 I'm going to share my screen now, please just tell me if there's any issue with that. Okay, so I'm hoping my screen is clearly visible. Yes. Okay, great. Hi everyone and welcome to my very first TechSoup Connect India chapter session with you. Many of you have attended, it's quite sessions with me earlier. So thank you for joining us again today. Yeah, I did remember to record. That's a reminder for me. So I want to tell you that TechSoup Connect India chapter is brand new. It's probably a couple of months old now and it's a program of TechSoup. Along with me, there is a co-organizer for the India chapter, Jairdeep Khanduja. He's probably going to join us today. So both of us together will be hosting monthly tech for good sessions for the nonprofit community in India and worldwide. And all of these sessions are going to be recorded and available to nonprofits at any point in time. And like I said, there are multiple country chapters across the world and hosts like us. So all you have to do is go to events.techsoup.org and you can check out sessions by other TechSoup Connect hosts, you know, that they've put up globally on very useful topics for nonprofits. And you can also connect with other nonprofits or using technology like you and network with them. So it's a great opportunity. I think you should go for it. So let's get to today's topic. I think the post COVID situation that we're all in and the economic disruption that we're all facing. I think this topic is very relevant and useful for the nonprofit community, which is how to host virtual fundraising events successfully. And on this session, we have a very special guest speaker, Karthi Vidya, who is the founder and CEO of Team Everest. Hi, Karthi. Hi. Hi, Mayura. Thank you. It's great to have you with us today. So let me quickly introduce Karthi to you all before we go forward. So like I said, he's the founder and CEO of Team Everest, which is one of India's largest youth-run organizations. And he's also a CSR and volunteering mentor and he calls himself a volunteer himself. So Team Everest is a very successful organization that Karthi has built was one man's vision that has now transformed into an organization that is supporting and educating 40,000 children a year. And he's been able to mentor 1,000 volunteers, which I think is a great job to manage. And particularly for today's discussion, Karthi is very relevant for us because the crowdfunding campaigns and the fundraisers that Team Everest hosts on giving their particularly, which I have been following. Are among the top most successful campaigns after year. I think if I'm right, these the last three or four years, they've been raising the maximum funds during giving us annual fundraisers. Is that right, Karthi? Yes, Mayura, you're right. Okay, so that's great and I think it would be great if you can introduce yourself, how you started your volunteering journey and how you went on to build Team Everest. It would be very interesting for all of us to know. Okay, thank you. First of all, a big thanks for giving this opportunity. Hi all. So I'm Karthi Vidhyam, the founder and CEO of Team Everest. So Team Everest is a 15-year-old organization. We started in 2006. So this August we are completing 15 years. So what motivated me to start my nonprofit is my own story. So I come from a place called R&E, which is 150 kilometers from Chennai in Tamil Nadu. So I used to, you know, like I come from a lower middle class family. My father is a small videographer, photographer who goes to marriages, reception, take photos. My mom is a government school teacher and I used to travel every day 15 kilometers to a rural school during my 7th to 10th grade. And I used to go to a rural school to do my schooling. So I used to meet a lot of my friends. I remember this particular incident. I used to have a friend who is my benchmate. He's my lunchmate. We used to play together. Whenever my math teacher asked to buy a notebook which cost around 20-25 rupees, he couldn't afford to buy the notebook because he didn't add the 20-25 rupees. So he will go back home. He will work with his father. His father is a cycle mechanic. He will work with his father, put some puncher, do some mechanical work. You have 2 rupees a day, 3 rupees a day. That is how he used to accumulate money. And it will take him like 10 or 15 days to accumulate 25 rupees and buy the notebook. Till the time my teacher used to punish him. He will make him kneel down or stand outside the classroom, give all sorts of punishments. Because he is one of my close friends, while having lunch, you know, like he used to share his feelings. He used to really feel bad that he couldn't afford even very essential items like notebook for education. It made a huge impact on me as a kid. Not just him, but many students whom I met till my 10th grade were coming from financially poor background because I myself was studying in a rural school there. I got some good marks in 10th. So my mom thought, why don't she invest on my education so that I can score good marks in 12th and get a good college so that my career is secured. So, you know, like I joined a top 10 private schools in Chennai. My family didn't have enough money. They got some loan and they put me in one of the top 10 private schools in Chennai. After joining the school, I observed a couple of things. One, what I observed is the quality of education. There is actually like 100 to 100 times better than what I used to get in a village. And the second thing what I observed is a lot of children whom I met there is financially rich. So till 10th, I'm seeing very poor children and here suddenly I'm seeing very, very rich children. But the kind of education, you know, like that's what actually was a big eye-opener for me because it's 100 to 100 times better than what I used to get in a village. And I felt really bad because way back my friends were getting a different kind of education and here because my family could afford some money, I get a different kind of education altogether. So as a 11th standard kid, I started understanding that if you have money, you get one kind of education. You don't have money, you get a different kind of education altogether. And I felt this is not fair. Every child deserves equal education. So I thought I should do something about this. I was in an hostel till 12th, couldn't do much. Then moved to do engineering in Salem. During my engineering days, I started volunteering locally. I started going to old age homes, orphanages, visually challenged homes. That's how I slowly started volunteering. And something interesting happened during my final year. I got campus recruited in Cognizant, one of the IT company. And that's when I decided, okay, now I've got a job also. So maybe once I joined the company, I'll start a small team and make more people to volunteer. So I completed engineering, joined Cognizant in Chennai, OMR Road and got my first month's salary on August 30, 2006, 15 years back. And after getting my salary, I reached out to some of my friends. I asked them whether they can contribute for their social cause. So some three people came forward, including me four people. We collected 4,000 rupees. And we went to a small village called Sirumur in Tirunamalai district, 150 kilometers from Chennai. And we identify