 Hi everybody, we'll give everybody just another few seconds to get logged in and then we will get started. All right, so it looks like we've got a good crowd already here. Hello everyone and welcome to our webinar on strategy for Richland Gives. My name is Linda Carhart and I'm the senior community engagement manager at Mighty Cause and I've also been happy and proud to be the project manager on the Mighty Cause side for Richland Gives for the past couple of years. Richland Gives is one of my favorite giving days because Mora and the team at the Richland County Foundation is so great to work with us as well as everybody who participates in this event. And we also see really great fundraising from this group of nonprofits every year. So I love Richland Gives and speaking of the Richland County Foundation, we have Mora on the webinar as well. Good afternoon. Thank you, Linda. And I'd like to thank all the nonprofits who have partnered with us. We started this back in 2015 and one of our biggest partners has been Mighty Cause because they have been powering this website since the beginning. So thank you, Linda and Mighty Cause for helping us year after year and to the staff and all the nonprofits for all of your hard work, your devotion and your energy. And I can't wait for another successful Richland Gives. So thank you. Absolutely. Thank you so much Mora. And yeah, from our end, this has been a really happy, fruitful partnership. So we're happy to continue to host Richland Gives on the Mighty Cause platform. And so we will just get started with the webinar. Here's a quick look at today's agenda. It should be pretty straightforward. And just as a bit of housekeeping, we will be taking questions at the end of the presentation just so I can get through all of the slides. So if you think of something you'd like to ask me or Mora while I'm presenting, you can actually just type your question into the questions box of the go-to webinar panel and we'll make sure that either Mora or I will get to it at the end during the Q&A portion. And just to let you know, we are recording this webinar and you will have access to the recording as well as the slides on the Richland Gives website. All right. So before we get too deep into strategy, I did want to go over some of the basics for Richland Gives just so that we're all on the same page. So in case you missed the first webinar or you just need a refresher, here are some quick facts and important dates for Richland Gives. Registration is officially closed. The deadline to register was on October 31st. And early giving actually begins next Monday, November 16th. I wanted to say September there, but it's November and early giving starts next Monday. So starting on the 16th, each donation that is made to your organization on Mighty Cause will count towards your leaderboard totals and you put you in the running for some early giving prizes that we're going to talk about in just a little bit. And you'll also notice that your organization profile will have the Richland Gives URL and have some Richland Gives branding added to it at the tops that you can navigate to the Richland Gives site. The big day, of course, is on December 1st, which is giving Tuesdays, same as every year, giving Tuesday changes, but Richland Gives is always on giving Tuesday. And Richland Gives officially kicks off at 7am. So you have many hours to fundraise. You have the whole day to fundraise beginning at 7am. So there are six basic steps to participating in Richland Gives. Sometimes an event like Richland Gives can feel like a lot, especially in 2020 when everybody is capacity is just toast and everything feels really heavy in the world. But it's actually not that complicated. So I don't want anybody to get overwhelmed with so many things to do in preparation for Richland Gives. There are six pretty easy steps and it's not that complicated, I promise. So first you have to register, which I hope everybody on this webinar has done it at this point since registration is closed. And then you'll just need to customize your Mighty Cause profile. So if you're new to Richland Gives, you may have more work to do to fill out your profile. But as we're going to talk about in a few slides, if you are returning nonprofit, which most of the nonprofits in Richland Gives are, you just have some basic updating to do. So it's really not that much work. And then you'll need to create a fundraising plan for Richland Gives, which can be as elaborate or as simple as you want. It all comes down to what your nonprofit's capacity is. So don't stress yourself out trying to create a huge elaborate plan. If you really just don't have the capacity for that right now, there are some simple things that you can do, as we'll talk about in this webinar, that will help you get the impact that you want from Richland Gives. We want everybody to set goals that are easy for them to accomplish and set them up for success. As I mentioned, early giving starts next Monday on the 16th. So you'll want to start soliciting donations then so that you can build momentum and also make yourself eligible for some early giving prizes. And to fundraise for Richland Gives, you'll need to reach out to your base of supporters and ask them to donate. That can look like a lot of different things to different nonprofits of various sizes and capacities. And we're going to talk about some of the ways to do that later on in the webinar. That's the strategy part of this webinar. And then finally, you just need to fundraise on December 1st. You just climb the leaderboards, try to win prizes and do your best and try to reach your goal. And I just wanted to mention, if you don't have a particular financial goal in mind, you can also think about goals that are not financial, things like getting more followers, getting some peer-to-peer fundraising going. So you can think about those types of goals as well, just whatever you think is most important for your nonprofit to accomplish. So that's six easy steps. It's really not that complicated, I promise. So I also wanted to go over a few technical things that will help bolster your fundraising strategy for Richland Gives. And some of this may be review from the Getting Started webinar we did in October. And this section of the webinar is going to be a little bit technical. But all of these reminders are related to your profile. And they're really important for building a strong foundation for your fundraising on Richland Gives. One of the first things I recommend doing, if you haven't already done so, is familiarize yourself with your nonprofit's dashboard. It has changed since 2019. You have some new tools that are available to you and things were reorganized a little bit. So even if you knew your dashboard inside and out last year, I recommend getting in there to poke around just so that you don't need to access a particular report on the big day and go, oh no, I don't know where this report is, everything's different. I want you to have an easy day on Richland Gives. So just definitely before the event, just familiarize yourself with the dashboard because it has changed from 2019. We've also added some cool data to your overview page. So I definitely recommend taking a look there. Depending on what's important for you to track, you can actually add some quick statistics there and be able to pull a report for information that's really important. And you also have a year over year chart, which can be really helpful when you're trying to track how you're doing compared to last year for Richland Gives. And also, all of your fundraising tools are now organized under one section. So they're all under fundraising so that you can find your organization profile. You can edit it there. You can find all