 All right, again, thanks everyone for joining us this afternoon. We are here to talk about end of year fundraising. We all know it is critically important such a large amount of funds are raised for nonprofits in this last month of the year, really the last couple of days of the year, but extends all the way through December. So it's really important to make sure that you've got everything optimized to really make the most of this time of year for your nonprofit because other nonprofits out there are doing the same thing. So let's make sure that everybody has their own pieces in place for a really successful end of year campaign. So we'll talk today about just a handful of key things that you can do to add to your campaign, to improve your campaign, to really make sure that you're putting your best foot forward to raise the most funds possible for your end of year campaign, setting you up for success in meeting your year end budget goals, but also in giving your organization the funds that you need to really take on the programming and mission based work that you'll have for the year ahead. So hopefully everyone's familiar with Mighty Cause. We are the online fundraising platform that's really here to power nonprofit fundraising. We want to make it easier for you to do your online fundraising. We want to make it more efficient, but also more powerful for you. So the tools that we've built are really all aimed at making it easier for your organization to raise more funds. So as I mentioned, we're really going to stick to five key strategies. So that's a really manageable number. Everybody can tackle five things. Some are a little harder than others, but all are definitely something that your organization can take on. You still have at least a few weeks left in the year. So don't think it's too late to add or change or adapt your end of year fundraising strategy to be successful. Before we get into that, though, I wanted to just mention two quick important things. Most of what we'll talk about today is all about getting donors to go to your donation page and make a donation. But before we focus on that, it's important to make sure that you have taken the time to review, finalize, and then preview that whole donor experience. If you work really hard to get a donor to your page, but you don't know or feel confident in what that donation experience looks like for them, what kind of thank you are they going to receive and when, you're not setting yourself up for success. So take the time right now before you do anything else. First things first, make sure your page is in great shape, whether you're using your organization's profile page on Mighty Cause, whether you've started a specific fundraiser page for your end of year campaign, whether you're hosting a team campaign, you can have all different types of pages, but make sure that whatever page it is that you're sending donors to, you've taken a look at it, it's in good shape, images, text, copy is all up to date, really aligning with whatever message you are sticking to for your end of year campaign. And we'll talk about that a little bit more, but make sure it is good to go. So when people get to that page, they're just further encouraged to click on that donate button and continue the process. And the rest of these items really fall under what that donor will experience as soon as they click on that donation button. And in Mighty Cause, through your donor experience tools, you have the opportunity to customize that experience for the donor, control what types of questions they're seeing when they go to make their donation. So for example, you can decide if it's critically important to collect the address, the physical mailing address of the donor or the phone number of the donor and a few other key features or key questions as well. Now it's important to make sure that you don't ask too many questions of the donor when they're going to make that process because you don't want to slow them down. But take the time to consider what information, what demographic information is really important for your team to be able to do the follow-up and stewardship that you need and then make sure you've got those questions in place. You can also customize the donation levels. So when somebody clicks to make a donation, they'll see four suggested donation amounts as well as the opportunity to select a custom amount and give whatever they'd like. Those four suggested donation amounts are a really good opportunity for your organization to continue communicating messaging the impact that your organization has. And this is especially important during the end of year, during this holiday season. Use these donation levels to really help the donor see the tangible impact of your gift. What does their $25 gift or $50 gift do for your organization? Is it food for a family? Is it school supplies for a student? Whatever it might be that's aligned with your mission, those donation levels are a really good opportunity for you to encourage giving at certain dollar amounts, but also to reinforce the impact that your organization can have. And that's especially important in this holiday season end of year. People want to see that tangible impact they're used to buying gifts for everybody. So it's nice to see that tangible connection. So really important to set those for your end of year campaign in particular. And then after the donor has made their donation, they'll have two key thank you experiences when you're using the Mighty Cause platform. The first is as soon as a donor completes their donation, they will see a thank you page that your organization has had the chance to customize. It'll be right up on the screen as soon as they click submit. That's your first and most immediate opportunity to say thank you to that donor for their gift. So don't miss the opportunity to customize this and make this a compelling thank you. You can add video, photos, and customize your text to make sure that it's really aligned with the donation that they just gave or the campaign that they just supported. You can also set a specific URL that you'd like your donors to be encouraged to click on and visit after making their gift. That can send them back to your blog. It can send them back to your organization's website, whatever that might be. But that thank you