children who used to struggle, like my friend used to struggle. We identify such children. We gave them uniforms, notebooks, stationaries, dictionaries, all those things. That's the very first activity of team members. That's how this organization started. And those days, I was a Java developer within Cognizant. I used to balance both my office work, my address work. I used to wake up early, go to bed late night. That's how I am managing both the work. And after working in Cognizant for almost 100 months, 8 years, exactly 100 months, on December 31, 2014, I quit my job and I came out. Basically, because I'm very, very passionate about volunteering, I strongly believe if more individual volunteers, more good will happen in this country. So I thought if I can quit, I come out. I can make a huge difference by promoting volunteering in the country. So my vision itself is to promote volunteering and inspire everyone to volunteer. So that's the goal of Team Everest. So we quit the organization, I mean quit Cognizant. I came out. For six years, we slowly started putting up a team. So we are a team of 25 people now, working with some 25,000 volunteers and work with some 40,000 children, right from kindergarten till college students. We work right now. So that's a very short introduction about my story on how I started this non-profit and what we do at Team Everest right now. That's great. Kathi, very good to hear that. It's a very inspiring story. And for one individual to create an organization that grows this big is no small deal. So tell me one thing before we get to the topic, something I'm going to also help other NGOs. It's not directly connected to the topic, but how did you manage to inspire so many people to volunteer and how did you keep them glued to the organization? Got it. See, the bigger goal here itself is to, the vision of the organization itself to promote volunteering, right? So what happened is during my stay at Cognizant where I worked for 100 months, 15 months I was a Java developer, but when they started a CSR program, corporate social responsibility program, they wanted someone to be part of it and I was also asking a role like that. So I moved to full-time CSR role. So where I used to travel across the country, represent Cognizant, promote volunteering within the organization. So volunteering is my core skill, employee volunteering and promoting volunteering is my core skill right now. So the key is create a lot of volunteering opportunities for people. Naturally, people wanted to come just like how they want to donate money. A lot of people want to donate time also. Just create easy avenues for them so that let interested people come and contribute time. The more they contribute time, they will feel more connected to your organization. So the key here is create a lot of volunteering opportunities, provide consistent volunteering opportunities and people will, people are going to stick with you. Great. I'm sure that was useful to the NGOs attending the session today. So I'd like to move to today's topic before I get on to Q&A session with Karthi and that should be followed by about 10 to 15 minutes of Q&A with the audience. So kindly keep your questions ready or you can post them in the chat feature and I'll take them up at the end of the session. So let's get to the topic. Why virtual fundraising events? So a lot of NGOs have a mind block when it comes to technology. They're used to fundraising events on ground. They're used to walk-a-thons. They're used to fundraising galas, dinners. But when it comes to virtual fundraising events, there is some sort of a mind block and today we are here to break that mind block and to show you that it's quite easy for you to organize these events and also to make them successful. So today in today's post pandemic, post COVID situation, in fact it's an ongoing situation still. We don't know when it's going to end. We don't know when the economic disruption that has affected all of us including NGOs is finally going to ease out. So considering the situation, I think most of your on-ground fundraising events have either been canceled or postponed indefinitely. The COVID situation has also led to a lot of nonprofit downsizing their teams, which means organizing your annual fundraising events, large events is now going to be more difficult to organize and manage less manpower. Plus corporate sponsorships have either diminished or they've become very uncertain. So you depended on corporate sponsorships for your annual on-ground fundraising events, which is now more difficult than earlier. Considering all of this, I think you understanding virtual fundraising events and beginning to think of ways you can make it happen for your NGO is more important now than ever. But having said that, whether the pandemic situation is here or not, I think virtual fundraising events need not be a replacement or a temporary replacement to your on-ground fundraisers. In fact, they can compliment your on-ground fundraisers even after you start organizing your regular events because they can be far more effective, easier to organize and much less expensive to organize compared to on-ground events. Logistically speaking, operations wise, manpower wise, you don't need a venue. There are many benefits that virtual fundraising events bring with them compared to your regular in-person on-ground events. So consider having them as part of your fundraising mix throughout the year even in the future. So a lot of small and medium-sized nonprofits often ask the question, okay, great, but what can we do? So there are umpteen things that you can do. The list is endless and your imagination is the limit. So here are just some online fundraising event ideas that you can explore like virtual concerts, online auctions, movie nights, birthday fundraisers, craft workshops, anything that you can do virtually to gather an audience, get them interested in your event, give them some value in return for their donation. So these are some ideas that you can explore. And I'm also now going to quickly show you some examples of virtual fundraising events organized in India in the last few months so that you know that it is possible to do. So this was a very successful virtual fundraising concert where leading artists from across India, especially Bollywood came together to raise funds for COVID relief. There were multiple nonprofit organizations involved that I have listed below. So this happened a few months ago. You can always Google and find out more. This is an art auction that happened by Indian artists for again COVID relief where artists came together and auctioned their work virtually and raised funds. So the bidding happened virtually. This is a stand-up comedy, a virtual stand-up comedy that happened to raise funds. This also happened quite recently. This was an event, a live virtual entertainment event that happened to raise funds for COVID relief. So in case of this kind of an event, there is a three-hour window within which the funds are raised by the audience attending the event. So apart from doing your own or organizing your own fundraising events, you can also participate in other online fundraising events like the Dhan Utsav, or giving Tuesday that's organized outside of India in the US. And in India we have Dhan Utsav that