of your campaigns, enter your matching grants. So that section is really important and it does have some new tools. So you'll want to check that out and make sure that you know where everything is and check out the new tools like the campaign screen just so that you are leveraging all of the tools you have at your disposal. We've also augmented our report section. So you used to just have donation reports and disbursement reports. Now you have donation reports with all of your donor data. You can filter those in a lot of new ways so that you can get specific information that you're looking for. We have a donor retention report available to you. So just take a look at reports and see what those are all about so that you can get the information that you need. And then just take a quick look at your settings. Those are always really important year to year in case anything's changed. Just check in there. Make sure that your EFT is up to date and correct if that makes sure that you clean up your admins. So there's always some turnover at non-profit. Some people may need access and some people may no longer be with your organization. So now is a really great time to just go into your settings and take a look at who has access to your page and just clean that up a little bit before this year's event. One of the things you'll want to do, whether you're new to Rich Link Gives or you've participated in it every year since its inception is just go to your profile and customize it. At the very least, go to your profile and just make sure you have no outdated information. So if you had a 2019 campaign, you may have some old information or some pictures and stories that are relevant to whatever your campaign was about in 2019. You just want to update that. This page is really the face of your organization during Rich Link Gives. And in most cases, your organization profile is the URL that you'll be sharing with your supporters to get donations. So you just want to make sure that it represents your nonprofit well. And this is also where you have a chance to really drill down on your campaign messaging, tell your story, talk about what you do and make the case for why donors should support your organization for Rich Link Gives. So update your story. Your story is really your spot to make your donation appeal to people who are looking for organizations to give to during Rich Link Gives. So if you're telling a particular story for your campaign, make sure that that is in your about section. Change out the pictures just so they're refreshed. If you have a campaign video for this year, go ahead and add that into your story. There's a lot of really cool options. It's just an inline text editor, but there's a lot of really cool, interesting things you can do with that inline text editor to make people spend more time on your page, get to know your story and entice them to donate. So take a look at your story, update it, add anything that's new for this year, remove anything that's outdated, and just refresh that for 2020. And obviously, if you are new to Rich Link Gives, you want to add your story there. That's basically where you want to talk about what you do in Rich Link County and how you help people in Rich Link County. So really use that space to talk about what you're all about and make your appeal for Rich Link Gives. On the Mighty Cause platform, your nonprofit actually has a lot of control over your checkout flow, which is what the process that donors go through when they're actually completing a donation. So be sure to take a look at your checkout flow and make sure it has everything you want there. That is under fundraising. You'll go to checkout flow and you can customize that there. And sometimes this is where outdated information can sort of hide. It can be in your checkout flow in the form of suggested donation amounts and descriptions. So it's always a good idea to check in and make sure that your checkout flow is up to date and hopefully tied into your campaign messaging this year. You get to choose what data to collect from donors. So we always get names and email addresses by default. But if you need phone numbers because making thank you phone calls is really important to your fundraising strategy or if you want mailing addresses where you can send people a welcome packet or a thank you letter, you want to make sure that you have that checked off in your checkout flow so that we know to ask donors that what their mailing addresses or what their phone number is. And this is also where you can opt into allowing donors to put dedications and designations on their donations. So dedications are obviously pretty straightforward. They can do on behalf of, in memory of, et cetera. Designations can be really great if you have any special funds or restricted funds that you want to fundraise for and you want to allow donors to designate their donation for that fund. And just to let you know, donors don't get to choose. You get to tell them what they can designate their donation for if you opt into designation. So you are in total control of that. And then lastly, while you're checking on your checkout flow, you just want to preview the checkout process so that you can see what your donors are going through when they try to make a donation. Sometimes that's a really great opportunity to reduce friction for donors. If you see you have some things in there that aren't really necessary and kind of bogged down the process, you can use that to edit yourself so that it's as easy as possible for donors to make donations. And it's also sometimes donors just come to your nonprofit, even though our support team is available to you sometimes because they know you. They will call you if they have an issue with their donation. You can certainly forward it to us, but it's always good to have an idea what they're seeing. So that's what that preview function is there for. Another place that outdated information can hide is in your thank you page and custom thank you message on your receipt. So this is in the checkout flow area. It's under post checkout. There's just a tab at the top of the checkout flow page, and you just toggle over to post checkout. And this is where you can navigate to your thank you page. You can build your thank you page if you don't actually have one there. You can update it. And you can also update the message that is sent to donors when they complete their donation. So we'll send them a receipt. We email them a receipt immediately and adding a custom thank you message here. Just adds a message from your nonprofit to that receipt so that you're sort of automating the thank you process. So the thank you page is what people see after they check out. They'll actually see the page that you build. You can preview it as well. And that's a really great place to include any photos, any videos if you have a thank you video that you want to send. And you even have the opportunity to put a CTA button in there if there's somewhere in particular that you would like them to go after they complete their donation. So you have some really cool things you can do with the thank you page. And the thank you message is probably the most common place where people go, oh no, there's old information there. What do I do? This is a thank you letter from our old executive director and we have a new one. So just make sure if you are, you know, a Richland Gives veteran that you take a look at what you have there and update it for 2020 because this is where a lot of outdated information can sort of hide from you. And it's also good just to refresh this so that you're reinforcing your campaign messaging through your thank you page and the thank you message. So this is always, always, always a big question for every