page is really your first and most immediate chance to say thank you for the donor. So make sure, again, through your donor experience tools from your Mighty Cause dashboard, take the time to build that thank you page very quick, but can have a really big impact. And as soon as you build that, you have the chance to preview that so that you'll see exactly what the donors will see. And then the final step, of course, is that donation receipt. As soon as a donor makes their donation, they will receive an immediate email receipt, and you, your organization, has the opportunity to add some customized language that will be plugged into that email receipt. Again, it's one of those first chances that you have to say thank you. So make sure to add that additional customization so that you are encouraging, reinforcing, thanking that donor in two immediate ways right following their gift. And of course, there's plenty of other ways that you can continue to say thank you after these first two initial interactions. But both of these are easy for your organization to customize and build right through your Mighty Cause tools to make sure that right from the start, you say thank you in a meaningful way. And the next piece here, again, before we jump into the five key strategies to cover, is take advantage of the Mighty Cause resources that we're putting out this month. Our goal here is to help all of our nonprofit partners raise as much as they can for their missions. And so what we're trying to do is share, compile, incorporate all of the expertise that we have from different campaigns that we've seen, different strategies that have been really successful to help do some of that initial work for you. We know many nonprofits don't have a big staff. You don't have a ton of people to brainstorm and do some of this research. So take advantage of these resources and help them, let them help you step up your campaign this year, whether it's downloading our ebook, which has key strategies from peer to peer fundraising and others to see how you can incorporate that into your campaign. We've got an end of year checklist, really helpful resource you can download and make sure that you are completing all of the most important things to keep in mind. Today's webinar is being recorded and will be available after the fact, but we also have another webinar available, just a quick walkthrough of updating and customizing your page for the end of the year. And we have lots more that we'll be posting on our blog at blog.mightycause.com. So make sure that you keep an eye on that and take advantage of download all the resources and hopefully they can help you be even more successful this year. All right, so now we're gonna actually jump into the five key strategies that we're gonna discuss today to really boost your year-end fundraising. And the first is incorporating the holiday season into your messaging, into your campaign. And this might seem obvious, but I wanna talk about a few key ways that you can do this. The end of year timeframe and the holiday season are really meaningful ideas that you can focus on within your messaging. Donors are receiving tons of emails, tons of solicitations at this time of year. And it's for these key reasons, for that holiday messaging, that year-end messaging. So make sure that you take advantage of that opportunity and incorporate that. Of course, yours will be customized to whatever mission, program, impact your organization will be having, but add in some of that additional content, tie it back to the holiday season. So one key way to do that is telling stories that are gonna appeal to human emotion. And by this, I mean focus on people or focus on one thing that is served by your mission. Try not to focus as much on those high-level statistics. That's something that's really meaningful to you as an organization, because it tells you the success you've had, the impact you've had over the years. But oftentimes for a donor, that can be overwhelming, it can go over their head, focusing on the story of one individual or one family or one student or one animal, whatever it might be that is relevant for your organization, that personal story is something that a donor can connect with much more closely than overall statistics of, for example, serving 600 homeless families in a city or whatever it might be. So think about how you can tell those personal stories. We already talked a little bit about the giving levels, but it used those as a chance to really make your donations feel like tangible items. Donors are out buying all kinds of holiday gifts this year. Allow them, help them to think of their donation to your organization in that same way. It's just as important that they do it before the end of the year, before the holiday season, make their gift, purchase whatever item that will support your organization. Of course, the holiday season is also a time that for many people, no matter what religion, no matter what kind of holidays they do or don't celebrate, it's a time to think about what people are grateful for or what they feel blessed to have. And so that's why it can feel really extra important to give back during this season when people are recognizing how much they have, especially in areas around the country where it's maybe a little colder and some of these key services are even more important. As people think of their own traditions and experiences that they'll have throughout the holidays, that motivation to give becomes even more important. And finally, year-end tax messaging. We all know that the tax code has changed a bit from previous years. And so there's all kinds of speculation about what that will actually mean for the way that it impacts donors giving during the end of year season. But it's still something that's important to keep in mind and reference, it's maybe not as important as it's been in previous years. I think donors will continue to give when it's important for them to give, when they care about your cause, less so for that direct ability to get the tax deduction for their gift. But again, it's messaging that will be out there. It's something to keep in mind just as it relates to helping to encourage that donor to convert across the finish line, actually go to your donation page and make their gift in December rather than waiting until at