happens once in a year during Gandhi Jayanthi. So these are events where you don't have to actually organize, but you simply become a participant, participating in these events and you can raise funds too. And make use of the platform they've created for you. So yeah, these were some examples that I wanted to share with you. And now I think we can move on and speak to Karti. Yes, Karti. So I have a few questions for you and I'm sure the audience attending will have many more. So let's get started. So I first want to ask you how important have virtual fundraisers been? How important have they been for Team Everest? And since when did you start using virtual fundraisers? Okay, that's an interesting question. So see, 100% of our fundraising that we do are virtual fundraisers only. So Team Everest was started in 2006. Right from 2006 what we are doing is only virtual fundraisers. We have never done a physical fundraiser except for one, because one in Chennai we tried for a musical concert because why I tried it is because one of the other NGO which is run by my friend, he was doing it. So I thought, okay, why don't we try it out? But after doing it, I understood it. Every organization's strengths and weaknesses are totally different. Because some NGO is able to do, doesn't mean you will be able to do it. One of the fundraiser that you showed in the presentation earlier, I saw a lot of celebrities and all. See, that's not possible for everyone to do it. If that is your strength, go for it. If not, please don't go for it. I always do a SWOT analysis. That's the best thing you could do. What is your strength, weakness, opportunities and threat? Do a SWOT analysis, SWOT analytics. And then you can actually decide which suits better for you. So for Team Everest, like I told you, our strength is our goal is basically volunteering. And our vision is to inspire everyone to volunteer. So naturally, our strength is basically having huge number of people. And every, I mean, most of them are corporate people, learning members. So obviously, when you ask them, they can, you know, like, introspect people will be able to come and contribute if you do genuine authentic work. If you build trust with them, they're going to come and contribute. So that is our core strength. So right from 2006, whatever we are doing is virtual volunteering. More than that, by nature, I'm a very lazy guy. Okay, if you ask me to do something, organize it and all, then ask funds. The way I look at it is, why should I? And I will tell you this. I never understood the concept of a marathon, almost till maybe, you know, like for almost 10 years or 11 years, I never understood. Okay, some people are running, how do you get money? If I run on my street, no one is giving money, right? So I didn't understand the business model behind how you raise funds via marathon. So for me, okay, I thought, okay, just like after getting my first month salary, I went and asked my friends, three people contributed. That's the same model we are doing even now after 15 years. We go and ask people, we don't conduct events like what you have mentioned, you know, like a stand up comedy or birthday fundraiser, nothing. We don't even have a, so these are even fundraisers. You have an event and either raise funds physically or virtually, but what we do is you don't even have an event. My belief is that human beings are good. If you do good job, if you do authentic work, you go back and report them, how well you spend the money, how you created an impact, you could build that, ask people will give you, that is my theory basically. And so we don't do any events. We go tell, this is the cause. Are you interested to contribute? People contribute using that money, we create an impact, go back, report to the people. This is our model for the past 15 years. So all the events we have done is only virtual. Okay. So what do you mean then? See, we don't raise any cash donation at all. 99.99% of our donations are online donations. And in fact, after COVID, 100% is online donation only. Hardly, like I think our cash donation came some three years back, I believe, three or four, where one senior citizen contributed 500 rupees or 100 rupees, I don't know, because he couldn't contribute online. If not, we have always given, in my background, if you look at it, I am a tech guy and then I work in CSR, then I work in non-profit. So you will see all these flavors in whatever we basically do. So we invest heavily on technology. So right from the beginning, our donations is mostly via online. And that also, you know, like, I mean, in terms of compliance and all of it is very good and auditing, it makes our task very, very simple. Right. So can you share some examples of what kind of virtual fundraising events you have participated in? You said you don't organize them yourself, but you probably participate in ongoing virtual events for fundraising. Now, see, when we say, what do you say? Okay, so let me give an example. Okay, so we run a scholarship called as I am the change scholarship program where we identify parentless, single-parented students, sponsor them for their UG degree. So for this camp, for this program, we run a year-long campaign where, you know, like, even if you go to our website, teamheavals.ngo, if you go to our donate page, you will see we will be asking funds only for this scholarship program. So that is something that happens throughout the year. Second thing is, like, see, we run some campaigns, like during Diwali or during December where we have a program called Gift a Child where we raise funds and, you know, fulfill the wishes of the children. So all these are basically, during those period, we send out a mail or a WhatsApp message to all our volunteers and ask them to contribute for our campaign. So this is one way of fundraising. Second thing is, usually, I think, you know, like, see, 2018, I believe we onboarded Give India. So they are a crowdfunding platform. So basically, we needed Give India because only at that period, we got FCRA. So we thought, you know, like, to get foreign funding, we needed a platform. So we felt Give India is good because it can even give tax exemption to people who donates from US and UK. So we thought, you know, like, okay, let's onboard it there. And what we found out is they run a campaign every Feb 1 March. I think it's giving their fundraising challenge now. Yeah. So we onboarded them that program in 2018. And basically what happens is, you see, for us every May, June, July, we select students for our scholarship program. So which means to know how many students I can select. Before that period, I should know how much fund I have. So I felt, you know, like, Feb 1 March is the right period where you can do fundraising so that ideally, you know, like, we will know how much fund we are receiving. Based on that, I can decide how many students I'm going to sponsor this year. And their fundraising also actually aligned with Feb 1 March. So we thought, okay, why don't we be part of it so that we get some additional matching rewards when we are part of such a program. So that's an added advantage. So even if Give India is not organizing that program, we'll be still doing the fundraising. So all we are doing is, you just need to align with some external programs already happening