All right. Hello everyone. It looks like we've already got some people here. So if you are here a few minutes early, if you could just let me know that you can see my screen and you can hear me talking in either the Q&A box or the chat panel. That would be really fantastic. I just want to make sure that everybody can hear and see me. So let's see. All right. Perfect. Thank you guys so, so much. So we'll give everybody else just a minute to get logged in before we get started right at the top of the hour. If you are here, I would love to find out where all of you are from. So if you don't mind telling me your location and your organization, that would be really great and help us get to know each other. And if not, that's absolutely fine as well. I would just love to see who is here. Oh, we've got Amanda representing from Atlanta, South Carolina, Detroit, Park City. Gosh, there's people everywhere. I have a fellow Virginian here from Fredericksburg. Hello, Elizabeth. I am up in Haymarket, Northern Virginia. Lots of folks from Georgia. Fantastic. Georgia is really representing today. So nice to meet all of you. I'm so happy to have you here for this webinar. And I'll give everybody just another second to get logged on. And then we will just go ahead and dive in. Ooh, Wisconsinites. I love people from Wisconsin. I have a giving day in Wisconsin. So hello, Andrea. More Atlanta. Awesome. All right. So it is three o'clock on the dot here on the east coast. So I will go ahead and dive in. Hello and welcome to our webinar that is all about matching grants. My hope for this webinar is truly that everybody here will leave with a good understanding of how matching grants function and everything you need to know from beginning to end to start working on matching grants for your fall campaigns. I know that's a busy time that's coming up and matching grants can certainly help you achieve your fundraising goals in the fall. So I really hope that after this webinar, you have all of the basics down. You know how to get a matching grant and what to do with it so you can get started on your fall campaigns. My name is Linda Gerhardt, by the way. And I am the senior community engagement manager here at Mighty Cause. I've been working with Mighty Cause since 2016. And I've also helped manage a lot of giving events, which we'll talk about a little bit later. And we see really the power of matching grants through giving events and other campaigns. So I've seen a lot of matching grants and a lot of different strategies in my years at Mighty Cause, which I'm hoping to share with you today. So here is a look at today's agenda. We're going to be going through the basics of matching grants and then talk about how to secure one and then how you can use it and you can strategically use it to achieve your fundraising goals. Just as a little bit of housekeeping, we are recording this webinar and everybody is going to have access to the recording once we're done. And I'll also make the slides available too if you're the kind of person who likes to look at a slide deck. We're going to be doing a Q&A session at the end of the webinar. So if you think of something that you'd like more information on or something that you'd like to ask while I'm presenting, just go ahead and put that into the Q&A box on your Zoom panel and we'll make sure that we get to it at the end of the presentation. And obviously any questions that or situations that you think might be helpful for other non-profit professionals to hear the answer to as well, please ask those in the Q&A box. So and also we're all friends here. We're all fundraising professionals. So please feel free to chat with me, chat with each other in the chat box. I really want it to be as interactive as possible. And a lot of you have great knowledge and experience as well. So feel free to chat with each other while I'm presenting. So before we get into the details, we really need to make sure that we are all on the same page about what matching grants are and how they function. So that's what we're going to be doing first. And on that note, what is a matching grant? So a matching grant is a fundraising tool that is used as a donation incentive. A nonprofit secures a large donation, which is offered up as a match to incoming donations. So basically it's kind of a Bogo sale on donations. If you make your donation when a matching grant is live, you get another donation added sort of in spirit. In its simplest form, a matching grant would be working with a donor or a sponsor to get a grant, say in the value of $1,000. And instead of them just paying that out to you, sending you a check and calling it a day, it's paid out proportionally to the donations that come in. So for instance, when somebody gives $25, the grantor also gives $25 and so on and so forth until $1,000 or whatever their match value was for is raised and all of the matching funds have been used. Now that is not to say that all matching grants function in the same way. There's actually a lot of different ways that you can use matching funds. Some grantors will give you the full amount, whether or not you meet your funding goal. And some will make it conditional. So if you don't meet your funding goal, you won't get that match. But that's the basic concept. You have a grantor who provides a pool of match funding and that funding matches each donation that comes in. A matching grant has a start and an end time or it ends automatically once the matching funds have all been used up. So there's a lot of different variables, but basically you have three different people involved or types of people. You have your nonprofit, you have your grantor who is a donor who provides