giving day including Richland Gives, especially ones that have been happening for quite some time, is how do I reset my metrics on my page? And it's actually easier than it has ever been this year because you can do it right on your organization profile. You don't have to go to a separate page or find anything within your dashboard to edit that. So you just want to go on your organization page to the pencil icon that's right near the text that says X number of dollars has been raised by X donors. And that section right there, there's a little pencil icon that you can click and that will bring up the sub menu where you can choose, you know, what do you display in your metrics and you can also choose when it calculates. So if you want to reset this to zero, what you want to do is instead of choosing to calculate over all time, choose start calculation on a specific date. So you'll click that button and then you'll have to choose a date and the date that you would like that you want to choose is November 16th, 2020. That is the day that early donations open. So what that will do effectively because it's in the future is it brings all of your numbers down to zero and then you'll only count donations that count toward Richling gives going forward. So that's how you reset everything to zero. And then the other thing you'll want to do is go into your goal. So right next to your progress bar where you have your goal and the percentage toward that goal, there's another pencil icon and there's another sub menu in there. And so you want to just click edit goal and then just enter your new fundraising goal and that will reset it to zero because you've changed the date from which you're calculating. So you'll start fresh for Richling gives 2020. And if you have any question about how to do that or if you hit a roadblock or you're just not sure, our support team is always available to you. We're happy to help you walk through that process. You can contact us at support at mightycause.com and we do also have a support article that walks you through the process and has screenshots that can be really helpful at support.mightycause.com. That's where you can find all of our help articles and our FAQs and this is one of the more popular articles in there. So just make sure that you're able to take a look at that if you get lost or you need some help or just reach out to us and we're happy to help you. And finally, Mora and the team at Richling County Foundation have put together a whole toolkit of resources to help you get ready for Richling gives. So please, if you haven't already, take advantage of the nonprofit toolkit. This is found on the Richling give site under resources. You just click on nonprofit toolkit in the resources submenu. And there you can find past webinar recording. So that's where you will find this webinar. If you wanted to go back to the recording or share it with a colleague. And it's where you'll find the first webinar. We did it in case you missed that or wanted to review any parts of that. You'll also find email and social media templates. There's a lot of work put into that. I'm not quite sure what to put in an email or what to post. There are some templates there where you can just kind of copy paste and customize. We have checklist and there's a whole lot of really handy stuff there. So make sure that you check out the resources that are available to you. There was a lot of work put into them and they will be helpful, especially if you kind of get some writers block. So make sure you take a look at the nonprofit toolkit and utilize those resources. All right. And how to make sure that you have a successful Richland gives the first step to having a successful campaign is taking advantage of the early giving period and securing early donations. The biggest incentive to do this for your nonprofit is that the Richland County foundation is offering 15 matching grants and they go to the 15 nonprofits that are the first to raise $1,000 for Richland gifts. So what they do is they match that $1,000 for you and you can actually utilize that as a match during Richland gifts and we're going to talk way more about matching grants in just a bit. So that's a huge incentive right off the bat because you can use that as leverage to help you reach your goals, incentivize your donors to give and reach milestones. So if you want to shot at that money, you need to fundraise early. But beyond the prizes available for early giving, this early giving period helps you build momentum for your campaign and get some money in the pot before the big day. What we see consistently is that organizations that utilize the early giving period raise more overall. And the reason for that is that most donors, the vast majority of donors don't just give one donation early. They actually end up giving more than once, which pushes up the overall amount of money that you raised for the event. Now one thing to note here is that these are not pledges. These are real-time donations. They process immediately. So it's just important to correctly message that to your supporters so that they don't think that they're setting up a donation that's going to go through on December 1st. It is a real-time donation. It will be taken out of their credit card immediately, but it does count towards your Richland gift totals. This period starts on Monday, the 16th, which is very, very soon. So you'll want to get a plan in place to just take advantage of that early giving period this week. It doesn't have to be a whole lot, send out an email, target some donors that you can count on to give to Richland gifts, you know, reach out to your board, reach out to people that you know will give past, get Richland gifts donors, especially those who've given early. So it doesn't have to be a really elaborate plan. Just, you know, you know, your first send out your first appeal and say, hey, early giving starts, you can help us win a matching grant from the Richland County Foundation. And most people do jump at the opportunity to help you win some money. Something that we also know across the board helps campaigns become successful is securing a matching grant or several matching grants. These offer your donors the opportunity to make their donation go further and it incentivizes them to give. So basically it's a BOGO deal for your donors. Instead of, you know, just giving $25, they have the opportunity to in effect give $50 to your organization. And that's really appealing to donors because it allows them to get a little bit more, or I should say give a little bit more for the money that they are able to give. So we're about 20 days out from Richland gives. So if you have not already been talking to potential grant tours, now is a really great time to start. And there's just three basic steps to securing a matching grant. It's one of those things that can sound a little intimidating and difficult, but it's really very similar to just talking to major gift donors. First you want to prospect, which is something that you'll do on your own. So making a list of the people who would be likely to give a matching grant and have the propensity and the means to give in larger amounts. So things like people like your board members, any major donors, corporate sponsors, just people who may be willing to provide a matching grant and have demonstrated that they have the means to give in larger amounts. Now that doesn't mean that they all have to have the ability to give like $5,000, $500, $200. These can all work for matching grants. So just think of the people that are in your nonprofit circle who may be willing to provide a matching grant, you know, a $50 matching grant can't do much, but you can make a $200, $500 grant work really well for you. And if you