 Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our first webinar for this year's Give Local NRV. I see a bunch of participants coming in. We're very excited that you've taken time out of your morning to join us. So if you are here, you can let us know in the chat your name and the organization you're representing, and we'll get started in a second. Awesome. Well, we have a lot to cover today, so we'll go ahead and get started. Again, thank you for joining us. So my name is Sarah, and I am a project manager with Mighty Cause, and we are the platform provider for Give Local NRV. I'm also joined by a fabulous team, so I'll pass it over to Lindsay to say hello. Hi, everyone. Good to be with you all this morning. I think I know a lot of you on the call, but those of you who I don't know, I'm Lindsay Gleason. I'm the Assistant Director here at the Community Foundation, and I'm your primary contact for Giving Day. I help manage the event, but anyone in the office can assist you with questions, so I'll just let Laura and Jess introduce themselves as well. Well, I'm Laura Penn with the Community Foundation. I'm the Administration Manager. Great, and hi everybody. I'm Jess Wergo, also with the Community Foundation, and I am the CEO of the Foundation. So we're going to jump into the agenda, and just a couple housekeeping notes. So this webinar is being recorded, and it's going to be uploaded and added to the Give Local NRV website under the toolkit resources. But our goal today is to really kind of dive into some of the Give Local NRV basics this year, just reminding you of key dates. I'll also discuss a couple different benefits of participating. There's lots of different benefits, and then we'll kind of talk through different things that your organization can start to do as you prepare your campaign. We'll walk through the platform overview, a couple features, and then Lindsay and I are going to kind of do a deeper dive into giving event myths and kind of thinking through different things that maybe feel like barriers to you. So we have a lot of really great things to cover. We also will have a Q&A. If you can think of any questions as we're going through these slides, you can put them in the chat or the Q&A button on your Zoom panel, and we'll get started. I'll pass it to you, Lindsay. And I'll also add as a housekeeping item, we have the automatic captions turned on at the bottom, and they're auto-generated. So you might see some mistakes there, but they capture things pretty well. We have those on for people who might have hearing difficulties or who are deaf, or if you're in a loud space, you can understand what's going on if you're sound's networking and so forth. So it's a good thing to turn on when you're in a Zoom meeting, but if you don't want them on, you can go to the bottom and toggle them off, so you don't have to see them. So important dates to remember. We're excited that today is the day that SignUp opens, and we already have folks registering. So thank you all for being the hot off the mark and for registering today. And SignUp will be open until May 15th, so you have a little bit of time, but we highly encourage people to sign up early. And as an incentive this year, if you sign up by Friday, March 15th, you'll be entered into a drawing to win your organization $500, and two prizes will be given out. Those will be randomly drawn, sort of like a golden ticket for those of you who are familiar with the Giving Day event. And so we're excited about that incentive and hope that it spurs people to register early. Because the earlier you register, the more opportunity we have to work together, the more opportunity you have to ask questions, and the more success you will be likely to have. So after SignUp closes, we'll be seriously getting ready behind the scenes, and then Early Giving will open Saturday, June 1st. So if this event is new to you, just want to explain we have the 24-hour Giving Day event, which is going to be held starting noon Wednesday, June 26th, and end at noon on June 27th. But we start Early Giving on June 1st, which means you can be collecting donations almost all month long. It helps you communicate with your donors all month, and it lengthens the period when you can collect donations outside of that 24-hour period. So your donors can make gifts all that month. You can build up that momentum. You can be reporting back on goals that you've reached and so forth. So by the time we start the actual Giving Day, which is a period of time where we offer a bunch of different grants and prizes as incentives for you and donors, you've already built up that momentum. Once the Giving Day ends at noon on the 27th, we can all take a nap and celebrate our success. And then in July, that's when you will receive the funds that you raise. And kind of depending on how you have things set up, if you receive money through an electronic transfer or if you receive a check, it sort of depends on how you have that set up on the exact date that you'll receive that money. But I can send you the kind of schedule to look at when you can anticipate when you'll receive those funds after this meeting. And then in mid-July, if you win any grant surprises from the Community Foundation, we will distribute them during that time period. And one thing I'll mention that's not on this slide is because we're the Community Foundation, we always have a lot going on. And our responsive grant application will also open around this period of time. So it will open at the end of May and will close on July 19th. So just to, and we'll be sending out more information about that, you can find it on our website. But just to let you all know that that's also happening during that time. And we'd love for you all to apply for those grants. So who can participate in this event? Any organization that is classified as a 501c3 by the IRS or if you're a unit of government such as a library or an animal shelter that serves the New River Valley, you're eligible to participate. And when we're talking about the New River Valley, we know the New River is a big place, right? But we're specifically talking about the counties of Floyd, Giles, Montgomery, Pulaski and Whitt as well as the city of Radford. And we ask that a significant portion of your organization services or programs serve the New River Valley and a minimum of 25% is preferred. If your organization doesn't quite meet that threshold, reach out to us and we can chat about that. The whole point of this, you know, what this event is, we want to keep money in the New River Valley. We want to raise money that helps the people, the animals and the environment in our community. And so that's the goal of the organization. So that's why we have those parameters and you must sign up each year to participate in the Giving Day event. So even if you've participated in the past, we ask that you sign up so we know that you'll be actively