the matching grant, and then you have your regular donors who will be making donations to have their gifts matched by the matching funds. So under the umbrella of matching grants, there are different types of matches that work to achieve different things. The most common type of match that you'll see, especially on Ladycause and elsewhere too, is a one to one match, which is a dollar for dollar match. So for instance, if somebody gives $25, they get credit from the matching funds for $25 as well. So they actually give 50 with the additional 25 coming out of the matching funds provided to the nonprofit by your donor. A lot of nonprofits will add another layer to this by putting a cap on the amount that can be matched. For instance, everyone donating up to $100 will be matched dollar for dollar, but then after $100, the match no longer applies, which just makes the grant stretch a little bit further. So there's a lot of variance in how nonprofits choose to handle these. You can also match a certain percentage of each donation. So for instance, maybe you have a grantor who wants to match 50% of each donation made during the time period when the match is active, but then that makes the matching funds stretch a little bit further as well. You can also use a matching grant to target a particular funding goal. For instance, if your goal for a campaign is to raise $1,000 and you have a sponsor that matches that $1,000 after you hit the $1,000 fundraising goal, that will help you achieve that goal because the money is conditional upon that funding goal being met. You can also set a matching grant to target a certain quantity of donations. So if you're looking for a large volume of donations, that can be a handy way to use it. Or if you're looking to acquire new donors, you can actually set a match to kick in once you've reached a certain number of unique donors. That's something that with giving events on Mighty Cause you might be interested in using if you're trying to get a lot of unique donors for a power hour or something along those lines. And just to be clear, all of these types of matches are ones that you can program in with Mighty Cause' matching grants tool. So the question usually is, this sounds like a lot of work and it's a lot of math. So what is the point of all of this and how does this benefit your nonprofit? Well, as I mentioned before, it provides an incentive for donors to give and it builds a sense of urgency. It's very easy for donors to get an email or see a social media post asking them to give to your campaign and say, oh, well, I'm busy right now, but I'll give later. But a matching grant has the same effect as a sale. For a limited amount of time, they can get something more for their money. So it behooves them to actually stop what they're doing and give right then and there. So when you're trying to accomplish something specific for a fundraising campaign or hit a goal by a deadline, this can obviously be a really powerful tool to get people to donate when you want them to. So for instance, on Giving Tuesday, you have 24 hours. If you want to make sure that people are giving within those 24 hours, a matching grant can really incentivize them to give during Giving Tuesday instead of kicking the can down the road and maybe making a gift at the end of December instead. So it really does work to incentivize and build urgency to give now. And a matching grant is at its heart a marketing tool. So with a matching grant, you have a hook already built in. You have something to offer your donors and you have something to talk about in your appeal. And it's just a really great tool that you can use to market your campaign and get the attention of your supporters. It's also goal oriented. Match matching grants work in support of your fundraising goals and they act as tools to achieve them. So if your goal is to raise $15,000 for renovations, a matching grant is a tool that you can use to get to that goal. So it's a way of achieving your goals in a very direct and proactive way. The other thing that matching grants are tools for is donor engagement. And they actually work on a couple of different levels in this regard. So for your regular everyday donors, not the ones who are providing the match, a matching grant allows them to get more bang for their buck and maximize their impact. So if you personally could turn $25 that you have to give to a nonprofit that you support into $50, I'm sure you would jump at that opportunity and I would too. So to donors, it's very appealing to them. It grabs their attention, it gets them engaged and it makes them feel like they're getting a good deal and an opportunity to do more with the money they have to give. And it's also a really great tool to engage the donors who are providing the match. So it's definitely a great deal if you only have a little bit to give and there's a match available. But a lot of people don't realize just how great it is getting your larger donors and your sponsors engaged. So if you give to a nonprofit, especially at a higher level, it can really feel a bit stale after a while just to write a check to them every year. But by giving them the opportunity to provide a matching grant, they get a more fulfilling experience. That's fun. It's exciting for them to see all of those donations coming in and know that they're driving giving, they're going beyond themselves. They're not just giving to your nonprofit, they're also inspiring other people to give. So it's a really great way to give them a fulfilling experience in addition to fulfilling your regular donors who are giving in smaller amounts. So whether they're providing the match or they're the regular donors who