some point in the new year. It's also another opportunity to kind of incorporate giving as it relates to gifting. Of course, people are buying all kinds of gifts and giving all kinds of gifts during this season. And you can use your campaign to be a part of that experience. So whether that's preparing e-cards or physical cards that you'll send for any donations that have a dedication or maybe just for any donations that are made at all, take that additional opportunity to connect in a personal meaningful different way than just a follow-up email with those donors. Encourage board members or close to boarders to start a peer-to-peer fundraiser for your organization, especially your board members, but you may have other close supporters as well that are really willing to be an advocate for your cause. And this is a really easy time of year for them to transition that to fundraising. It's a time when they will have the opportunity to connect with their close friends and families and you can tell them to encourage people instead of giving a gift, instead of buying me a gift this year, make a donation to this organization that I really care about. That seems to be easier messaging for somebody that maybe hasn't tried a peer-to-peer fundraiser for your organization before, this holiday time when people are used to giving gifts, it's an easier transition. So think about if you might have a few keyboard members or your board of directors as a whole that might be willing to take on this approach to help bring in more funds for your organization, this campaign. And then finally, of course, thinking about your messaging, your campaign, as you develop it, can you take on something like adopt a family, adopt an animal, adopt a student, adopt a tree, whatever it might be again, that's relevant for your organization, but make it more tangible by allowing the donor or the group of donors to see the direct impact to one specific, again, person, family, whatever, that they're gonna have an impact on. And then it starts to feel more like that holiday gifting experience rather than just making a donation to your organization. So the next key strategy to keep in mind, it's one that we talk about all the time here it might've caused, but we do it for a reason. Matching grants are one of the most proven ways to be successful with any fundraising campaign that you are putting on. They are a great way to increase your overall totals for what you raise for the campaign, but they can have a really important impact on the donor experience, donor psychology when they're making their donations. The reason for that is because it creates an extra sense of urgency. So we already know that the holiday season and the end of your timeframe coming up, that's what creates an urgency to give now or given the next week or two for your donors, but adding a match is a way to really amplify that. Give before December 31st and your donation will be doubled. Your donation will be tripled, whatever it might be. That adds extra urgency, extra reason for the donor to cross that line and actually make their gift. It's really appealing, especially for those smaller donors that might wanna make a contribution, but be intimidating that they're intimidated that their $25 gift might not be big enough to really make a difference for your organization. Seeing that match opportunity at whatever level it might be lets them feel like their donation has a bigger impact. Donors look for that type of opportunity when making their gift. It also makes it really clear, easy call to action again. Not just support our organization because we do such important work, but make your donation today because it can be matched. These are all things again that just play into making it more exciting for the donor to make their gift and encouraging them to actually do it. So we have other resources available that dig even deeper into matching grants, but I'm just gonna cover it briefly here today. Some of the key steps to take from today, if you don't have a match as part of your campaign, how you might be able to get one in place in before the end of the year. Of course, we're getting, we're cutting it close here already in December, but depending on the relationships that you already have in place, you may still be able to secure one for the end of the year. So the first step is prospecting. Taking a look at who in your existing network of supporters might be a good fit for this. This is really important for an end of year match. It's important to really look at who is already in your existing base of supporters in some way or another. We're likely past the point where you'll make a brand new connection with a corporate partner, for example, that's willing to make a matching donation this quickly before the end of the year. So you'll wanna focus on those existing relationships that you have, whether they've donated in the past or not, whether they've been involved as an event sponsor in the past or not. Look at those existing relationships and pay special attention to key groups of people. Corporate sponsors, maybe major donors that typically make a larger gift each year and they haven't made their major gift this year. Same thing with a sponsor if they've supported your organization in the past years but haven't yet made a donation this year, maybe your event structure changed and they didn't support your event or whatever it might be. Looking at major donors and corporate sponsors that have given in larger amounts before, but maybe haven't this year. This is a great opportunity to connect with them and see if they wanna make their gift as a match so that it can encourage further giving. And finally, a fallback that every single nonprofit should have access to is your board of directors. This is one definite way to get a match before the end of year is to ask your board of directors to pool together their year-end gifts and offer them in the form of a match. So every organization should have that as an opportunity, maybe one board member in particular makes a large gift each year that they're planning to make at the end of the year and they can transition into this match but look at those groups, see where you might have a few individuals or groups of people that could be a good fit again for a match in the next few weeks before the end of