so that you can tap the benefits out of it. You know, so which has been your most successful virtual fundraising event, you think, and why? Okay, see, yeah. So this Feb 1 March, we do a program. We are doing it from 2018 onwards. We call the program as Change the Future, where we ask our volunteers to contribute. At the same time, we ask our volunteers to become fundraisers, reach out to their families and friends and ask them to contribute for the social cause. Every year from right from 2018, we are waiting our own record. This Feb 1 March 2021, you know, like we raised around 3.3 crore rupees from more than some 10,000, 12,000 people actually. So that's been our biggest fundraiser ever right now. So the key is to, what do you say? It is to put up a plan in place and execute it. So yeah, so the Change the Future is our biggest campaign for now, Mayura. So what do you think makes this fundraiser more successful than others? Or to make it more general, what makes a successful virtual fundraising event? Yeah, see this is an annual event for us. This is an annual fundraiser. We do it only once a year and a huge fund, I mean this forms the majority of our funding for our scholarship expenses actually. So the key is we put in a lot of resources. See, like some 10 to 15 resources would be working on this single fundraising program for almost two months. We have a very clear processes in place. And then, you know, like you onboard volunteers as fundraisers and educate them to go on fundraise. I think these are some of the success criteria why this has become a successful fundraising for us. I think makes a virtual fundraising event successful in general if you have tips to smaller NGOs that are probably starting out only now and have never done a virtual fundraiser. Okay, okay. So like I told you, right, see, with the kind of tools that we have right now, I think India is catching up actually earlier 10 years back or 15 years back you want, you know, like if you go to a payment gateway vendor ask for an online donation for nonprofits, most of them are going to reject you, you know, like that because they felt NGO was a threat. Getting a payment gateway itself was very difficult. Things were changing right now. There are some businesses which is now dedicatedly giving payment gateways to nonprofits. So things has become a lot more easier. So the first thing, I mean, anyone can do virtual virtual fundraising, but what I would suggest is again, you do a SWOT analysis, see, this is your course stretch. If you are not good at technology and if you, basically, if you don't have a good volunteer base, crowdfunding is not for you. And I will tell you something, this word crowdfunding is very, very confusing because you think that, okay, I will go to some website like KTO or Milov or give India. I will create a campaign and some virtual random crowd will come and donate. That has never happened because I myself have tested, I went to some of these websites, created a campaign, put it up and never marketed myself. Even after 100 days or a thousand days, you have not got even a single donation. So basically the word crowdfunding means you create a campaign and invite your own crowd to come and contribute there. That's what is crowdfunding all about. It's not some magic crowd coming and contributing there. So if you don't have a base, if you don't have a crowd to whom you can market it, sometimes you will have a crowd, but you don't know how to market to them. Marketing means just sending out messages, right? Mails, SMS or WhatsApp messages. You just need to tell the world that, hey, this is happening. Are you interested? See, maybe you take an Hamaam soap or a Colgate. If you don't know, okay, that's a great product, but if you don't have, you don't know that such Hamaam or Colgate exists. Now, how are you going to go and tell the shopkeeper and ask them to give it to you? So end of the day, whatever you do, you need to tell the outside world. It could be via social media, via mails, all those things. Every medium has its own advantages and disadvantages. Like say in social media, when you are going to tell it, whether all the followers get to know, probably not. Because the social media, they themselves are going to actually, you know, like the algorithm is going to stop you from showing it organically to so many followers. So every platform comes up with this advantage and disadvantage. So my point would be, first see whether this is your question. So if you want to do crowdfunding, you basically need a good tech platform. It could be, you know, like giving the R something, you can onboard it or you can get Reserpay or something and put it on your integrated on your website itself. Reserpay itself comes up with their own payment pages. So you can take any of these things. Now that is there because most of the, it's a one-time thing that you need to do. If you already have that, the second key thing is do you have people to whom you could market this? And third thing is do you know how to market? So basically you don't need marketing to do it. And even see I am a metallurgical engineer, then became a Java developer, then moved to CSR and doing a nonprofit. This itself is some four or five sectors I have been. I don't know anything about finance, HR, marketing, but I am the CEO of the organization. So I read a lot. I, you know, like Google is my guru right now. Whatever I don't know, I just go put in time to read it basically. That's how I learned some of these things. It's, you know, like learning by doing, that's what I have done. And so once you have a crowd and you know how to tell to the people that you can fundraise, I think then you know that, yeah, crowdfunding is good for me. And once this is done, I see these are some of the parameters that you should keep in mind. Have a clear goal in mind. Okay, what is my goal? And see, you write it on paper and see whether your strategies to achieve the goal. Because if you don't have strategy, goal will just be, it's a wish. Actually, it's not a goal. It's, you are just wishing for it, but it's not a goal actually. So have a clear goal in place. Then put a clear plan on how you are going to achieve it. See it is like, okay, I'm in Chennai. I want to go to Bangalore. Now you will have a plan, right? Okay, I will catch a bus or a train or a flight. Now what is your plan to achieve the goal? So you need a very clear plan in place. Look, that's your basic strategy. You, and every fundraising without communication, nothing happened. So you need a clear cut communication plan, the right technology in place, because if you communicate properly, but your payment gateway is going to fail you most of the time, all your marketing efforts is going to go waste. So make sure it has the highest success rate. You have the right technology in place. And another thing which many people miss out is right costs. Are you projecting a cost which many people can connect to? Because even within team ever is for not every campaign, they contribute. Some campaigns brings in a lot of funds. Some campaign doesn't bring equal amount of funds. So the key here is see which campaign brings in money and try to do those kinds of campaign more because end of the day, just because you do the campaign doesn't mean the donor is going to