are giving in smaller amounts, it's a really great tool to engage them. So it's a really fantastic donor engagement tool. So if you're thinking about your stewarding, this is a really great way to steward those larger donors and your sponsors. Another thing that matching grants are really fantastic for is engaging sponsors. So if there is a prospective sponsor that you have been just dying to work with and get involved with your nonprofit, this is a really great icebreaker that you can use to start bringing them in. Having a matching grant for a campaign and trying to kickstart that process can get them on board and get them involved in your nonprofit. And matching grants are really kind of catnip for sponsors because they have recognition built into them. It gives your sponsor an opportunity to show their support for your organization and be recognized as generous and philanthropic to your supporters and the larger community and highlight their work to support nonprofits doing work in the community. So for sponsors, it definitely helps you out as a nonprofit, but they get something out of the deal too as well. So it's very appealing to sponsors. And again, it's really engaging. It's a matching grant is fun and more interesting than just cutting a check or something like a corporate giving program. Those are extremely important and they can be great arrangements, but they're not really exciting. Whereas a matching grant adds this element of excitement. There's a countdown, you're watching donations come in, and it's a really fantastic way to engage sponsors. So if you have a list of sponsors that you're either looking to work with or already work with, this is a really fantastic way to engage them. So the thing that trips up most nonprofits once they decide matching grants are fantastic. I want to use them is how do I actually go about getting one? And so we're going to go through that process step by step so that you can start thinking about getting matching grants for all of your fall campaigns.  And the process for securing a matching grant is honestly not much different than securing any sort of major gift. So if you work in development, if you're even a major gift officer at your nonprofit, this process is probably very familiar to you, but you already have a template in place to start this conversation and start this process. It's three steps. You start with prospecting, which is where you identify potential sources for your grant. You cultivate, which means building the relationship and starting the conversation and then making your ask. It's pretty simple, three steps. So the first step is prospecting. And in a lot of ways, I think this is really the most important step because you're laying the foundation for the work you're going to do. Donor prospecting can sound kind of intimidating, but all you're doing is making a list of people or organizations or companies that might be interested in providing a matching grant. So as with most things, it's helpful to start with a list. So make a spreadsheet and list out your prospects and their information, anybody off the top of your head, as well as within, which we'll talk about in just a moment. So when you're finding a prospective grantors and you're getting your list together, there's three basic factors that you want to consider, which are also key factors in major gift prospecting. The first is affinity, meaning do they have some sort of connection to your cause? Do they have a preexisting relationship with you? Are they just part of the same community as you? Is there some sort of overlap in the work you do? Or do they just know somebody who sits on your board? There's a lot of different ways that they can have an affinity, but do they have some kind of connection to your nonprofit? And you'll also want to look for giving history. Have they given to your organization in the past? Or do they have a history and a reputation for working with other nonprofit organizations? Are they known for being philanthropic? The best predictor of whether someone will make a gift to your nonprofit is a history of giving. So this is something that you'll want to research during the prospecting phase. So if it's a company, for instance, have they worked with organizations in your community in the past? Have they worked with organizations like yours? And just really figure out, do they have a history of doing this sort of thing for nonprofits? If they don't, that's not a reason to necessarily kick them off your list, but it's an important piece of information about how they interact with nonprofits. And finally, you want to consider capacity, which is basically a little bit of a softer way of saying wealth. You don't want to approach like a failing business to provide a matching grant or hit up a major gift donor who just had a major health or life issue that knocked them out and is eating up all of their attention. So you want to make sure that you're targeting people who can actually realistically financially provide a match for you. You want to make sure, since you're going to be putting in a little bit of effort to secure this, that you're targeting people who can realistically provide a match. Like if you called me tomorrow and said, Linda, can you give me $1,000? Unfortunately, the answer would be no, because I'm not that wealthy. So you want to make sure that you're targeting people who have the capacity to give at the level you're looking for. One of the things that I recommend here when you're making your list is looking within before you start thinking about cold calling anyone or starting off fresh with somebody that you've never worked with before. If we look at matching grants on