the year. And then take the time. Again, we are short on time here but think about your relationship with this donor, whoever it might be and what's important to them. A corporate sponsor is gonna have things that are important to them that are very different than your board of directors or a major giving donor. So think about really what's important to each donor prospect and then when you go to do your ask, make sure that it's specific and personal and crafted to them, call them directly, schedule a meeting face to face if possible and ask for this matching gift in a way that's going to make it easy for them to say yes. That corporate sponsor is likely gonna be much more interested in maybe the marketing appeal, how their company might be promoted or recognized as a sponsor while the major donor might be much more interested in knowing the impact that their gift will eventually have on your organization. So again, just kind of a few key things to keep in mind as you prospect, take the time to cultivate, communicate with these donors and then actually make your ask. And I mentioned it as it relates to board members but it's really available with any type of match that you're able to set up. There are flexible opportunities on the MyDucals platform to promote that match as a part of your page, whether it's a one to one match, a two to one match, your only match in the first $25 of each gift and you always have the opportunity to combine smaller matches to make a big impact. I mentioned this as it relates to the board of directors but you might have other groups, maybe past staff members, volunteers, groups of people that might be able to make smaller donations but if you batch a few together, you might come up with something that feels more meaningful to offer as a match. So once you've taken the time to secure the match, the really important piece is promoting it. Make use of this additional tool that you've added to your campaign this year. Make sure that it is part of every email that you send out, send out a specific email just focuses on the match as the primary focus of your campaign. You'll have some, of course, that focus on the mission, the impact, what you're hoping to raise, what the funds will help you to accomplish but send one that's a really clear, simple, here is our match, make your donation to double your impact. Make it really clear. It's also important you put that match on your page. As I mentioned, on Mighty Cause, you have lots of flexibility in adding a matching grant to your page and it's just a display feature. So you're, of course, it's your relationship to manage with the donor. They can send you a check directly. Their match doesn't have to be paid through the platform but you have the opportunity to add it to your page to add this extra sense of urgency. All those same reasons that it's important for donor psychology to know about the match. You wanna reinforce them, remind them of the match whenever you can. So when they're on your donation page, right about to click that donation button, reminding them of that match that's available is important to maybe encourage them to increase the amount that they were gonna give. It's also helpful because as you receive funds towards the match, the dollar amount left will count down, the time will count down. So again, you're encouraging people that, hey, I probably shouldn't wait till December 31st to make my gift because the match looks like it's almost up. I'm gonna go ahead and donate today. Along with, of course, having the chance to recognize the grantor publicly if they're interested in that. You can always choose to leave them anonymous but for those donors that are interested in that recognition, this is a great opportunity for you to give them that recognition and promotion right on your donation page. Social media is a great way throughout the month of December to share progress and updates, how close you are to meeting your match, how many donations you have. You can set many goals kind of throughout the rest of the month of December. You have about 20 days left of giving. So how can you package and make use of all of these tools to make each day feel exciting? Give people reasons to give throughout and not just again. Oh yeah, I'll make sure I come back and give at some point before December 31st but why should they give now? Why should they give today? And finally, as I mentioned, as it relates to the email, you can incorporate this match directly in your call to action language. When you add a donate button to your email, for example, double your donation, add things to really remind donors at all opportunities that you can that this match is available. Of course, our next item here is all about outreach because you can have a really great campaign, really great page. And if you don't spread the word to people, they're not gonna find it and get there. So just a few key things to focus on when it comes to your outreach campaign. Likely, you already have certain things in place. So this is just about adding to that, optimizing that. So the first thing I will say is that there is no such thing as too much communication. As everybody knows, when you're looking at your email this time of year, you are getting 10, 15, 25 emails a day from all kinds of companies that are encouraging you to buy their products, Cyber Monday, Green Monday, Black Friday, everything. They're still hitting all of those messages and adding new sale messages. So there's lots of noise in your donor's inbox. So you have to communicate. You've got to make sure you're presenting as many opportunities as you can so that they can see yours. Your one email in the month of December doesn't get lost in the hundreds of others they're getting. So don't worry about sending too much communication. Worry about sending the right communication to the right people and we'll talk more about that in just a minute. Multichannel is really critical. We've talked, I mentioned just a little bit about email while that is one of the most important ways to connect with your donors. Of course, it is not the only way. And especially in this time of year, it's important to reach out and get your message through a number of different channels so that you have more opportunities for donors to see. They might see your email, but again, with hundreds