come and donate. It's because they feel connected to the cost. Only then they are going to come and donate. So do programs which a donor can connect for or have a campaign and then make sure you connect with the donor. If the donor doesn't feel connected to a cost, they're not going to contribute. The next key ingredient could be right amount of follow-ups. Follow-ups is key. At least three follow-ups is something I would always recommend. And as a closure, thank your donors. Gratitude is very, very important. Thank the donors. And the last thing is the ultimate thing. Probably some people do it. Some people doesn't do that. Post campaign updates, the success stories of it. So go back if you would have sent individual hours to people. Go back, individually tell them that this is what your money has done. And put it on social media. Tell individually that way, right? This becomes a cycle. You asked, they donated. You go back and report to them. Trust has been built now. After a certain period, go back and ask them again. So I think that's a cycle that you need to build. There's a lot of tips that you have shared. Kathi, I'm sure that was very useful. And I'm just going to recap this for the audience. Some of the most essential ingredients of a successful virtual fundraiser would be to have a clear goal. To have a plan on how to achieve that goal. To have a team to back your plan and to reach out your core team of volunteers or your team members. And I think next would be to have a great communication strategy in place because communication is key to reaching out to your donors and nudging them to donate. And then next would be following up with your donors and thanking them probably which will help in donor retention so that next time they come back and donate when you go with an ask. And in terms of technology you spoke about having a robust payment gateway integrated with your website. And for NGOs that probably don't have a payment gateway they could use a platform like GivenDare that offers that to them. An external platform where they can raise funds. So apart from that in terms of technology they should also have some prowess when it comes to social media marketing or reaching out through social media tools like Facebook, WhatsApp etc. so that they can spread the word about the campaign. So is there anything else that's not covered in terms of technology because a lot of smaller NGOs might think oh how can I do a virtual fundraiser I am not technologically sound enough. So do you think that's all it takes to have a... That's all it takes. So just to summarize these are the eight things I told you. Clear goal, clear plan, communication, right technology, right cost right amount of follow-ups, banking donors and post campaign updates. So that's one of the very key ingredients of any any fundraising it could be virtual or physical I think these are the key things. Great. So it's actually not out of reach for NGOs if they simply sit down and plan it out well and they have a team to support them I guess. So apart from this it would be interesting to know since you do multiple virtual fundraising campaigns throughout the year what do you think is your most innovative or creative virtual fundraiser till date? Yeah I think I answered this earlier so change the future campaign. That's your most successful campaign sorry to interrupt you that's your most successful campaign which you don't give India. So by creative I mean something that's really innovative or out of the box. I think like I told you right all our campaign actually follow the same pattern basically I would say change the future is where we have added a little bit of tweak where instead of we just asking our volunteers we ask our volunteers to become fundraisers reach out to their network it's called as peer to peer fundraising. So basically when we ask our set of volunteers it's called crowdfunding but you make your volunteers are fundraisers it's called peer to peer fundraising so what we have done is because we are a very small team we are just 25 people so we can't do much so if you need to you know in a bigger reach you have to enable your volunteers to become fundraisers so where you know like we have done some of these things there like in that program we orient the volunteers on how to fundraise so we educate them basically how to do fundraising we have built a small fundraising kit on you know like because not everyone can communicate effectively they need and volunteers are also again constrained with time so we make a small communication kit a fundraising kit for them so where we put all the tips everything which they can take it up and use it for fundraising and then we have put up some you know like in so for social media things we have put up some do-it-yourself activities like say you can make a small scholarship cap put it on your head take a picture and tell the world like this we are given easy to do-it-yourself activities which volunteers could do and share it with their network that way you know like you have more reach to the people in their network actually I think to know so DIY activities on social media for donors that they can do themselves so that that's an interesting way of spreading the word or probably for it to go slightly viral at least within their own network that's an interesting idea so let me ask you one question as a follow up to this since you do a lot of fundraisers throughout the year how many let's say about 10 to 12 whatever that you do see we basically do like every quarter one campaign basically that's what we do we basically do four fundraisers yeah that's all because what we found out is asking people to donate money once in three months once a quarter is kind of idle if not it becomes too long if you ask more frequently it becomes too short then you feel like you are asking very frequently I would say every 90 days you can go and ask them that's what we found as a sweet spot okay okay so even if you do quarterly fundraising events you are pretty much reaching out to a similar or database donor database which probably grows event to event but the base remains the same so how do you keep it interesting for donors like how do you make it different for them each time so that it doesn't seem like you are repeatedly going and asking them for donations see it's about the cost right so basically what I have found out is in India Diwali works very well maybe many NGOs could also relate to it during Diwali a lot of people actually contribute so you know I mean align that with people's interest so basically Diwali is one when we do a campaign by December we do a campaign because it's mostly festive season your Christmas is coming New Year is coming holiday season a lot of people go on vacation so I think you know like that's the period we do and Feb 1 March we do this campaign and usually before school reopening during May or June so we do another fundraising campaign so people can relate to this okay so you see when say May, June you go and do programs like back to school campaign or as fundraising for scholarships many people can relate to it because school colleges reopen at the time so I think that's where you need to align like I told you right see we don't do events based fundraising like this time marathon next time musical we don't