participating. But then once you're signed up on the website, you can use the platform year round to fundraise for your programs. You can use it all year should you wish to. But once Giving Day sign up opens the next year, please sign up so we know that you want to actively participate. And then new this year, I'll mention we're piloting a coaching program. So we have coaches lined up and we're looking for two more if anyone's interested. And we're pairing more seasoned Giving Day participants with a group of mentees. So folks who might be new to Giving Day or maybe not sure where to start or want some more one-on-one pointers. And we'll be pairing you in a small group with those coaches and kind of taking a deeper dive on things like fundraising, communications, event planning, if you want to do an in-person event and getting that more one-on-one support. And please feel free to still reach out to the Community Foundation. We are here to support you and meet with you one-on-one if you would like. But this is a supplement to the support that we're offering because we're a small team and we also know that we work in a really collaborative region and we have a lot of folks who are happy to share knowledge and help each other out. And I'll add one thing about that. When you register you'll see an option that says that you're interested in coaching. Please select that so we know that you're interested and it'll be a first part of me that you're interested in being coached. If you want to be a coach please reach out to me as well. But if you're interested in being part of the small group, indicate that in your form and we'll reach out to you. So we also wanted to talk chat through some of the benefits of participating in the Giving Day. Giving Days offer just really wonderful opportunities for a variety of different things. So I'm going to kind of walk through a couple of those. So of course it offers you the opportunity to raise just a bunch of donations and funds during a short time frame. That kind of shortened time frame really allows you to encourage a lot of gifts. It gives momentum for your donors. It's also just a really great, you know, kind of event to integrate into your annual giving campaign. So if you are new to Giving Days and you're wondering how it can fit in, this is something that you can start to do annually. Make donors aware that you're a participant every year. It can kind of work into your emails. Just work into newsletters. People can start to expect it and then they get excited about it because it's something to look forward to that, you know, there's prizes involved. It's also, of course, a great opportunity to educate the public and the community about your cause. Maybe you're a smaller nonprofit and you feel like you don't have a large donor race. This is a really good way to get involved. You'll be found in the search, you know, different newsletters and things like that, just kind of advocating and letting people know that you exist in the community. So that's a really great kind of way to get involved. And then through this process of just, you know, being kind of involved and give local NRB, people are going to find you. They're going to be able to search for, you know, different events and maybe within the search itself, they'll be able to kind of filter different causes that they're inspired by. So you'll also be able to find new donors. They're not going to just come to you. We'll get to that in some of our Giving Day myths, but this is a great way to kind of reach out and find, you know, new people who are interested in what you do. It's also a fabulous way to engage sponsors or try to find sponsors. Maybe you have a couple of community partners. Maybe you want to try to get more community partners to maybe give you a match during the event, peer-to-peer fundraising. There's just a bunch of ways to use the momentum from a giving event, like give local NRB to really engage your supporters, your board members, and really just, you know, make it a community kind of effort to raise funds for your cause. Additionally, reinvigorating laps donors. Maybe you have a, you know, a group of donors that gave during a previous campaign. The goal is to really get these donors to come back to you. Hopefully, you know, you can, this is a great speaking point. Hey, we're participating and give local NRB. These are the dates. This is when you can give. We saw that you gave during a previous campaign, you know, kind of explaining why you're participating is really good to try to get those laps donors. And then just overall, the giving event is here to also help you learn different fundraising strategies and just help you grow in areas that maybe are a little challenging to you. There's a bunch of resources on the give local NRB nonprofit toolkit. And then additionally, Mighty Cause has a bunch of resources on our website. We have blog posts. We have on-demand webinars available to you. So if there's any kind of key area maybe that you struggle with, maybe it's matching grants, the goal is to try to, you know, challenge yourself, try something new, and just hopefully carry what you learn throughout the year in all of the fundraising that you do. So what does your organization need to do? I believe this is my slide. So first, you definitely want to sign up. Sign up is available and open as of today. And you'll want to do that before Wednesday, May 15. So that's when sign up is going to close for the events. Once you are signed up, you have told the team that you're going to participate this year and you've been approved, you can go ahead and you can start filling out your organization page. So that means updating any content. So if you participated last year, you'll just want to refresh dates, make sure nothing says, you know, an out of date year. Make sure, you know, anything you're campaigning for specifically is updated. And then of course, just familiarizing yourself with the event rules, figuring out, you know, what's allowable gifts that can be added to your totals. Lindsay is going to cover that in a minute. And then just starting to set your campaign goals. So like I was saying, there's a bunch of, you know, perks of participating in a giving event, you know, try something new, maybe set a campaign goal for trying out a match, any specific fundraising kind of campaign goals that you have as well. And then of course, accessing the nonprofit toolkit. I think this is sometimes an under looked resource center, but there's a bunch of really, really great things in there. We have links, templated types of emails and things to kind of get your brain thinking about how you want to pitch your participation to your supporters. So go through there. We always try to refresh content every year. So you'll find something new that you find, you know, hopefully beneficial. But that's a good place to start. And then you'll want to start broadcasting