of others in there, they might gloss over it, they might forget to take action and then they're on to the rest of their day and they may forget about it, unless of course, they're reminded of it with a social media post they see. They're reminded of it with a piece of direct mail that they receive at their house when they go to read your blog or visit your website. Whatever it might be, use all of the different options that you have available, but again, focus on where you know your audience responds to you, where you know your audience is. If you don't have a big following on Twitter, now is not probably the time to spend extra effort on creating your campaign and making sure it's shared on Twitter. Focus where you know people are going to be looking to hear from you and try to make sure that your message is consistent across, so they're hit with, they're reminded of the same thing, oh, matching gift, matching gift, matching gift, matching gift, whatever it might be across all of the places they see it, just to reinforce, okay, I'm gonna go ahead and take action and make a donation against that match. And of course, personalization is important. It can feel especially daunting at this time of year to take the extra time for personalization. You've got a lot going on, you're trying to make as much happen as possible before the end of the year. It is just as important now as it ever is to take the time to make it personal. Whether that is making phone calls to donors, and that doesn't mean that your development director has to make a phone call to every person who's ever donated to you. You can create lists, create groups of people that make more sense, make most sense to save time for a phone call for. You can enlist volunteers to help with these phone calls, whether that's your board of directors or actual volunteers that support the organization. Creating that list and maybe a quick script will allow you to get these phone calls out. Again, that is a way to make sure that your message stands out in this busy time of year. In-person events are always great when possible and it doesn't mean that you have to try to throw together a gala before the end of the year, but maybe host a happy hour, host a breakfast at a local coffee shop or invite people into kind of an open house type of event at your organization or one of the locations where you provide service. And finally, ask your board to reach out. Again, your board is there to advocate on your behalf. So connect with them directly, personally, make sure they know that you're counting on them to reach out to their network and garner support for your end of year campaign. They should have the opportunity to, whether it's send emails, phone calls, whatever, to their direct network to activate them for this end of year campaign. It's important to keep in mind that while the entire month of December is really important, the last three years are really super critical. That's the last three days of the year are really when a lot of the giving will happen. So don't slow down. Whether you're gonna be in the office or out of the office for the holidays, you can plan things ahead of time. Don't just assume that if you've sent an email in early December and maybe even sent a follow-up in mid-December that your job is done, make sure that you have plans in place to communicate right in those last three days of the year so that you capture that final phase of attention, phase of interest for your donors. Subject lines are of course critical. Again, we've already talked about donors having hundreds of emails, many coming in every single day from all kinds of different retailers. Borrow some ideas that seem to be working what you're seeing, be creative. The point of your subject line is to get the donor to open the email. To get the donor to stop, take a quick moment and to read what it is you're sending. So be creative, have fun with it, use caps, use emojis, whatever it takes to get people to open your emails and take the time to test. So many email programs will allow you to do A-B testing to see if this subject line or this subject line has a better response, drives more people to open. It takes a little bit longer to set it up this way but take the time to build in any of those tests wherever you have the opportunity to get the most out of the emails that you're sending. Get the most people to open them, get the most people to click on them. And I mentioned it earlier but there's no such thing as sending too much emails. You shouldn't worry about sending too much but you should worry about sending the right emails to the right people. And that is all about segmentation. If you take the time to segment your full universe of supporters into key specific groups and then you send emails, you send communications that acknowledge that individual not just as somebody that you are asking to make a gift generally but acknowledge their past support, acknowledge their interest level, whatever it might be. This is one of the most effective ways to increase your open rates of your emails and increase the rates of the number of people that are gonna click on that donate button in your email. So when it comes to segmentation, again, at this time of year, you're really busy, there's a lot going on, it can feel like that might be too much to take on but it doesn't have to. You can start small, just identify a few lists that you wanna work with or if you have all the time and resources in the world, you can get really sophisticated with it and really think about how you can personalize and customize this message. But no matter what type of organization you are, you have certain groups that you should be able to segment. One is you can create a list based on a certain date of when donors gave their last gift. So for example, anyone that gave their last gift in 2017 and they haven't made a gift yet in 2018, that's a great list to segment. Anyone that has made a donation in certain tiers, for example, you may wanna speak a little bit differently to somebody who has made a $20 gift to your organization than to somebody that's made a $250 gift to your organization. One key way you might wanna change your communications for these donor levels is when you send your email, you can include in your call to action, make a $100 gift, make a $200 gift, whatever