do that because that's not our core strength our strength is we believe in people you ask them you do genuine work people will contribute so we just ask for a different cause every time so that you know like okay now I need to contribute for a different cause not the same cause so people the donor fatigue doesn't comes into play and they can come back and contribute got it okay great so thank you for that and finally before we open the floor for audience questions is there anything else that you'd like to share especially with small NGOs that probably now want to do their first virtual fundraiser do you have any tips for them okay see what I would say is fundraising is an art and at the same time it is a science so what I would recommend us if you are very very scared of it or not try it just read whatever is on the internet go try it out fail hundreds of times then you will actually crack it because I always used to tell this what work for us might not work for you because your strength and our strength is totally different our strengths and weaknesses so something which works for you will not probably work for me at all so figure it out what works better for you tweak it don't stick to whatever has been put up in the internet this is what they have told so I will follow only that no because every organization is different so tweak it according to your own strengths and weaknesses build your own programs and you will see definitely more success in all your fundraising causes so much for that so you can ask your questions now I am going to take them up from the chat feature so there is one question here if you have more questions you can act them in the chat feature so there is a question from Sagar Pujari it says any suggestions for a rural based grass root organization to build its network probably he means online donor network okay okay see again Sagar in terms of fundraising there are many ways of fundraising types of fundraising you Google it us there are many types of fundraising so for us team ever a substitution crowd funding and peer to peer fundraising as a fundraising model so we don't do any events we don't have like a donor who gives you a lakh rupee or 10 lakhs 20 lakhs like that majority of our funds are like around 500 rupees 1000 rupees range so lot of people come and contribute tiny amount of money so we work on a principle of tiny drops makes a ocean right so that's the principle we work on so what you need to do is look into what is the strengths and weaknesses so without me knowing what is the strength and weakness of your organization I can never suggest this is the way for you to do this so go look back and then you know like you could also take inspiration connect with a peer rural based grass root organization see what they do what work for them and see whether you can be able to replicate it if not see how you can tweak that and execute this so I would say I can't say this will work for you what you need to do is look into it okay you are a huge say NRI base for example then you can target NRI's fundraising or no no probably I have only people all in what do you say Karthi you are muted could you please unmute yourself I'm sorry I don't know we've got muted yeah so what I was telling you was you need to figure it out what works well for you because there are many many different types of fundraising so you need to pick and choose so one thing I would strongly advise is just because some other NGO is doing don't try it out the same because everyone strengths and weaknesses different this is the biggest mistake we did at our early stages but luckily we got that lesson earlier and then you know like struck to what works well for us so Neha is asking we promote quality education low in groups helping them embrace technology can you help us car few fundraisers which we can work on to make it successful or at least noticeable Neha see what I would suggest is education I think if you look at globally education is a sector that actually been funded heavily in philanthropy in this sector and many people actually could also relate to it because most of your donors are educated and they can relate to the you see probably if you go and ask them for healthcare or probably woman empowerment or agriculture what happens is not everyone has been working on woman empowerment so for them to contribute relate to a cost is difficult but education is something I strongly believe you can easily fundraise so what you need to do is like you want to get into crowdfunding peer to peer fundraising all you need to do is come out of there good cost okay guys again I will tell you something you need to actually take something and break it into units they call it as unit economics right so today someone comes and ask me Karthi what is your per student cost for scholarship I have a cost in place so you need to have that money see today for Akshay Patra they do great fundraising so if you reach Akshay Patra they will clearly tell you per student what is the cost for providing meals to a child so you need to come up with that cost I think that is the starting point that is the key so today for Diwali we tell them 500 rupees per person per kid is the dress cost so every Diwali we get dresses for children and contribute we tell them this is the cost for dress so you need to first break down into so if you are going to go and tell them I am going to put up a computer lab do this please can you contribute people will think that will cost me 5 lakhs 6 lakh rupees now I can contribute only 500,000 rupees how is it going to make a difference and they will withdraw they will not come and make a contribution so what you need to do is you take the 5 lakhs 10 lakh rupees and it say it benefits 1000 children now divide that by 1000 and make it around 500,000 rupees and then go and ask people it is easy to convince people so you need to make it very very relatable if you are asking an individual donor in case your donor base or targeting is corporate there ok one computer lab 5 lakhs makes sense if you are targeting CSR funds so yeah even I often say this to our NGO clients as well that defining your impact very clearly is so important before you start a fundraiser so the donor needs to know what he is donating for exactly how much it costs and how you will use those funds I think that is a very very important point that you have made something there is a question from you organizations that do not have a fundraising department it is often difficult to get a buy in from program staff to push crowdfunding campaign it is seen as additional work that takes away from core competencies best ways to overcome this and encourage our team Nikhil I will tell you this see 2014 when I quit my job on December 31 2015 when I came to my home I did not have a working desk also because I did not need it for so many days so I got a working days laptop I started working there so when most of the small nonprofits I would say the founder is the issuer is the fundraiser or whatever all I mean all in one is basically the founder actually you start there and what happened is you know like we slowly started growing my first employee I hired we already had an employee so he worked on almost every department for me we did it for a particular cost then I got to know he has done MCA