your actual message to your supporters. So using whatever existing communications you have, maybe you're, you know, you do a lot of social media posting on Instagram or Facebook, kind of figuring out the timeline for when you need to start pushing your message. You'll want to have early giving messaging, you'll want to have day of messaging and anything you can do now to prepare to take some of that load off during the live event is going to really help you. So pre scheduling, social media post, everything like that is what you'll want to start focusing off on as well. And then keep in the back of your mind. Do you want to get some matching grants to entice donors? What are you going to do to try to make it not all fall on your shoulders type of deal? We have organizations of all sizes and some of you are doing this, you know, as a one person show. So trying to think about and consider how you can get some others involved. Maybe you have a board. What could they do? Could they do peer to peer fundraising this year? Maybe you're a little larger and you've participated before and you want to try doing an in person event to kick it off. That's something you can consider as well. All right, I'll share giving day rules and to kind of talk about some of the parameters of this event. We have more than 100 organizations that register each year and we receive thousands of donations. So it's a lot to manage. And so we try to be clear about the rules for participation and the types of donations that we allow just so everyone's on the same page and we can all have a good experience and everyone is on the same playing field. So again, please remember you have to sign up even if you've participated in the past. We always hear from people after the deadline that they thought they're registered or they want to register and we just really want to encourage you to please sign up early. And it's beneficial because you'll have more time to reach out to us and plan and so forth. There are only four types of donations that are allowed for this event and I'll share more on the next slide. All donations must be received, dated and added into the system between June 1st and noon on June 27th. Please keep records of all offline donations and when I say offline donations, things like checks or a wire transfer or cash. I know keeping a record of cash is a little tricky, but particularly your checks and your wire transfers, please keep copies of all those in case we ask for confirmation of details. Sometimes prizes and grants are that people are organizations are neck and neck for who might be winning. So we just want to make sure we have all the details in place and we have everything accurate. And every donation that is, I should say every offline line donations that is entered into the system will require this confirmation and we'll ask you to email us confirmation before we approve it, but please save it for every offline donation. Organizations are eligible to win up to one grant and up to three prizes. We don't have all the details nailed down yet for this year's grants and prizes. We'll announce those later in the spring, but those are all good incentives to encourage your donors to participate to try to go after a grant or prize and then results for grants and prizes are not final until they're announced by the CFNRV. Sometimes organizations qualify for multiple grants and so we have to sort out, okay, who's second place and so forth. So it takes a little time, so just wait to hear from us. And then the minimum online donation is $5. There's no maximum. Of course, any offline donation, if it's less than $5, that's perfectly fine. And you can enter it into the system. And I can share a little bit about the four types of allowable donations. So what am I talking about there? So what donations count for this event? As we all know, there are so many different places where people can give online. It's both, I think, a great thing and can be challenging. There's so many systems to manage. But for this particular event, the only types of online donations that we accept are those made through the Give Local NRV website. And this website is really flexible. Donors can pay via credit or debit card, PayPal, Venmo, they can connect to their bank account if it's over $50. It really caters to everyone. So please direct donors if they want to give online to give on the website. No other donations will be accepted that are online. And then three types of what the website calls offline donations. So we accept cash, checks, and wire transfers. So we try to keep things flexible there. And we know that a lot of donors in the newer valley prefer to give by check. And that's why we have these types of offline donations as allowable ones for this event. And there's a pretty simple process for entering those into the system. And we can share more about that in another time. But you just, you go into the system and add them. So what donations are not allowed? So if you receive donations regularly from your donors via your website or PayPal or Facebook fundraiser or a GoFundMe fundraiser or anything else, those are not allowed to be counted for your give local totals. So please make sure you're telling your donors early and often that if you want to make a gift online, please make it through the give local website. Our goal is to drive traffic to that website. And once donors are there, they might give to your organization, but they might go searching and find other organizations to give to. And then they can also track our success with the overall giving total. So we're trying to drive traffic there. Credit card donations processed out of give local NRV are not allowed, such as at an event or box office or front office, please direct folks either to go to the website or give in another way. We can't accept in kind donations for this event. And then make sure that your offline donations, your checks, your wire transfers are dated between June 1st and June 27th. They have to be dated during that period to count for the event. And then if you receive a donation before June 1st or after June 27th at noon, and I know that always happens, it's happened to the Community Foundation before. Unfortunately, it can't be counted for your giving day totals, but it does count as a donation to your organization, which is what matters, but it can't be counted as your toward the totals. And the reason why I mentioned these pieces of these specific types of gifts, if when you go into the system and look at offline to enter in an offline donation, you're going to get a pretty long drop down list of types of donations that you can add. And that's because Mighty Cause works with hundreds, if not thousands of fundraisers around the world, and they give that flexibility to folks to give in a variety of ways. But to try to manage the types of donations, because the more you add, the more checking has to happen, which