have people who tend to give beyond that, you obviously want to include them on the list to reach out to. And then after that, once you've got your list together, you just cultivate, which means you reach out, you see how they're doing, you let them know about Richling gives this year, and you're really sort of listening to see whether or not it's a good time to ask them for a grant. So for instance, if you reach out to a corporate sponsor and they say, oh yeah, we've had to really scale back our operations. Everybody's working from home. Some people are furloughed. You go, okay, maybe not a great time to ask this particular sponsor for a matching grant, but if they seem open and receptive to it, then you want to move on to the next step, which is asking for the matching grant. And basically you want to just tailor that a little bit to who that particular donor is. So for instance, a company might be really interested in getting a little bit of positive publicity. So sharing their logo and making sure that you label the grant so that people know it's from their company. You know, for major gift donors, it's a really great opportunity for them to engage with your nonprofit in a new way. And instead of just sort of writing you a check and having that done, they get the opportunity to use their donation to bring in more people to your nonprofit to bring in more money. And that can be a really interesting way to sort of cultivate your relationship with that donor. So just ask in a way that sort of appeals to their interests. And then just be flexible. See what the donor is willing to provide. There are actually a lot of options for matching grants available in Mighty Cause. So take a look at the tool and just see what you have available to you. You can do things like milestone grants where if you reach $5,000 for Richling Gives, that's when the grant is fulfilled. So there's a lot of really cool things you can do to sort of punch up your matching grant. It doesn't have to just be one to one, so that is the most common way matching grants are run. But just see what they're willing to provide. And if they have anything in particular that they have in mind, just work with them and be flexible. And one thing that you can also do is combine smaller matches into one large one. So for instance, if you had your volunteers or a group of your volunteers and they wanted to put together some money so that you could have a matching grant, you could do, you know, they're not giving much individually their own, but collectively they're giving you, you know, five or $800. You can turn that into a matching grant as a group and you can also make it work with smaller matches as well. As I mentioned, it doesn't have to be thousands of dollars. $200 for an hour can be a great incentive for people to give. So you can make a lot of things work when it comes to securing a matching grant. Oops, sorry. There we go. So when I talk about matching grants, a lot of nonprofits first question is, well, who am I supposed to ask? So we've talked about that a little bit already. But generally speaking, you want to start with people in your nonprofits inner circle who have demonstrated a propensity to give in larger amounts. So really engaged donors, major gift donors are a natural fit for a matching grant. And again, it really is an extension of the nonprofits or your relationship with this donor. And it gives them a new way to get involved in your nonprofit and also in Richling Gives makes it new and exciting for major gift donors. So if you have somebody who normally gives you 500 bucks every Richling Gives, maybe reach out to them and say, hey, you usually given this amount. If you're still planning on giving that amount, why don't we turn it into a matching grant? So they're a really great place to start. If you have some major gift donors and people who normally give in larger amounts for Richling Gives, then you're board of directors. So in most states, your board of directors has a duty to help your organization with fundraising. We tend to forget about that at nonprofits sometimes, but that is part of the commitment that they make. So you have a lot of different things you can do with your board. They may wish to give an individual matching grant. So you may have one board member or a board chair who wants to give in a larger amount as themselves, but you have to pull together money from your board for a matching grant from your board of directors. And because Richling Gives is at the end of the year, if you have a board that gives annual dues or has a giving requirement, you may be able to use those as a matching grant if they haven't already fulfilled that obligation yet. So there's a lot of cool creative things that you can do with your board of directors. And then obviously sponsors are a really great place to start. So a business, a foundation, a corporate sponsor that you have a partnership with. You can offer them a little bit of promotion with the matching grant and say, Hey, well, if you give us this matching grant, we'll share your local and we'll shout you out on social media and we'll make sure that everybody knows that you provided this matching matching grant. And that's oftentimes really attractive to businesses and corporate sponsors. And it's also a really great way if you're kind of, you have this business that you've been wanting to reach out to and talk to and sort of partner up with. Richland gives us the perfect opportunity to start that conversation and get in touch with them and get that partnership going. So think about sponsors and people in your community, businesses in your community that might be willing to help you out. And then when you've got your, your grants or your grants plural, you just want to start promoting them because like the tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it, if you don't promote your matching grant, it's not going to have any impact. So just post it on your mighty cause page. You go to fundraising and then matching grants and then you'll be able to access the matching grants tool. You just fill out a little bit of information. And once you fill that out, you, that'll add the matching grant to your profile. We'll also put it in a search on the Richland give site. So people will, we'll be able to search for organizations that are offering a match and they can find your, your organization there, which gives you an opportunity to be seen by some donors who may not be familiar with you. And it'll also put a sticker on your donate button, which you can see on the slide. So anybody who goes to your page to donate, they'll be able to see that you have a matching grant live. And that gives them extra motivation to finish their donation. Now you also want to promote it on social media, send out some emails about it. If you have a lot of matching grants, you might want to send out a schedule of when those matching grants are scheduled to go live. So, you know, most organizations don't have a bunch of them, but we have some giving events where organizations will have 10 matching grants. So sending out a schedule so people can plan their gift can be a really effective way to promote your, your matching grant. But just make sure that you, you do your due diligence and promoting it and making sure that your followers are well aware that you have some matching funds available that will help their donation go further for your nonprofit. Another really great way to have a big impact during Richland Gifts is through peer to peer fundraising. And peer to peer fundraising is a technique where you leverage your existing supporters to bring in new supporters. And what, how they do that is by creating their own fundraising page and then asking their social network