Mighty Cause, one of the most common sources for matching grants is nonprofit boards. And that's because board members make a financial commitment to your nonprofit. They are responsible for overseeing the financial health of your organization. And fundraising is often a part of their responsibilities. It theoretically should be a responsibility of your board members to fundraise. So this can be a really great way for your board to get involved. So sometimes an individual board member will provide a match. And sometimes board members actually work together and they pull together funds for a match. So across the board, even if you have no one else to ask, if you're very small and you're overwhelmed by this, ask your board. They should be willing to work with you. Any current major gift donors are obvious places that you should ask for a matching grant and add to your prospecting list. These are tried and true supporters who are invested in your work. And you know that they tick all three boxes. They have affinity, they have history, and they have capacity. So they should be included in your list. And if you have any sponsors that you work with regularly, work with regularly, these are really great prospects as we talked about sponsors love things like matching grants. So even if your organization is very small, you have a smaller network and you're really overwhelmed with the idea of prospecting, you already have a group of people affiliated with your nonprofit, who are excellent prospects. And one thing that can also be really helpful at this stage is asking for referrals, especially from your board of directors. Many of them know people in the community, they may know business owners, they may be able to help you make introductions, they may be able to introduce you to people. So even if your board is not able to provide the match, ask them for referrals. Most board members are pretty connected to the community. So just ask them if they have anybody that they can introduce you to. It is important to stay organized when you're prospecting. And to that end, I really recommend using either a spreadsheet or a CRM tool or some combination of the tool. If you're interested in a CRM, Mighty Cause has a tool that comes with our advanced subscription called supporters. And we also have a Salesforce integration that you can utilize to help you stay organized. Salesforce is really very well set up for this kind of process, the discovery process. So it's a really great tool if you already utilize Salesforce and you can actually integrate that with your Mighty Cause account. I highly recommend that you assign one contact to each prospect so that you can really have one person that's focused on building and cultivating that relationship. For people who are being prospect, who you're trying to cultivate, it can be really frustrating and confusing and make it impossible to actually build a relationship when you have different people reaching out and they're saying different things and some people know things and some people don't. So having one main contact for each prospect is really the best way to go about it.  For instance, if you have a prospect that has told somebody at your organization that they absolutely hate talking on the phone and you don't write that important piece of information down and you keep calling them, you may end up losing that relationship. So it's just important to keep notes about these prospects and what you learn about them. The next step is cultivation, which is really just the process of building the relationship.  This is a personal process. So things like phone calls, meetings, zoom calls, breakfasts and lunches, these are all really great ways to make that first step and make that first contact. You can also use email too, like definitely we're all logged in. So if you prefer to use email to reach out for the first time, you can do that. And what you're doing at this stage is you're building up to the ask and you're also collecting information. So one thing that can be helpful is having some qualifying questions that you want to try to work into your conversations just to see whether or not they're likely to be warm to an ask and have the capacity and are frankly worth your time and their time. So you don't want to waste anybody's time. You definitely don't want to call them and start going down a list of questions, but some things that you want to get out of conversations with people. Like if you have a relationship with a local restaurant and you reach out and they tell you that they are understaffed and struggling because of COVID, that you probably want to cross them off your prospect list. So you're really just gathering information and trying to find out how likely they are to want to get involved. Now every prospect is different and there's really no set path to get to your ask. So for instance, if you have a board member that you talk to all the time, it's going to be a much shorter path to making your ask than if you're talking to somebody for the first time who's never worked with your nonprofit. So you want to be flexible and really use the cultivation process to build that relationship rather than trying to just jam them through a process because it's going to be different for everybody. And again, keep good records because this can make or break your attempts and all of your contacts. So take note of how each prospect prefers to communicate what their interests are, what's going on for them right now, and so on so that you can tailor your approach to them. And these notes are also going to be helpful to your organization in the future. And then finally, you make your ask. Now this is basically where you