so I have given some technology later work because I found out technology is a game changer it will help you scale I gave him slowly technology but we worked on all the department but my second person whom I hired is actually for fundraising so because fundraising is like your heart it's like a blood passing on see today you can do great job but tomorrow your bank account is free we are not going to get even a single money you are going to die quickly actually so fundraising is the key so I would say probably don't you hire one person when you are very slowly starting nonprofit set your base as strong so don't take five people who is going to spend the money and only one person to bring in money now what happens more money are spending you have five people to spend the money only one person to bring the money instead do the reverse if you have more money bring in two three people to bring money then probably one or two people to spend money so it's easy for the people know like who wants to bring in the money to convince them to spend the money they will happily do because spending money is easier than bringing in money so don't bring in people who are who wants to do work on ground and ask them to do fundraising is going to be difficult instead tell being people to fundraise and then tell them to do on-ground job they will do easily I think that's the trick it's like the Bill Gates of fundraising I should say seriously getting more people to raise funds than to spend funds I think this is the first time I heard anything that's something it's like see end of the day there is no water in the tank you are not going to get it right so basically one thing in the past success I have done is because very first month when I came I had very little money to pay to only one person so you hired it now I have 10 problems in my office now and you will have it is like 10 babies crying you are only little bit of food now how do I give it basically so as an CEO you just strategize so what we have done is which is the loudest crying baby now which causes me a lot of headache okay let's go feed it you fix that problem your list of the nine problem is going to stay but if this problem I attack I can easily solve probably rest of my nine problem so for any starting small organization fundraising is key because you need to fix it permanently if not it is like you need to live with that disability forever it's going to not allow you to grow further I have a follow up question for Nikhil's question yes the organization should have a fundraising team in place before you know but what about the model where for example even a team I rest most of the people raising funds are volunteers right they are not really part of the team or they are not professional fundraisers so how are you inspiring them and making sure that they stay you know now motivated enough to fix that question right this is Nikhil's question that I answered now actually no no no no I am saying I understood your answer but I am saying suppose you are not apart from your employees you have a lot of volunteers your volunteer base raising funds is much larger than your employees how do you apply this logic to the volunteers see this logic is very simple this logic is very simple look at fundraising as volunteering ok see today someone trust us trust me I can go on ask them ok would you like to volunteer for a teaching program to teach computer to a child similarly ask them would you like to fundraise for the social cause see there would be some people who are too introvert they will tell no no no fundraising money I am very scared of it see even I will tell you something when team ever one crore very first time I come from a lower middle class I have never thought in crores even before that not even once I have read something so many zeros in your crore I have never done that first time team ever said one crore I started trembling actually my arms started shivering actually oh my god this much how much I do because it shows actually lack of courage within you because you don't see that kind of thing lot of things disturbs your mind that you can't do this because you have no solution then you know like like what did they say in superman's movie and all right so I think with power comes responsibility right I felt I started looking at it a different perspective Karthik come on so many people trust you on their donating now it's your responsibility to take this money spend it responsibly go back tell the people if I can do that now what we are creating people will start trusting NGOs not just team ever else as a sector they will start getting more NGOs and then more people come come forward and contribute that's exactly the vision of team members to promote volunteering in the country so I started looking at the big picture then I thought okay now I should not be scared of I should take this money responsibly spend it so my answer to your question is look at it like a volunteering opportunity go and ask people ask I always tell the key in fundraising is always ask don't try to convince people tell me I'm not good at marketing I don't I'm not good at convincing I will always tell don't convince only ask because asking is in your control whether they contribute or not is not in your control I will tell you tell you one tip guys if you are listening to this see I will we will all we are always set up goals right we will tell like I want to lose 5 kg now gold based stuffs never work actually you I want to lose 5 kgs 10 kgs instead make it very input based or system based goals like hey am I going to gym okay for next 10 days I am going to gym for next 100 days I am going to go to gym because this is the input this is input based goal we always set up output based goals like I want to lose 5 kg but what is the input there I want to go to gym 100 days similarly in fundraising always tell okay I need 50 lakhs don't do that instead I have a goal like ask 2000 people because if you ask 2000 people you will end up pricing 20 lakhs so that is how you need to change the game so my point here is identify your volunteers ask them whether they can do it so basically last time some 600 people fundraised for us for that we asked around some 3000 people 3000 or 6000 or 5000 people you asked so you need to ask people only people who was going to who is who has time who's chose interest and okay wow this looks like fun maybe I will try it there are many reasons why they will tell you no and some people will tell you yes this year next year they will tell you no so end of the day you need to pick and choose you just need to ask asking is the foundation of all fundraising you don't even ask you don't even get it the moment you ask the chances of you getting a donation is 50% and make sure you don't convince anyone why people run away from NGOs because you try to I mean this is like you are not what you say the bad sales guy who try to push you don't want the dictionary but you somehow try to sell it on you you get irritated none of us should actually do that you should ask that as a genuinely okay I don't want it as move you just tell them okay that's absolutely fine but we are in need maybe you can contribute next time or you come here for a friend who want to contribute to such cause please recommend us tell that come out