makes it tricky for our small team, we've limited it to these four. But if you have any questions about this, please reach out and just thanks for helping us kind of manage this process. And if you tell your donors early and often, these are the ways to give, you'll be able to get them to give that way. All right, so next, we're going to cover how to navigate to the site and log in to access your page. So you'll always want to access your page via the Give Local NRV website, even though Mighty Cause is the platform provider, you will only go to GiveLocalNRV.org to log in. And so you'll log in at the top right corner, there's a login button, and then it prompts you to log in either using Google, Facebook, or your email, or it also says sign up. So if you're brand new to the platform, you can create an account via the login button as well. But again, you're only going to access your page for the event directly through the Give Local NRV.org website. And then you're going to want to sign up again. We've been repeating it by May 15th, so you have plenty of time to register and make sure everyone knows that you're participating this year. The sign up form asks you a couple of questions by your organization, just so that we can gather kind of, you know, different categories and stuff like that. But to fill out the form, you'll be prompted to log in first. So once you go to the site, which it's now the sign up form button is live. So when you click that button, it'll prompt you to first log in if you're not already logged in. If you are not logged in and you also are new to your organization that you're trying to register, you're just going to create an account on that same window. And by signing up your organization under this new email address, you're also automatically requesting admin access to the organization. So that admin request gets sent to the Mighty Cause support team. And our team is actually the ones who approve these admin requests. And so you can expect between two to three business days for a response, or if they need additional information. Oftentimes they'll request additional information if you're using like a Gmail account or some way that we can't quite verify that you are a part of the organization. And that's just because we are very careful about who we allow as an admin because you have all, you know, this sensitive donor information available to you. So we want to make sure that only those who are part of the organization requesting access are verified. But after you submit your actual sign up form, the Give Local NRV team is going to review reviewing those. And then you'll get an email separate to the admin request, just letting you know that you're approved or if they have any follow up questions. I'm going to grab my tea real quick before I get into this. Alrighty, so you've registered, you're signed up, the team knows you're participating. Now you're going to want to access your organization page. So once you are logged in again at the top right corner, you'll have a drop down menu. You can click your name and you'll be able to click your organization name once you're approved. You'll see it in the little drop down. By clicking that, it'll bring you to your kind of overview back end of your organization page. So you'll see a dashboard on your left hand side with a bunch of different kind of buttons and areas that you can start to work on or refresh if you are a previous participant. Your overview has kind of a kind of a general to do list that we recommend. These are like your basics out of logo, out of banner, out of thank you page. But if you go and you continue down, you'll see organization page. This is really the face of your organization. This is the page that donors and supporters, people who visit your page on The Vocal NRV are going to see. So this is where you're going to want to spend a lot of time just making it look nice, make sure you know all the dates are current, anything specific your campaigning for is updated. Working down the page, we have fundraising tools I want to highlight. This is where you're going to be managing your fundraising efforts for your non-profit. This includes your campaigns, your peer-to-peer pages. You can see if there's anything that you want to hide, maybe an out-of-date peer-to-peer campaign, you can hide that from the search. This is where you'll set up your matching grants, your text to give is also available to you. Moving down, we have reports. You'll be in and out of this all the time. It'll probably be very comfortable with it if you're not already. This is where all your donation, your donor data live. So from the event, from last year's event, that type of thing. And you can download these OCSV reports. You can filter by specific time periods. Maybe you just want to look at the donor data from the early giving time period. You can do that. Check out. This is where you'll customize your donor checkout experience. You can update your donation form, kind of, you know, decide how many donation levels you want to provide, add some descriptions. And then settings is where you'll, you know, add additional admins. Maybe you're an admin and you know somebody else needs to be added. You can go ahead and add them and approve them yourself. Then you can also sign up for EFT, that type of thing. But you'll first mostly spend a lot of time, like, updating your organization page. This is a beautiful example by the CFNRB. But this is the main link, the main page that you're going to be sharing with your donors in your newsletters on Facebook. You'll be able to kind of see what the donors and the visitors see. So you can add a logo. We recommend a square because it takes a one-to-one aspect ratio and that is a square image. So a lot of social media accounts, Instagram, Facebook, you might already have a logo that you use. Just add that. It works great. The banner image, you can also select from our kind of suggested gallery or you can add just whatever image that you feel, you know, beautifully represents the work that you do. We recommend no text in your banner just because you already have a logo. And text sometimes can get a little confusing when you have two images stacked that have text. But you can also set a theme color. So you can decide what color you know. This is blue for example and CFNRB has a dark blue. So you can select the color that you want on your page. You'll also take the time to set your goal. Once you've figured out your goal, you can enable your metric bar. This is where you'll tell your story. We really recommend kind of putting your key, like what you're fundraising for specifically at the top. We like to think, you know, you have all of maybe five or six seconds to really capture the donor or the visitor's attention. So what do you find most important to be putting at the top of your page? That's what you'll want to put there when you're telling your story. And then