to donate to that page. And why that's such a big deal for Richland Gifts. There's a lot of reasons, but the biggest is that it really puts more boots on the ground. It helps you acquire new donors. That's a, it's a magical tool for donor acquisition. It helps you expand beyond your list of supporters. So let's say you have a really enthusiastic supporter of yours or an enthusiastic volunteer and they create a peer to peer page. Well, you as an organization don't have the ability to contact their aunts and their uncles and their grandma and all their friends and ask them for their permission. You just don't have that permission, but that volunteer who started a fundraiser for you absolutely does. So it helps your message get in front of more people and it helps you expand beyond that list of supporters that you've been hitting a lot of go, go moving into Richland Gifts. And it also just helps raise awareness. It gets people talking about your cause of something that we know statistically is that one of the top reasons people give to a nonprofit for the very least is because someone that they know asked them to. So your, your peer to peer fundraisers are actually better than your nonprofit at getting new individuals to make their first donation. That can be hard to accept, but because they know the person, they trust them and they understand that they are asking from a good place. Most people are more willing to listen to somebody. They know whether that's a friend or a family member than an organization. So it's really effective at donor acquisition. It's a great donor engagement tool. So if you have a lot of supporters and they make donations to you starting a peer to peer fundraiser can be a really great way to engage them in a new and different way. So instead of just making their donation and that's it, you're getting them more involved. So you're building that relationship with the donor by having them start a peer to peer page. And they also act as really great testimonials for the importance of your work. Generally, most people talk about their connection to your cause. They explain why they care to everybody that they're promoting the fundraiser to, and that is magic because they're basically doing the work for you. They're explaining why your organization is worth supporting to people who are much more willing to listen to them. So they do, it's a really great way of sort of delegating some of the work and just getting your message in front of more people. And it also generates buzz on social media. It helps your fundraiser get in front of more eyes and helps your organization draw more people in from social media. So the good news is that peer to peer is baked into the Mighty Cause platform. It is one of the first things our platform did and it's one of the things that is central to what we do still. So it's super easy for people to create fundraisers on your organization's behalf. All you have to do is ask and then just send them to your organization profile where they can click the button that says fundraise, which is right next to your donate button. So it's very prominent. It's hard to miss. And then once they start that process by clicking the fundraise button, we guide them through all of the necessary steps to build their fundraiser and get published so that they can start fundraising. And you'll just want to let them know that they can start fundraising as soon as November 16th. So when somebody creates a peer to peer page for your nonprofit, all of your admins will get an email notification and you can also track peer to peer campaigns in your campaign, your campaigns tool, which will show you who your fundraisers are. It actually allows you to contact them through the Mighty Cause platform. And you can also see how much they raised. And if you have old peer to peer pages that you want to hide so that they're not shown in the search, you can also hide them from the campaigns tool. So if you're going to be engaging in peer to peer or you have in the past, just take a look at your campaign still. This is a really great way to track who is fundraising for your nonprofit and how they're doing. All donations that are made to peer to peer fundraisers, events, teams and so on are counted on your profile. So it counts on their page. And you'll also see that added to your profile totals. And you'll see it added real time to your donation report as well. All of the donations that are made through peer to peer pages, count for the leaderboard, count for prizes. And what we do when it's ready to, when it's time to disperse is we just bundle them into your regular disbursement. You'll be able to see them added to your donation report report. And you'll also be able to see the source of the donation. So if you wanted to track how much came from a particular page, you can easily sort your, your donation report to find that information. The only thing that I do want to note here is that fundraisers do have to actually be connected to your organization correctly in order for everything I just talked about to be true. So that's really easy if they start from the fundraise button. But for instance, if somebody went to start one for the humane society in Mansfield, I don't know if that's a real organization, but let's just say there's a humane society in Mansfield. But instead of actually choosing the correct organization, they chose the humane society of the United States. Those are separate organizations. And unfortunately, we can't move the funds once donations have been made. So on your end, you just want to be as clear as you possibly can about where peer to peer fundraisers should go and what they should do to start their fundraiser. And obviously the easiest thing to do is goes directly to your organization page and click the button that says fundraise. That doesn't happen often. I don't want to scare anyone, but it has happened in the past, not necessarily with Richland gifts. So I just want to make sure that I note that just in case it happens with a peer to peer fundraiser of yours. And you can always contact support if you have something like that crop up and we'll do our best to help you out. One thing that is new this year, and should be a huge help in getting peer to peer fundraisers off the ground is fundraiser templates, which allow you to pre-fill some key parts of a fundraiser. You go there, you get to your fundraiser templates by going to your campaign screen and clicking fundraiser templates. And you'll be able to create one template if you're on Mighty with the starter plan, which I believe almost all organizations for Richland gifts are, but you really only need one template. If you're participating in Richland gives fundraisers can opt into using a template or they can choose to build their page from scratch. We are going to ask them. So when they click their fundraiser button, we will let them know that you have a template available and they can choose to use it or they can choose to not use it. And even if they do use your template, they are not locked into it and they can still customize their fundraiser as much as they'd like. And this is also a really big way to draw in busy board members who are too busy to be bothered with building a page from scratch. So keep that in mind if you wanted to rope your board of directors into peer to peer fundraising for Richland gives, you can help them out by creating the template. They don't really have to do much to get it off the ground if they use the template. So moving on from peer to peer email strategy is key on Richland gives because you have a direct line to your supporters. So let's just talk about the components of a good email strategy. First, we recommend keeping your emails relatively short and making sure