I'm damn sure these people will come back and support you in future because you are to be so nice to them those are nuggets that can only come from practical experience of having work with you know thousands and thousands of volunteers that was very useful at the seriously so there is one question from yeah would you like me to read it yeah how do you manage such large number of donors does it not make donor management difficult small grassroots organization with resource concern may find this a challenge I will tell you something I am actually only three people or maybe I would say four people who works both on fundraising and finance so if you put finance I say finance managing your bills expenses all those things if you actually look at it we are only two people I would say working full time on and we manage some 40 thousand 45,000 people actually donors so I would say you need to have a good technology in place and you will build expertise over time you just need to start with 100 people you will know you will hit a bottle neck then figure it out how do I do it out it's you need that curiosity to solve problem there is no problem then it's not fun right the fun is in that journey actually so all you need to do was start with 100 thousand people now you will hit a bottle neck now go see there are a lot of dms donor management systems right see how you can use some of these tools to manage your thing and most of the time sometime like a spreadsheet or that's our table you can use some of these things or use any CRM see we use Zogo Zogo creator so you can use any of these things which works well for you you can use Salesforce CRM or Microsoft so many things options are there but you have to go evaluate which works for you from Surabhi right at the bottom how do you motivate the volunteers to fundraise on what kind of target should be given to them sure we don't motivate anyone to actually go and fundraise we basically pick people who are already motivated ready to be fundraised we are going and asking them that's all whether you want to do it so the one of the thing that we do is don't go ask some random guy to fundraise for you that's a bad ask most of the people who are engaged with you whom you should ask to fundraise is someone who is very committed to your organization or engagement I would say who has engaged with your organization at least two times a year what I say what I mean by engagement for example someone is volunteer for your call that is one engagement they have come for some five of your events that is five engagement someone has donated twice a year now that is two engagement so someone has donated two donations that is seven engagement count your engagements anyone about two engagement because they are already they are not just interested they have also expressed their interest in terms of giving money or coming to an event so target those people ask them because your chances of them getting convert to fundraiser is high so that is what you do you can't someone who is not even aware of your organization trying to convince them doesn't work very useful Karthi so basically don't come process pushy and don't force correct what we do is you need to be in donor shoes or people shoes because what happens is as non-profit sometimes you think your only goal is money your only goal is money I want money whether known person giving unknown person giving it doesn't mean to me I need money no see it is actually like how you build a relationship right it's a relationship you have to slowly inverse time on a relationship once they start believing you see today I go and ask my wife give me 2,000 rupees she is going to give me now same thing I can't go and ask a stranger is not going to give me what is the difference there the trust factor is not there there is no relationship so they don't give you that money it's as simple as that build trust show them that I am authentic I can make a huge impact then you can relate to them these people are going to come and give money see the goal here is not to get money the goal is to identify people who sings with your dream hey I also believe that every child should get equal opportunity so what is your story that you are going to connect with if they don't connect with your story then they are not going to contribute I remember your donor you know like he came and told Kathi tell me if anyone is suffering with cancer I probably want to give money to them and we work on education see we told hey we don't come across like that but if I come across someone like that I will let you know immediately next to 2 days the kid who reached out to me told that their parent actually told me that kid has a hole in their heart and they need some money for this operation I reached out to this guy and told hey there is a kid suffering because of the hole in the heart would you like to contribute he told no no no I want to contribute only for a cancer patient because I lost my mom because of cancer now only if you understand that intention see it's not money it's an emotion actually played to it you should not go on trying to donate it for an hard cause or for an educational cause something like that because he wants to reciprocate that's an emotion that he or she is trying to express that is something we need to respect tap it if you think he has money but that is not my money this is not a cause you want to contribute respect that move on because you have enough people in the world who want to contribute to your cause that's great that's a very good tip so basically donation is an emotional decision and not a rational yes he too connecting with the donor is what you are saying so there is one last question from Anupama we are running out of time so this is the last question we will take would you like to answer it quickly for non-profit that are non tech savvy do you have any recommendation of choosing a tech platform to support scaling up tech savvy better go to any of the crowdfunding platform I have used only give India I have not used anything else but give India as an advantage of collecting foreign donations and all I don't know whether Keto, Milov does that I don't have knowledge about it but please check it out but give India is really good we have used it personally and you can try out their platform give India is also equally fond of Karthi they keep talking about it yeah yeah yeah because most of the times you know like we bring in large amount of funds large amount of donors so our core strength basically match with what they are trying to achieve so that's why that partnership was very fruitful so thanks for those nuggets of information that you have shared with that non-profit community I can see that people are excited with your information you have shared it was so nice to host you and I look forward to talking to you again and thanks everyone for being here and catch you on our next webinar next month so I am going to share my screen again I just want to share a few clips before I sign out it's okay I think I will what please go to the TechSoup India chapter you will see monthly events listed there same place as this one and I will take turns in hosting monthly and I hope to see you all there thank you so much, thank you Karthi thank you so much thank you all again, thanks a lot everyone