 hours. We'll email everybody who signed up. I know some of you've got the link from other people. Make sure you sign up for the next ED chat. If you go to TechSoup.org, click on the community link and right underneath there, there's a link that says events, look for executive director chat, sign up for that and you'll get the recording and you'll see the previous ED chat. So someone asked about the SWAT analysis video. It is on the previous ED chat. Also it's on YouTube TechSoup has our own YouTube channel. Yes, you can get that on our YouTube channel. Ruth, people are asking RK wants Ruth to email her. This is great. I love it. And Lauren, thank you for being here back for TV, Fisher House, Sarah, Adam, Ed, Dionne, Angelie, Jay, Lungs, Page, RK, Eureka. I think that's Kelly, Christine, Francine, Evangeline, David Porter. David, is this David? My David Porter in Orlando. I know there's a lot of David Porters, but type in the chat room if you're David Porter in Orlando. Norma, Carmen, look, I'm going over, I love it. Just a sense of community from this helps a lot. Thank you, everyone. This is what Sue Ann said. I get it, Sue Ann. And that's why we did executive director's chat. It's a place, you all going through the same thing, maybe not at the same time, but somebody has been where you are or somebody's going to be where you are. So thank you all for being here. Mary, Linda, Michelle, Melissa. I think I've called some of you. I'm gonna go to the next page. Annabelle, Clark, Anthony, Kim, Johnson, Orlando in the house, Susie, Christine, Carmen, Michelle, Erica, Andrea, Romeo, Chantel, Devin. Thank you all for being here. They were like big breakout rooms to network. That is a great idea. So what you're thinking of now, Devin, is kind of like a conference because this hour, excuse me, this hour goes by so fast that we don't have time for a bigger room. So you're thinking about a conference. How many of you would like a conference, an ED chat conference, type yes in the chat room? Yes, in the chat room. I need to hear a lot of that. And you can put that on the survey. Everybody's saying yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So we will definitely plan that because I understand you want breakout rooms and maybe to have breakout sessions. And if anybody is interested in teaching, I know you all wear lots of hats. You can email me, asymonds at TechSoup.org. I'll type it in the chat room, asymonds at TechSoup.org. Let me know if you would like to be a co-host. If you would like to teach on a specific topic, when we host our conferences, we'll bring experts in, but you're the experts too in your different areas. So we would love that. Awesome. Yes, yes, yes, this is good. So a lot of yeses. So we will do that. And I think breakout rooms is definitely going to be a part of it. Notifications for future ED chats. Larry, I'm not sure if you are a member of TechSoup or if somebody invited you here, we send out emails weekly. But if you go to the ED chat events link, I'm gonna put it in here. I don't know if somebody, Shannon, you can find it real quick for the ED chats link and sign up to be a member of the ED chat group. You'll get the emails for future ED chats. I'm looking in chat room. Good. You are a member, okay. So you should have gotten the email. You should have gotten the email. Awesome. Good, good, good. Thank you all. We're gonna close this out. Again, I wanna just leave a few minutes if anybody happened in closing comments that they wanna come live and share. I'd love to hear from you. You can unmute yourself. I'm gonna let you be free for the last five minutes. Oh, I have some shy people. I would say, it's Caroline. I would say, I learned many, many years ago, the churches are the number one fundraisers in the United States. And the reason is because they ask every week. So when people say you don't ask, you ask too much, I always reflect back to that comment. So once a month to me is not too much when you're used to getting asked every week in church. So we need to, we preach what we do so we can get the support and change lives with what we do. I love it. It was awesome. That was awesome. Anybody else? Hi, I'm Devin. I run a nonprofit called Y-Semi-Chessian, teaching children chess math and computer science to empower them to pursue STEM degrees. If anyone works with children, I'd love to be able to partner with you and work together to continue to help our youth. I dropped my email and my LinkedIn at the top of the chat. I'll do it again here. And I got to run. I look forward to next month's conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Anybody else? Any comments, last comments, thoughts? Yeah, just, it's Ron Rose. Just, this is my first time on the conference. And I just thought it was really helpful. And I look forward to the next one. And if anybody has any experience with, I just implemented give WP. And if anybody has any experience with implementing that, I'd love to hear from them. Because I've just done the basics so far. And I think it's an application, it's for accepting donations. So, if anybody has any experience with give WP, they could email me, that'd be great. Okay, put your email in the chat room and also give WP, write that in the chat room. We have a few more minutes. Any other comments? Sue Ann, you had unmuted yourself, but I think somebody talked over you. Well, I'm just, I'm overwhelmed because I'm the new ED, but I was given this job. And I feel this incredible sense of responsibility, but I'm really overwhelmed and crying every day. So I feel like I need a lot of help, but just talking and listening, helps are ready. So, I'm crying already. So thank you, though. You're welcome. Well, we're all sending you good vibrations and we are all here for you. That's what ED Chat is for. And thank you for saying that. I mean, it's good to say that out loud so that you hear it and other people hear it because I think sometimes we're all scared, right? We're all scared. But I think it's to bring art to all these kids in this really poor neighborhood who don't get to have art class. And it's an importance of art and creative thinking. And I feel like that's what's giving me the motivation to stop crying and push on. So thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Would you put your website or content information in this chat room? Awesome. On Javanya. So I've only been the executive director for two and a half years and this is one of those thankless roles. And so I just wanted to thank all of you for what you do. I know your board's not usually thanking you if you have a board or not, but the work that we do is extremely valuable to our community. So I just want you all to know that I appreciate being in this space with you and that what we're doing is valuable to the world. And so just even though it might be hard for us right now, we just have to keep on going because we're needed in the community. Wow. With that, I'm going to close. Amen. I'm gonna thank you. Yes, that deserved to amen. I'm gonna thank you all for being here with Edie Chat. Look, TechSoup, we talk about you every day. We talk about how can we help you? We talk about ways we can help you. But I wanted to make sure as you're taking care of everybody in the community, make sure that you take care of yourself and drink your water. And I'll see you guys next time on Edie Chat. Bye-bye.