that they're easy to skim. Most people do not read emails. They skim them. So using things like headers is really helpful that so that people can just scan the email and find the information that they're looking for. You want an email to entice them to open it and click. And you want to have the bulk of the information and your main appeal, stay on the page where you send them to make a donation. People unfortunately have very short attention spans when it comes to email. And if you send them a wall of text, they're not likely to read. They're likely to skim it. So keep it as short and sweet and to the point as you can. I highly recommend segmenting your audiences, especially if you're working from a rather large donor list. Blasts are absolutely fine. And a part of a good email strategy, meaning emails to your whole list. But what I recommend is on top of those blast emails that go to everybody, scheduling some emails that are specifically targeted to certain groups of donors. So for instance, volunteers, people who have recurring donations set up, people who've given to your rich link gives campaign in the past, just so that you're not missing these important groups of donors and you're talking specifically to them. People tend to sit up and pay more attention when you're talking directly to them. So it's definitely worth the effort to segment your list. And most email programs like constant contact and MailChimp and Campaign Monitor allow you to do this pretty easily, though you may have to do a little bit of data sorting on your own. I also recommend scheduling as many emails as you can ahead of time so that you're not scrambling to send anything on December 1st. And also think about timing. For instance, you'll want to have emails ready to go and schedule to fire during hours where you're trying to win a golden ticket. Most of us check our emails from our smartphone. So just make sure that you're using a mobile friendly template when you build your email and just test your emails, not only on a desktop computer or a desktop monitor, but on smartphones as well. Because sometimes emails that look really great on a big desktop monitor look a little funky on an iPhone because sometimes when we do things through an app, it just looks different. So just make sure to double check that. I do emails for Mighty Cosmets happened to me before where people get an iPhone email and they're like, what is happening with this? So just make sure it looks good on a phone as well. And finally, be totally clear about what you're asking people to do in your emails because as I mentioned, most people are skimming for that information. They want to know what you want them to do. So make sure that you're asking them to donate in clear language and make sure that you're giving them a working link in your CTA button in the email. Now, one thing that I'm not mentioning on this slide, but I do want to mention, nevertheless, is personal outreach. If you have the capacity to do it, if you don't have the capacity for it, that's absolutely fine. But if you have the capacity, it does make a difference to pinpoint some of your tried and true donors who you can really count on to support you and just reach out to them personally with a note about Richland Gives and just ask them if you can count on their, if you can count on their support again this year. And also just see how they're doing check in with them. Those personal notes can really make a difference. Automated emails and email marketing emails are important, but don't forget about the personal element as well because that can really tip a donor from not donating to you or forgetting about Richland Gives to making a donation because you made a point of contacting them one to one. So that can also be a really great job for development staff if you have them. And some volunteers might be willing to send some emails for you as well. So don't forget about volunteers if you're like, oh, I don't have time for that. You can sort of farm that out to volunteers. Social media is also very important just like email for a giving day like Richland Gives, especially in 2020 because most of us are keeping in touch with our friends and our families and people that we care about through social media rather than being able to see them in person. What I recommend when it comes to social media for a giving day is being really judicious with where you spend your effort. So devote an amount of time and energy to each platform that is proportional to the following you have there. So for instance, if you don't have a huge Twitter following, but you have a bunch of really active and engaged followers on Facebook, you'd want to spend most of your time planning posts for Facebook. I do encourage you just like email to schedule as much as you can ahead of time just to save yourself some time in trouble on the big day and save any live posts for the big day for things like celebrating milestones, reaching a goal, thanking donors and interacting with your followers. One thing you may also want to think about on December 1st is planning a live stream to get your followers engaged. Richland gives is actually going to be doing that, which we'll talk about in a moment. Live streams really don't have to be fancy or elaborate. It can be as simple as a quick hello and a quick statement or speech from your executive director or someone else at your organization doing Q&As and interviews, allowing people to ask you questions that you then answer on the live stream is also a really great way to get engagement and get more bang for your buck when it comes to the live stream. The cool thing about live streams is that the expectation is that they're more or less informal. You don't have to put on a live concert and have everybody with prepared remarks. They can be a little informal, but that is a great way to add in a live interactive element without actually having people in a big lobby somewhere. Consider live streaming if you're not comfortable with it. You don't have to do it, but it's something you can certainly incorporate. You can actually also put your live streaming in your story. You can add the link into where you would add a video in your story, and you can actually stream your live stream on your Mighty Cos page as well, although Facebook is getting a little bit funny with how long you can do that, but you can certainly put that link in there. On that note, things like photos, videos, engaging stories, you want to try to make some content that is going to be appealing to social media users. Things like infographics do really well. Videos do extremely well on social media, so just be sure to plan some content that's ready to go for social media. Finally, this is really easy to forget on social media sometimes, but always include a call to action and a link to where people can donate. Do not forget your link. If you forget it on a post, no problem, put it in a comment. On Instagram, you'll want to put your link in your bio since Instagram does not allow you to post live links in post. Instead of saying, go here, you'll say go to the link in our bio. One thing that you can also do if you're using Instagram is you can get a link tree account. Those are free. What that does is when people click the link in your bio, it goes to basically a list of links that you want to share so you can share the link to your Rich Link Gives page there. One thing that is really important, especially if you've participated in Rich Link Gives previous years is to focus on donor retention. These donors who've given to you in the past are low-hanging fruit. We know that they have a propensity to give to you that they care about your organization enough that they've made donations in the past. So focus on