it might be, you can get specific in your communications and your email. And so if you know this group of donors that you've segmented have all made a donation of $100 or more, you probably don't wanna send them an email that says, make your $25 gift that will feed for families, you might be encouraging them to give that a lower level that they've given in the past. So segment them out and find an ask, find an appeal that recognizes that they're maybe willing to give it a little bit higher level. So what's the impact that they can have when they make a gift at that higher level? Of course, many organizations have different programs, different interest areas that they serve. So if you know donors have always given to your after school program, you may want to send them an email that acknowledges the work that your after school program does. If you have a women's program versus a children's program, for example, acknowledge where your donors have shown their support and then talk to them about what matters to them. Major donors and board members, we've talked about them a little bit as it relates to matching gifts, but of course, major donors and board members are going to need segmentation. This includes passport members as well. Don't just send them the same exact email that everyone else is gonna get. Take the time to follow up, engage with them personally, especially for these major donors. People that have volunteered or maybe given recurring gifts all year round have shown in really great ways all throughout 2018 that they support your organization. So they don't deserve the same generic make a donation email as somebody that hasn't yet given this year. When you reach out to those donors in particular, you wanna acknowledge what they've already helped you accomplish this year or what they help you accomplish on a regular basis with their support. Maybe your ask for them is a little different and it's not just make a donation, but it's help us spread the word about this campaign. Help us recruit a new supporter to make a donation. And then depending on the work or the mission or the programming of your organization, you may have other groups as well, alumni, people that have gone through your programming and have graduated or moved on and benefited from it, parents of whether you are a school and you have parents of kids that go to the school. There's lots of different groups. Again, think about who are all the different universe of people that are involved with your organization and how you might be able to create some segmented communication. And that will absolutely increase your engagement with the emails that you're sending. And following on that, one key thing to keep in mind for your end of your campaign is retention. So donor retention is one of the most important things in my mind when it comes to online fundraising or fundraising of all sorts really. And right here at the end of the year, we're at a very critical time to close the gap on any of those donors that have given a gift in the past but have not yet given a gift in 2018. As soon as the clock ends on 2018, all of those donors that didn't come back to give are not retained for your organization and it increases their likelihood of not coming back again to make another gift. So now is a really critical time to focus on retention. There's lots of reasons why, but one of the most important is that it is less expensive for your organization, significantly less expensive to retain a previous donor than it is to acquire a new donor. You spend all of this time and energy recruiting, acquiring these new donors. And if you don't retain them, when you lose them year after year, all you're doing is making sure that in the future, you're gonna have to put more energy into acquiring new donors. And there's not always, as we know, this growing universe of new, untapped donors that you can always reach into. Donal retention is also really important because you have the opportunity for higher conversion levels. So when you send an average email, you might have 10% of donors that open that email, click on the link and actually make a donation. An email that you send to donors that have already made a gift to your organization in the past and you're trying to get them to retain, make their gift for 2018, they should be able to see higher levels of return from that email because they're a lower hanging fruit. You've already convinced them once that your organization is worthwhile, important to the community. It should be easier to get more of those donors to make a gift. And it's also about much more than just getting their $25 gift right now during this campaign. A retained donor is worth so much more than just that single next donation that they're gonna make. That donor that has given multiple times over the year, or over the years, is much more willing and likely to volunteer for your organization, be engaged and show up to events, follow you on social media. They're going to be invested in your organization because they've given multiple times. Those are the types of donors that really matter. They're really going to make a difference in big ways for your organization. Not to mention that most major gifts don't typically come until later in a relationship. So if you want to have the opportunity to get some of your donors to that giving level of a major donor, you're going to have to steward them and retain them at least a handful of years before they're willing to make that larger gift. And end of year is a really good time to focus on retention because it's a very focused targeted ask. There are lots of things to compete with all year round that donors are busy with and supporting. And so general calls to support your organization might easily be missed. But right now you have a really focused time, whether you have a matching grant or just the messaging around year end and the holiday season, you have the opportunity to really encourage those lapsed donors or those almost lapsed donors to give today. So once you're ready to focus on retention, there's a couple of key things that you can do to set up your strategy for the rest of the month. The first thing is to calculate your retention rate. This will help you set goals for year end. And also there's actually some evidence to prove that even just knowing