you can also optionally enable giving of the activity feed. So if you want to highlight donors, it's going to honor whatever, you know, anonymous data the donor wants. So if they've chosen to hide their name, it'll say anonymous donated. If they've chosen to hide their amount, it'll say so and so donated. But you can also add images and integrate any social media as well. Next, we recommend you editing your checkout flow. So what's really great about the platform is that you can kind of customize these different donation levels and suggest a donor amount. So this is really impactful for a donor when they're deciding how much to give or even when they come knowing how much they want to give. And then they can see what they can do maybe with a little bit more. So we suggest between four to six amounts suggested amounts is really the sweet spot. Anything more than six can sometimes overwhelm a visitor. And then, you know, you've lost their attention. They're not reading anymore. So we really recommend between four to six amounts with varying levels. So the, you know, the donor donation minimum is $5. What can they do with $5? Maybe you want to start with $10. But I sometimes see organizations put, you know, $1,000. And while that's wonderful, I think sometimes it can be a barrier to donors who really want to see how much maybe 50 bucks can do. So make sure you have a couple different levels and always add a description, you know, coming to the page and seeing, okay, I want to give, you know, $10, but oh my goodness, $40, 10 pounds of dog food. That sounds cool. You know, you can really encourage a donor to give a little bit more just because they're, you know, inspired by what they can do with the funds that they're giving you. This is a great opportunity to preview your checkout experience. So you can really in real time see these edits that you're making and see what a donor sees. And then you can also add any dedications or designation sections that you want to. If you are an organization that prefers to call donors to thank you to thank them, you'll want to add a section to collect a donor phone number because that's not data that we automatically collect. So just something to keep in mind. Your post checkout flow, you'll definitely want to check out, intended. But this is your thank you page. So this is the message that is going to pop up on screen as soon as a donor finishes making their gift. So this is your message. What do you want to say immediately after they make their gift? Obviously you'll want to thank them, but you can also get creative. You can add video here. So maybe you want your board, you know, celebrating and saying thank you. Or maybe you want just a photo of your team altogether. Anything that you can do to make it kind of a personal experience for the donor is really valuable. And you can also add a custom button so you can click learn more. Maybe you want them to sign up for a newsletter so you can click sign up to learn, you know, to get a monthly newsletter from us. So think about what you want your next call to action to be after the donor completes their gift. Moving into reporting. So this is going to be a big section, like I said, that you'll be visiting and you'll get very comfortable with very quickly. But one thing to note as well all admins on the event on your organization, they're going to be receiving email notifications when a donation is made. So if you do not want to be notified every time a gift comes through, you can always turn that off under your own user account settings. But this is the section where you can access your donor data in real time, download those detailed reports. The reports are going to include any additional custom questions like that phone number, if you decide to collect that during checkout. So you can kind of, you know, decide what time period you want to look at. All the reports are going to default to the last 30 days. So if you're not seeing information that you need, you just need to change that time view. And then this is also where you can access, I have to move my zoom screen, but this is also where you can access those retention reports. So those are going to be very valuable to you as well. If you were a previous participant, you'll be able to see that in a second. So your retention reports, very valuable data. This is, you know, available to those who have previously participated and give local interviews. So if you participated last year or any year before that, you're going to be able to have this record of donors who gave to you during the event. So this is something to definitely work into your strategy. The goal is to help you, you know, reinvigorate those lapsed donors, retain your donors, and grow your donors. So using this data, you can see, oh, so-and-so gave to our campaign last year. Let's, you know, add an email that goes out to all these donors during the live event that says, hey, knock, knock, the event is today. We saw you gave last year. Like, here's what we're trying to accomplish this year. So definitely work that into your strategy and use that. Download the report and send it through your email marketing system. And now we're going to move into some giving event myths. If anyone has any questions on anything they just saw, you're welcome to let us know, but we will move into our first myth. Yeah. And so each of these myths are things that we've heard from folks. And also, it's not unique to our event. I know Sarah has heard these from other events as well. So we're not alone. So I think one of the most important ones that I want to emphasize is the idea that by signing up my organization, we will automatically receive donations. So it's sort of the crock pot. I set it and I forget it. I put the ingredients in the morning and I'll have a meal at night. And it's while this event receives a lot of publicity, you should not assume that your organization will just be noticed and people will donate. There are definitely people out there that will that may find you. But the vast majority, I would say 99% of the donations you'll receive will come from people that you have asked or your supporters have asked. So you have to ask. So I would say when you're thinking about, okay, well, who do we ask your first outreaches to existing donors? Who's given to you in the past year? Look at that list and reach out to those folks and then maybe go to people who have given in the past, but maybe it's been a year or two since you've heard it from them a little bit longer. Then go to other supporters. Who gets your emails if you have an email list or who follows you on social media but perhaps hasn't given? Then ask your closest champions who they can ask to donate. So your closest champions might be a long time volunteer or a board member, maybe your staff, maybe a really excited donor. Ask them who they can reach out to. And they don't have to reach out to 100 people. Ask them