donor retention. You can download a list of your people who've given to you in the past and have not been retained this year by downloading your donor retention report. What I recommend is tracking your retention on the day of Rich Link Gives and having an email that you've already built. It's already in MailChimp or Constant Contact or wherever you send emails from. And then you just download your donor retention report and plug that list into whatever program you're using and send the email so that you don't miss out on those donors because, again, they're low-hanging fruit. They're very likely to give to you again. And with donor retention, you obviously want to get them back whatever they can give. But one thing to consider is working with them to increase their gift. So that's one way to bump up your total for Rich Link Gives year over year is if people gave $25 last year in your email appeal, you can say, hey, why don't you give $30 this year or $40? You can double your donation and just sort of get people to bump up their donation. So that's something that you can do with donor retention just so you're not getting the same donations, but you're actually getting more. So yeah, just focus on donor retention. We've made it really easy with the donor retention report. And you can actually track that through the donor retention report and really make sure that you're capturing those donors who've given in the past who have not given again this year. And again, this is your donor retention report. It's easy to pull. You can see how many people have yet to give and you can find their email addresses. You don't have to do any manual data sorting to find that information. So make sure you know where your donor retention report is and just pull it just so you can see how it functions and you can see what the list looks like just so that on the big day, if you want to do like a last appeal to get people who haven't given yet who've given in the past, you can go ahead and do that through your donor retention report with very easily because you've done it before. Another thing to consider in terms of campaign strategy is giving a follow-up. So the thank you is extremely important. Statistically, organizations that provide a prompt, quick, personal follow-up are more likely to retain those donors. So that's a big factor in whether or not people choose to give to your organization again. So you do have some tools through Mighty Cause like the thank you page and the custom thank you message that we add to your receipt that will automate that process. But we do recommend going above and beyond that like sending them a thank you card that's handwritten and signed by somebody. Phone calls are also a really great way to thank donors. There was a giving day a few years ago where I made a donation to just a fundraiser that I saw that I liked personally and I made them a quick personal donation and within 10 minutes they had a volunteer for their organization calling me saying thank you so much for your donation. It means so much and I remember that years later. So that kind of personal touch can be really important in getting donors invested and engaged in your cause. If you were fundraising for something specific, like let's say you had a new roof that you need for your facilities or something along those lines, if you were fundraising for a specific fund, just make sure that you close the loop with your donors. Donors need a full, they need you to close the loop. They need you to end the story so that they can move on and be ready to give for the next campaign. If you fail to do that, they sometimes have an unsatisfying experience with your organization and they never heard back. Did you get your roof? Did you raise enough money? Is the roof going to be repaired? Is it going to be changed? So just make sure that you are closing the loop with your donors and especially because this is December 1st, it's a really great time to segue into end of year fundraising. So when you're thinking about your Richland Give Messaging, Richland Give Messaging, you can also think about what's your plan for end of year and you can sort of make it similar so that it's easy to move into end of year fundraising. And Richland Give Donors, you really want to follow up within a way that opens the door to end of year fundraising as well. And definitely pay some special attention to those first time donors, send them a welcome packet, have a welcome series of emails ready to go for them. So just make sure you're paying attention to the follow up because after the day's over, really Richland Give is all about helping your organization grow your donor base and grow your organization. And this is key to that. So make sure that you are also planning for follow up when you're planning emails and social media posts and so on. All right. So before we end things and do the live Q&A, I wanted to talk a little bit about prizes. They're very important to Richland Give's and obviously winning them is very strategy intensive. So we talked about this a little bit, but there is a one to one matching grant available. There's actually 15 of them available. So if you raise $1,000, the Richland County Foundation will match that one to one. And that's a total of $15,000. There's a lot of money available here. And as we talked about with matching grants, you can use that grant to use as a matching grant to incentivize donors to give to you. And so the strategy there is really very simple. We've talked about it already. Take full advantage of the early giving period. And if you really want to hone in on the strategy there, like who do I ask? Do I ask everybody? Focusing on those donors who give regularly the tried and true donors, people who've given to Richland Give's in the past, your board members, your staff, your volunteers, those are all groups of donors that you want to target for early giving. So just make sure that you're paying attention to early giving. There's a lot of benefit to taking advantage of that period, including these grants. So leaderboard prizes, these are kind of the main events on a giving day, like Richland Give's. So there are two leaderboards. One is for large nonprofits and one is for small nonprofits. And placement on that leaderboard is determined by the information that you submitted with your registration. So what we are considering for the purposes of Richland Give's is that small nonprofits is everybody who has an annual budget of $250 and under, and large nonprofits have budgets over $250,000 per year. So we look at the information that you give us and this breakdown is pretty fair and pretty even given the size of the organizations that participate in Richland Give's. If you notice that you're on the wrong leaderboard, you can certainly contact us, but it is based on that information that you gave us at registration. So on the day of, there's not a whole lot we can do. So if you think you may have given the wrong information at registration, just contact me or Maura beforehand and so we can make sure that you are put on the correct leaderboard. So these are all ranked by most dollars raised. So you'll want to aim to raise the most money, which is a pretty simple strategy that has a lot that goes into it. And there's $10,000 available for each leaderboard. Or for both leaderboards. There's $5,000 available for each individual leaderboard and the prizes are the same. So there's no preference given to large nonprofits over small nonprofits. First place is $3,000. Second place is $1,500. And third place is $500. This is a lot of cash. So you want to think about your strategy to climb the leaderboard. You want to pay attention to the leaderboard on Richland Give's on December 1st. You'll be able to see it when