and tracking your retention rate is likely to help you increase that retention rate without specifically changing all kinds of other strategy because it will just start to influence the way you think about your communications and the way you think about your outreach. So if you're using Mighty Cause, we'll talk more about it in just a minute, but you have access to our premium tools for free for the month of December. And something you can access through your analytics is donor retention. So we calculate this for you. You can choose what period you'd like to calculate retention from, whether you wanna do it over a longer term period or just from 2018 compared to 2017. But calculate that retention rate and then set a goal of what you wanna get to by the end of the year. And that will give you something to work towards, but also give you something to measure against at the end of the year. So of course, very easy way, pull a list of donors that haven't yet made a gift in 2018 to drive your communications. Again, just like all those other segmented lists, this is a very specific one that you'll want to have targeted messaging for that acknowledges that you are asking them to make their gift. They haven't yet made their gift this year. Here's their opportunity to support. You might also look at additional lists of maybe donors that have given in previous years, but lapsed in the past. So maybe they gave in 2016 and they haven't given since 2016. You're going a little further back in your list. So again, you'll wanna be careful and thoughtful about how you communicate with that donor, but you still have the opportunity to find a way to connect with them. You can also look at donors that have given less so far in 2018 and they gave in 2017. Maybe they gave larger gift in 2017 and so far in 2018, they maybe just gave a small gift, whether it was to your Giving Tuesday campaign or another campaign you had throughout the year. Use this as an opportunity to target those groups, those donors in particular, so that at the end of the year, you don't see them as a different type of lapsed donor. They've still made a gift, so they're still going to be retained, but if they've stepped down their support in the last year, that's a sign of somebody that might perhaps be on the way to being a lapsed donor, so take the extra time to engage with those in particular. And it's important to maintain these lists really carefully so that if somebody does take action and make a gift in response to one of your email campaigns, they don't continue to receive emails that recognize that they haven't yet made their 2018 gift yet. That's probably one of the easiest ways to upset a donor, of course, is to continue to ask them to give after they've already made their gift. So especially when it comes to this, these donor retention lists, but in general, as you're going through your email campaigns through the end of the year, take the time to remove those people that have already made their gift so that you're communicating with them differently. You wanna focus on the thank you, the follow-up pieces with those people that have already given and saved those asks for those people that haven't yet made their gifts. So when it comes to retaining donors, once you've got your lists in place and you're ready to focus on this strategy, it's not rocket science. It really comes down to building relationships. The easiest way to retain your donors is to value your donors, to create meaningful relationships with these donors so that they are encouraged, they're wanting to continue giving to your organization. So this is a great opportunity for that personal outreach that we talked about earlier, might be a great opportunity to tap into your board or those volunteers to help you make these gifts. Lapsed or almost lapsed donors are definitely people that you might want to set aside for a phone call outreach to make their gift this season because that also gives you the opportunity to have a conversation with them, to understand maybe why they haven't made their gift yet, what is changed for them, what is different for them. So then you're both using it as an opportunity to convert their gift, but also to get to know that donor, understand them and understand more about your donor's motivations in general, what might be affecting them. Just like with general segmentation, with these donors in particular, take the time to understand their donor history. If they always give every year at an event and this year they didn't give at that event, you may want to take the time to say, hey, we missed you at our event this year, you can still support us this way. Just taking that time to acknowledge the way that they've been involved in the past will add that extra level of personalization. And another way that you can do this is identifying the connections that you had to these donors in the first place. So whatever CRM system you might use or donor data tracking system, you may know that you have donations from a specific individual because of their friend who's a volunteer or because of their mom who's a board member or whatever it might be. If you know of those direct connections, reach out to those people. You're bored in particular, but any volunteers and say, hey, these five people have given to our organization because of you, you brought them in and they haven't yet made a gift this year. Will you help me connect with them? Will you help me reach out to them? That personal connection can really make the difference in actually converting those donations. And of course, once they make that gift, that's not the end of the process, that's not the last step. Retention is a year round strategy. And so putting things in place right now that will last through the end throughout next year will make sure that when it comes time to next year's end of year campaign, you're in a much stronger place when it comes to retaining your donors. But what you can do right now, that immediate thank you is critically important. Donors that receive a thank you from nonprofits within the first 48 hours of making their gift are four times more likely to make another gift to your organization. So that piece is super critical. Follow up immediately with that thank you. And don't let that initial thank you be the last that they hear from you about