to reach out to two or three people and you just see how it grows. And make your case for support clear. Make your goal, whatever goals you set tied to something tangible. Don't just say I want to raise $10,000 because that sounds good. Tie it to something. And inform your donors early and often that you're participating. If you sign up today, you can tell your donors today we're participating in this event, save the day. That repetition is really important because we're all so busy. It might be top of mind for you. I know they'll be top of mind for me in the next couple months, but folks are busy. You've got to remind them. And we can go to the next one. So myth number two, we have giving events are only about raising money. I think a lot of organizations do feel like the giving event is only about raising money, but we kind of want to reframe that mindset. Again, coming back to that, you know, one of those first early slides that we did at the beginning, giving events, they're here to offer a very unique engagement opportunity for your organization. And there's just a whole, you know, slew of ways that that happens. Of course, like Lindsay saying, engaging with your existing supporters. So, you know, who are your existing supporters? How can you get them engaged? Can you engage with them in a new way? So it's not just about raising money, it's about, you know, those connections that you have with your donors, with your supporters, with your board, with your staff. Also adding that additional fundraiser to your annual giving campaign. So I know a lot of you already have a bunch of campaigns that happen throughout the year. How can this giving event be worked into, you know, your annual appeals? Kind of working that in, thinking about those goals, using that limited time frame to really rally your supporters is going to be key. Also, just, you know, the overall awareness about your mission, sharing your philanthropy with the community. Everyone's coming together during this time period. Everyone's trying to raise, you know, awareness. It's just a really collective kind of, you know, everyone's coming together to raise funds, meet, you know, new donors and engage. Also, you know, not just thinking about funds, but thinking about how you can engage with your community of businesses. How you can maybe make new connections by being involved, you know, create a couple, if you have the funds and the time, create a couple, you know, different brochures about like why you're participating in this event, what you're trying to achieve and how like a local business could benefit by supporting you, you know, could they, you know, offer you something to help your campaign that maybe isn't funds? Could they do some free printing services for you? There's all sorts of ways that community partners can help you during this without necessarily giving you funds. Of course, we're invigorating lapsed donors. It's a great knock on the door for people, just letting them know that you're, you know, working on this campaign. And then a big one, and we always try to reiterate it, and it will probably come up in additional slides, but just using this as an opportunity to explore new fundraising and campaign strategies. So Lindsay has talked about it a lot. This is a great time to just also reach out to your local nonprofits. If somebody's participated last year, I mean that cohort sounds absolutely fabulous. You can learn from each other. Maybe somebody else has had a match and you're brand new to it. It feels intimidating. You know, talk to another organization, see if they can give you any, shed any light on how they did it. Learn from each other. This is really a community kind of event that's happening, which is very unique. So try something new. Myth three, we need to raise a huge amount of money to be successful. So in last year, we had 106 organizations that received donations. The Community Foundation also received donations, but we kind of keep our numbers separate from participants. So 106 of you raised funds and that raised, that ran the gamut from $100 to $100,000. Our spring house raised $100,000, which is pretty extraordinary, but that's not the norm. So as a participant snapshot, 50 organizations raised $2,000 or more. 42 had 25 or more donations. And then looking at that average amount raised and again, some organization raised in the tens of thousands of dollars and others raised less than $10,000 or less than $2,000. All of all of that combined into an average raised of $7,300. And then the median raised, so smack dab in the middle of those 106 organizations was just over $1,600. So these aren't necessarily record-breaking numbers. It's not necessarily going to be the event where you raised $200,000. If you do that, that's amazing and incredible, but there has to be a lot leading up to raising those kinds of funds. So just in terms of managing expectations, if you're new to this event and you don't have a big existing donor database, we still want you to participate and you can still find success, but just change those expectations, maybe set a goal for between $1,000 and $2,000 and say we're going to kind of aim low, lower. Any money you raise is a benefit, right? And then if you raise more, that's great, but kind of having those lower expectations because if your donors aren't used to giving to you online or of course they can give it other ways too, but if they're not used to this particular event and it's new to them, it can be, you need to use the time for this giving day to kind of build momentum and educate your donors and other supporters, like, hey, we're participating. This is why it matters. This is why it's great to give during this time of year. So regardless of how much you raise, it's going to benefit your organization, but just thinking about what success means and what it looks like for your organizations is about the goals that you set for yourself. The fundraising, and I know we keep emphasizing this, but it's true that the amount you raise is important, but the new donors you potentially get or if you get your board involved, if more people hear about your mission and maybe you get a couple new volunteers, it's about those pieces as well. So that focus on the money, yes, of course we're excited about how much everyone raises and the collective total is important, but there's all those other little successes that build up into one big success in this event. So it's about raising money, but it's about so much more. Myth four, if we don't win a grant or prize, then we are not successful. So I would like to shift folks thinking to whether you win something or not, if you decide to go after a grant or prize. Like for example, we have a prize that's most unique donors, and what that means is an unduplicated donor. So a donor who gives one, so a donor can't get, they can give more than once, but they only count one time for this prize. If you go