the site goes live at 7 a.m. So just check in and see where you are. And if you're really close, like it's a great social media post to say, hey, we're in fourth place. If you can make some, if you can make, you know, X number of donations, we can get into third place and be in the running for a $500 prize for our nonprofit. So that's the kind of strategy you also want to think about just monitor where you are during the event. And if you are close to overtaking the nonprofit that's above you, mention that to your followers. That's a really good incentive for people to give. Golden tickets are another big part of Richland Give's. There are 10 golden tickets awarded total and you win them by winning by raising the most amount of money during the specified golden ticket hour. They are worth $500 each. That's a lot of money. And then you are, you can find the full list of prize, like when these golden tickets are available on the rules and prices page on the Richland Give's site. So during these hours, it's really great to plan some social media posts, encouraging people to go to the Richland Give's site and make a donation because it gives you the opportunity to win $500 for your nonprofit. So that's the main strategy is during these hours, you want to go hard and try to entice your donors to give. And at the top of the following hour, usually about five minutes or so after the top of the hour, you'll be able to see who won on the site. So just check the Richland Give's site to see if you've won any golden tickets. And you'll also see a little gold ticket next to your organization's name on the leaderboards. If you wanted to check that way as well. But these are going on throughout the day and they are worth a fair amount of money. $500 is no joke. So just consider these when you are scheduling your emails and your social media posts because these are key times when you can win money. So there may be an hour where you want to target people for like you want to go after a specific golden ticket. So just make pay attention to the schedule. Take a look at the prize schedule and schedule accordingly. All right. And then there is another prize or more prizes available to you. There is going to be a virtual leaderboard watch party this year, which will be streamed through the Richland Give's website and on the Richland County Foundation's YouTube page. And then there will be a virtual leaderboard watch party. 16 tickets will be pulled at random from the golden bucket. So there's 16 that are worth $250 each. That's $4,000 total. And every registered nonprofit has a chance to win. And so you just want to tune into the leaderboard watch party to see if you want a ticket. These are completely random. There's literally no strategy involved. Just tune in and see if you want. Everybody has an equal opportunity to win. All right. So that is all I have in terms of slides. But I do want to open up the floor to some questions. And so Mora, if you are available, we want to just take some questions from everybody who's on the webinar. So if you have a question for me or Mora, just type it into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel. The golden tickets. This is a question. Are the golden tickets $500 or $5,000? They are $500 each. And the total amount that is being distributed in golden tickets is $5,000. So each golden ticket is just worth $500 as opposed to $5,000. But $5,000 will be distributed to nonprofits in the form of golden tickets worth $500 throughout the day. So I hope that made sense. They're worth $500 each. All right. If anybody has any questions, I do want to make time for everybody to be able to pick my brains or Mora's brains. So just type into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel. I don't want to spend too much dead air waiting for questions. But speak now or forever. Hold your peace. And Mora, if there's anything that you wanted to chat about where we're giving people an opportunity to type in their questions, let me know. I did want to say one thing. I know that we have some people on the call today that are in charge of fundraising pages, peer-to-peer pages. So most of the information that was shared by Linda pertains to you as well, but you may not have all the features that a nonprofit fundraising page has. So if you have more questions about your peer-to-peer pages, you can reach out to either one of us. Also on December 1st, in the morning during drive time, which would be 6 a.m. to I believe 9 a.m. on I Heart Radio, we will be broadcasting live from the foundation and we are inviting nonprofits to drop by so that Chris Kelly can interview you. So I will send out additional information about that. I'm not sure if I'm going to schedule certain spots or if I'm just going to let nonprofits drop by, you know, as they want and then we'll accommodate you as you are there. So look for more information about the live drive time on December 1st. That's a really cool opportunity. We do have one question and this one's for you more. When does the leaderboard watch party start? The leaderboard watch party will go from 6 p.m. till 7 p.m. and it will be on the Richland Gives website as well as our YouTube channel. And, you know, something fun that you might be able to do with your friends and your volunteers and your supporters is perhaps organize watch parties amongst yourselves. Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's a great way to get people engaged and get that full Richland Gives experience even though we're not able to have the big Richland Gives event that has a big Richland Gives event. So that's a really great idea to engage people as well. So I think that's all for questions. I'm not seeing any additional ones come in, but I did just want to mention that in terms of support, we are our mighty cause support is open and available to everybody involved in Richland Gives. So whether you are a peer to peer fundraiser and you have a fundraising page set up for a nonprofit or you're a volunteer donor, so if you get a donor question and you don't know how to assist them, we are open to helping your nonprofit, helping your donors, helping your fundraisers, literally everyone. So don't be shy about emailing support at mightycause.com. We are available to you and we will try to get you the answer to your question as quickly as possible and on Richland Gives. We are going to have support people available throughout the whole event and it will be a priority. So if you email us about Richland Gives during Richland Gives, you will get a quick response because our team is ready to answer any tickets related to Richland Gives. And we also have a support library available as well. So if you are like, I don't know how to use this feature and I would like some help. There is actually a search tool that you can use on your profile page that you'll probably see that pop up if you're a nonprofit administrator, but you can also just go to support mightycause.com and access our support library. We have a lot of great articles and walk-throughs there. We even have some videos available to you and there's a whole section that's dedicated to giving events as well as nonprofits. If you run a fundraiser, we have a whole library available to you as well about how to fundraise and how to navigate your fundraiser. So that's a really great resource. I just want to make sure that everybody is aware of. But yeah, I think that's it for today. Thank you, Maura, for popping on for the live Q&A. I really appreciate it. It's always great to talk to you. Thank you, Linda. It was a great webinar. Well, thank you. Thank you to everybody who attended and I will get the recording up on the Rich Link Give's website as soon as I possibly can. But thank you and happy fundraising.