their donation. Follow up in the new year to remind them to let them know what you've been able to accomplish with their impact. Throughout the year, you can survey donors, ask for their feedback again when you have a phone call with a donor that's a great opportunity to get more information about what they like, what they don't like, what's important for them, what matters to them. And then you can build that into your communication strategy, your email strategy, your messaging. Make sure that you are prioritizing what's important to the donors. Avoiding the jargon, the statistics we've talked about a little bit already and focus on what's really going to matter to the donor, what's really going to get them excited about making their gift. And our last option here, I know we're running out of time here just about over, last key step to keep in mind is the using Mighty Cause Premium tools to improve your success. So I already mentioned we are, the Mighty Cause platform is giving a free trial of all of our really great premium features that your organization can use from now through the end of the year, no obligation, there's nothing you have to sign up for. We just want you to make use of these features to fundraise better, to make your efforts more efficient so that you can hopefully raise more money. We've got lots of tools, including a full blog post that really walks through lots of things you can do with these premium features, but I just wanted to highlight a few of them here. The first and one of the most useful really ties into what we've spent a lot of time talking today which is segmenting and customizing your communications for different groups of donors. And the Supporters CRM tool is a great way to help you do that. You can build your lists through this Supporters tool. You can create tags or use existing tags that might already be there to filter a list of everybody that's given in a certain way to a certain campaign over a certain dollar amount. So you can filter lists by these tags or other information that you'll find in the Supporters tool. You can export these lists for use in any external email program that you might use, or you can actually send emails right through this Supporters tool. So if segmentation feels a little bit daunting and overwhelming to you, this is a great way to make that feel easier. You can filter your list and send an email right through the Mighty Cause platform so you don't have to burden yourself with wondering how you're really going to effectively get this all done before the end of the year. You also have the opportunity to review an individual's donor history before any of those personal touchpoints that we've talked about. So whether it's a major donor, a board member or somebody that you're prospecting for a match, you can look at their supporter record directly and see their donor history. Take a look at what kind of giving they've done over the years and let that inform your conversation with them. Another thing that you can do through your analytics feature on premium, I already mentioned that you can easily see your donor retention rate calculated for you. You can also connect to Google Analytics so that you can track important things like the number of visits to your Mighty Cause page as a part of your end of year campaign. A couple other key things that you can do with premium, again, there's more that we're not covering today, but just some highlights here. One of the best way you can streamline your fundraising efforts this end of your season is using our data connect feature. From this, you can set up automatic integrations so that when a new donation is made, it's automatically added to your, that contact information is automatically added to MailChimp, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, if you're using any of those email programs, that's gonna be a really helpful way to make sure you create an exclusion list, for example, in MailChimp so that once somebody makes a donation, they're added automatically to that exclusion list and they're not receiving your further emails. That way, without manual effort, each time you send an email, you're making sure that you are acknowledging and respecting those most recent donations and not giving those people another email that asks them to give if they've just made their gift. You can also connect to Salesforce, if that's an external CRM system that you're using, you can set up an integration to add contact information or a new donation record right to their Salesforce account. You can connect with all kinds of Google apps, whether you're trying to fill out a spreadsheet with key data or set up an automatic thank you email to come from your executive director or board of directors Gmail account, lots of additional tools that you have access to through Data Connect, all about saving you time and making your fundraising more efficient. And the last key thing is a custom donation page that you have available that you can use for your website. So we talked about at the beginning, there's lots of different pages that you might use for your end of year campaign, whether you're hosting a fundraiser, you've got a team event or you're just using your organization's profile page. Another option that you have with premium is a custom donation page. And really what this is is a simple yet branded donation experience so that when somebody goes to click on that donate button on your website, they're not presented with a lot of content and information that's gonna distract them away from the key mission of what you want them to accomplish on that page, which is just make their donation. So that's accessible through your donations tab labeled custom donation page again, now that premium features are enabled for any Mighty Cause organizations using the platform through year end. So with that, we are just about to the end of the hour here. I think we likely won't have time to answer a ton of questions, but I will make sure to follow up with anyone that had questions throughout. And if you do have any questions as you're going throughout your end of year campaign, you wanna connect with somebody here on the Mighty Cause team, feel free to email us at support at mightycause.com and we'll be happy to help. Thanks everyone and good luck with your end of year fundraising.