after that prize and you get 60 donors, but someone else beats you in that prize, that was still motivating to your donors and it's still compelled more people to give to you. Same thing with a power hour, it's the most amount of money raised in a specific, that's, is that correct? Did I write that correctly? Isn't that the most donors in an hour? Sorry guys, that's that's my error. So we have certain period of times during the day where it's the most number of donors in a particular hour. And if you have 20 donors in the hour, but someone else gets 25, you still motivated your donors. So yes, try to go after those grants and prizes, but don't center your whole success strategy on winning a grant or prize. Shift it to winning a grant or prize would be the cherry on top of our efforts. And center those goals on other metrics. Myth five is giving events are best suited for large nonprofit organizations. So it's certainly true that nonprofits with more resources may have more time to devote to the event, but organizations at every level can be successful. I would say, you know, even for those of you who are on the call who work for a large nonprofit, we know everyone is super busy, right? So you might, maybe you don't have a ton of time to devote to this event. That is not necessarily the best indicator of success. I think the better indicators of success are planning early sign up early and you get the benefit of working with us and information about the event and you can plan out your strategy and engage your supporters early having specific goals. We want to raise $3,000 a year. Well, what's the why behind that $3,000? Does it buy a certain amount of equipment? Does it pay for a certain amount of meals or a certain number of pets to be spayed or neutered? What is the why behind that number? Is your one of your goals to engage your whole board in giving each one of them to make a gift of $5 or more? It doesn't have to be breaking the bank. Do you have a goal this year of having 10% more donors than you did last year? Whatever those goals are, make them specific. And if you feel like you can't have five different goals, that's okay. If you have one or two things that you really want to focus on this year, and that's what you have time for, focus on those things. And then the third thing, have a good communication plan. Think about how your donors like to hear from you and what ways you're already talking to them and reach out to them. And then an existing donor base also helps. But again, if you, maybe in the past, you've relied mostly on grant funding, and you haven't done a lot of outreach to individuals or businesses, but sometimes you receive those donations, but you're not actively seeking them. You can still have success, but again, maybe aim lower if you're kind of introducing your supporters to this new way of getting and introducing your supporters to saying, hey, you can help our organization by donating. Because you might have supporters out there who love your mission, but maybe just, it hasn't occurred to them that you might need that monetary support as well. And I'll add that in 2023, our small sized organizations, which is, which was a budget of under $35,000, I believe, we had 33 organizations in that category who received donations, and they raised a combined total of $84,000 from 621 donations. That's pretty extraordinary. So certainly small, but mighty. And so I think at every level, you can have that success. But just consider your particular organization's capacity level, regardless of what your budget is, we know how busy folks are. If your time is limited, again, concentrate on doing a few things well. What can you do? What can you capitalize on what you're already doing? Don't go out there if you're not on social media and create a bunch of social media accounts just for this event. If you have an email list or if you can engage folks in person, whatever your communication is, concentrate on that. You don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel and create a bunch of new things for this event to be successful. I'm muted. Our final myth, my donors already gave during the year and they won't want to be asked again. So that is a very, very large myth, because donors like to be asked to participate, especially your core group of supporters. These are people who know your work, appreciate what you do and are inspired. And so they want to be asked to participate. Think about ways that you could ask those donors who already gave or you're anticipating to give, especially maybe donors that give in larger amounts. Think about more creative ways that you can get them involved, especially in a special way like we've suggested a match. Matches are really great ways to make the donation feel a little bit different for donors who have already given. And it's also a way to just strengthen that relationship with that donor. They like to know that what they're doing is going to help you. And so when you pitch this idea of like, hey, you give to us, really appreciate it. Would you consider doing your gift as a match this year? Let them know the impact that that match will have. It's going to inspire more gifts. It's going to reach more people. It's going to give us something to talk about and share in our socials and our newsletters and our emails during the day. That's really exciting to donors. So think about how to make the ask and then get them involved in maybe setting the specifics. Do they want to have their donation be matched one to one? Maybe two to one? Any way you can get them involved is going to be really special and just strengthen that bond with that donor. And donors who maybe don't give in large amounts, maybe they're not the match, the ones you want to ask, but they're more than happy to give again. If they know it's going to help you reach a goal or a special milestone or win a prize. So during the day, if you have donors who gave in the morning, but you're close in the afternoon to reaching that goal, the event is almost over. It's almost noon. Don't be afraid to ask those donors that gave yesterday or in the morning to give again in a small amount. Even $5 is going to help you maybe win a prize. So something to consider, just making sure you're very clear with the ask and making sure you're also acknowledging and thanking those donors for previous gifts. So you don't want to just ask and ask all day. You want to make sure you pull that list of donors who gave already using that report that I showed you on your dashboard, but add them into a different mailer. Let them know you gave to our campaign. There's two hours left. We're trying to win a power hour, give during this hour, and we could potentially win. So just making sure you clearly communicate that impact and let them know. And more than likely, they're willing to give you an additional $5 to try to reach a goal. Sarah and Lindsay, can I jump in here for it with just a little bit of a tidbit? This is a very timely webinar. And for those of you all who have older donors that are over 70, it's a good time to ask. They have to have a minimum distribution from their retirement accounts. And so they are not taxed on that minimum distribution if they give it to a charity. But you need to give the financial institutions time to mail the check so it lands in June. So it's a very good time for outreach to your older donors to ask for that required minimum distribution to be sent to your charity. That is helpful information. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Laura. Alrighty. So for our final slides, we just want to always make sure you have the support materials and links that you need to make sure your campaign moves seamlessly. So I wanted to put these out here. So of course, you have the fabulous main contact at CFNRV Lindsay. Super helpful if you need anything you can call or email. If you have more technical questions, if you're running into issues, maybe registering, some button isn't working for you, donors need a receipt recent, maybe you need help setting up a match on the platform. That's where mighty cause can come in. So send our team an email at support at mighty cause.com. We're also available via call. I would recommend just sending an email first though, because oftentimes we can help you resolve something pretty quickly so you're not waiting around for a call. And then we also have just fabulous online support libraries apart from, you know, the fabulous toolkit that's already on the website. We also have our own library of resources that are available to you. So you can go to support.mightycause.com, very similar to the email for support, but this is the website. And you can get just a bunch of ebooks, you know, sorry, that's for the guide for the support resources. These are like our frequently asked questions. So you can get donor support questions, maybe you're trying peer to peer fundraising this year, you can usually find something because if somebody's asked it, we've put it in one of these guides. And then we have mightycause.com slash guide. And this is where you can find pre recorded webinars on all sorts of topics. If you want to know watch a webinar specifically geared towards peer to peer fundraising, we have it if you want to watch something specifically geared towards matching grants, we have that. So just check it out. There's a bunch of ebooks that you can download. If you don't want to watch webinars, you can download those guides and we just have a bunch of tips and fundraising ideas for you. Also make sure you take advantage of it. Yeah. And when you register, we send out resources in the email of, Hey, here's our planning worksheet, download this and kind of it'll help you start planning out the event and thinking about your goals. We also have a kind of a getting started checklist. And when you look at it, you're like, Why is this checklist five pages long? It's because it's broken out into time period. So here's what you should do first after you sign up. And then within two months of the event, do this. And when early gaming kicks off, do this. So it's meant to kind of help you do those the step by step things. Do you have to do all those things? Absolutely not. But we hope it helps you as a guide. And when you have a question, certainly feel free to reach out to me or support. Like Sarah said, but I would just suggest heading to the website first and looking at our frequently asked question section and the toolkit see if you can find your answer there. But just know we are always happy to chat with you or meet with you to talk over something. So I noticed two questions in the chat, but if you all have any that we can answer quickly, let us know, but certainly reach out if something wasn't covered here wasn't clear. So Katie asked about how do you sign up to be coached? So when you sign up your organization in the registration form, you'll see a question that says, what information or resources would be most helpful for you in trainings, email communications or online toolkits? And there's a box you can check that says a cohort of fellow nonprofit leaders, check that and we'll know that you want to be part of these small coaching groups. Or you're welcome to email me and let me know that you want to be part of those groups and we're happy to add you. If you want to be a coach, we would also be delighted to have you as that. So you can email me and let me know. But we want to have these groups set by the end of February. So we do have that deadline to get folks in those groups. So you have time with your coach over a couple of months before early giving starts. And then someone asked about, will this presentation be recorded and shared with other folks? Absolutely. We've been recording and we will post this webinar recording on our website and we will email you all when it's ready and also have the slide deck available as well. So you can kind of look at the slides separately too. Let's remind them where on our website they would find the recording. Sure. That's a great question. Sarah, do we store those in the toolkit? I'm just looking at the website. Double check. I know we set up some new pages list here. Yeah. I think so if you go to the website under the resources tab and then you go to nonprofit toolkit, you'll already see that there's a video and some other resources, a guide to download, load, and other links and stuff. We'll add the recordings there. And we are planning on having another webinar. And we're working on setting that date and kind of we'll dive deeper into some strategies around giving day for that webinar. But we're working on setting the date there. So we'll upload it directly to the webinar library. And so if you want to write it down, it's givelocalnrv.org, backslashp, backslashwebinar-library. Okay. Thanks. I'm sure you'll probably email that out to everybody as well. Yeah, for sure. We'll get that out to you and we'll make sure it's prominent on the website. And can it be on our website too, Lindsay? Sure. Yep. We can put it in multiple places. Okay, everyone. I know we're at time, so we can wrap up. But thank you all so much for joining us today. We know that we covered a lot of information today and there will not be a quiz. So if you didn't catch something or if something wasn't clear, please reach out. We're always happy to clarify things and take a please visit that toolkit early and often. And then the frequently asked questions piece of the givelocal website, that's going to answer a lot of your questions. But again, as you can probably tell, I enjoy being a part of this event. I get excited about it and always happy to talk to you. Just reach out early so we can work together and help you reach whatever success and whatever goals you're trying to reach this year. Thanks everyone. Thanks everyone. Have a good one. Bye.