would pitch your idea of providing a matching grant. So you'll want to make an informed pitch. Use everything that you've gathered in your prospecting research and the cultivation process to make an ask that is tailored to that person's style, their interests, their preferences and their capacity. Like with any pitch, you'll want to explain to them what they get out of it. So be sure that you're also explaining how providing a match benefits them and use what you know about their interests to make that case. So for instance, for community sponsors, you might want to pitch it as showing their community how much they give back and how much they're committed to helping out and include some information about how you're going to recognize them and shout them out. And be flexible. You want to use what you note, but be open. If somebody can't provide $5,000, and that's what you had in mind, but they can provide 800, you can still work with that. So don't go in with really firm expectations and be willing to work with each individual prospect. So some tips for making your ask. You want to be prepared. You don't want to over prepare. You're not going on Shark Tank, but you do want to do your homework on the prospect and be prepared to share some information about your campaign, your impact, talk to them about how matching grants work, what they are, because definitely some people can find this confusing. And even when I'm trying to talk about it, I can sort of talk myself into circles. So be prepared to so be prepared to share some information about them. And one thing that can be really helpful to bring to them is some financials like an annual report so that you are prepared and you're ready to answer their questions. You want to keep it simple. Most people are not nonprofit fundraising experts, so you really want to make sure that it's easy for them to understand that you're not using jargon or a lot of things that don't make sense to them. You want to make sure that anybody, regardless of their experience, can understand what you're proposing to them. And when it comes to actually making the ask, it can be really helpful to pull someone else in who has maybe a little bit more clout. So if you personally have been managing a relationship with a prospect, when you're actually going to make your ask whether you're setting up a phone call or a zoom call or actually meeting in person, you want to be there because you're the person who has the relationship with that prospect, but also bringing in somebody like your executive director, your major gifts officer, your director of development or even somebody from your board can really add some weight to your ask and make it more likely to be successful. So sometimes you want to tag team the ask. You want to be the one to manage that relationship and who have the person who's been having those conversations present of course, but making the ask is a great time to loop somebody else in. So there's a couple of different outcomes here. And the first we'll go over is getting a yes and you've got the matching grant. So first and foremost, say thank you. Thank them for their generosity and make sure that they feel fantastic about it. And then you want to shift into hammering out some of the details. So talking about how much they're giving to you, how you're going to function, how this match is going to function rather, when you will expect the match, if you're going to get the full amount regardless of the outcome or if they are making that conditional on meeting a fundraising goal. So you want to talk to them about some of the details and understand what they want and also have in mind what you want. Like obviously it's preferable if they give you the donation anyway, but just chat with them about what their expectations are and make sure that you are setting expectations and working with them and hearing what they want. So talking about goals is really important. You want to find out from them and hopefully you should have a sense at this point, but finding out what's important to them and sort of working with them so that their goals and what they want out of this experience is included and accounted for in the plan and also making a plan for how you're going to report to them the results of the match. They may want to know something in particular. So make sure that you're talking about what the goals are. You don't have to get too lost in the weeds with them, but talk to them about what they want out of the match and work with them on that. And then also talk about recognition. Some donors, especially major gift donors, actually don't want to be recognized. They would prefer to remain anonymous on Mighty Cause. They absolutely can. If it's a sponsor, they may have some specific ideas about how you can recognize their generosity. So this is the stage where you'd want to shore up the details and talk to them about the particulars like how they would prefer to be recognized. So the other outcome is, of course, that you get a no. So even if they say no, you still want to thank them for their time and attention. You want to make sure that you appreciate them and make them feel appreciated so that they just don't say no and you saunter off and they don't hear from you until you need money again. You want to keep the relationship going and don't despair. Even they know they gave you a no right now. You're still learning a lot about them. You're building that relationship with them and you can utilize that to make future asks. Maybe the timing is not right. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how you approach them. But keep it going. Keep cultivating them. Even though it's a no right now, that could be a yes in the future. There could be another opportunity that's more suited to their capacity, to their interests. So don't take it as a no forever. It's a no for right now and continue stewarding them and building that relationship with them. And again, you want to keep cultivating and engaging. So really all this is about is building a relationship with either a sponsor or a grand tour. You want to make it a good experience for them. You're not just taking the money and running. You want to make sure that they find it fulfilling because if they find it fulfilling and satisfying as a donor, they're most likely going to provide another one for you because they got something out of it. You want to also make a plan for how often you're going to keep in touch with this donor, with the grand tour, what reporting and information you'll send with that send to them and keep them engaged during the process. Again, don't take the money and run. You want to continue cultivating that relationship. And then you also want to talk about thank yous. So how are you going to thank them for their generosity? Definitely saying thank you in a public way is important, but maybe you'll do something like send them a card that's signed by all your staff, sending them some flowers or something along those lines. Think about how you can make them feel valued and make this a fulfilling, satisfying donor experience for them. All right. So now that you have theoretically secured your match, we're going to talk about how to actually use a matching grant. So the first thing that you'll want to do is assess your goals. So if you have a campaign and you've gotten a matching grant, that's fantastic. And you want to think about what your goals for that campaign are. So do you have a specific fundraising goal? What are your goals and how do you want this match to support you? So either you may want to run a certain type of match to support a goal of raising a certain amount or getting more donors. And you want to think about your high level goals as well and how you can utilize this match to really support your overall goals for the campaign. So what do you want this grant to do? Do you want it to stretch for the entire length of your campaign? Are you going to use it for a short period of time, a particular day, an hour? Think about what your goals are for the grant and how you're going to fit that into your overall fundraising campaign. And then also consider the high level goals for your organization. So for instance, if one of your goals for 2021 is donor retention, can you use the grant to encourage that? Think about how it can tie into your overall fundraising goals for your organization and engaging your donors. So think about your goals for your campaign, for the grant itself, and your high level goals. And then you think about how you can fit that into support those goals. So this is a little bit technical, but we do have a matching grants tool in Mighty Cause. It is on your admin dashboard. So if you are already an admin for your organization, you have access to this. If not, you can get signed up now and start using the matching grants tool. And the cool thing, my favorite thing about this, frankly, is that it does the math for you. So it definitely benefits you to enter the matching grant here in the Mighty Cause tool. You go to fundraise, matching grants, and then create new grant. And then you kind of just fill in the blanks. You tell us about your match and how you want it to function. You tell us what type of match you're doing. And then you have to make a couple of decisions in terms of how you want this match to function. Do you want to put a cap on the amount that gets matched? Do you want to count offline donations? Do you want to include peer-to-peer fundraisers in your match so that when somebody makes a donation to a peer-to-peer page that's connected to your page that also has their donation matched? You can opt to do that or not. Do you want to set a limit on its match once per donor? There's a lot of smaller decisions that you can make in the matching grants tool that are really as simple as clicking a box. So basically, all you have to do is fill out this form and tell you what you want from the match.  So we actually display your match in a couple of key places. So the first and most important place that we display it is on the donate button. So when somebody goes to your profile or they go anywhere that your organization is collecting donations on Mighty Cause, there's a little sticker there that says that you have a match that's available. And that's really important because if somebody is deciding whether or not to click, that can be the thing that tips them over is that there's a matching grant available. It's also viewable on your organization profile. So people will be able to see that it's active if they visit your profile and it'll also be visible in searches. So many giving days, if you're participating in a giving day, actually have a search that's just for matching grants and people can also filter their search so that it only displays organizations that have matches available. So there's a few different key places where it displays on Mighty Cause to sort of support you as you promote your match. But really in terms of making people aware of your match, it all comes down to your marketing. So here's what you want to do to try and promote your match. The first is email marketing. If you are sending emails about your campaign, you want to include the match so that donors can plan for their gift. If you have multiple matches for a campaign, let them know what the schedule is so that they can make a plan and give during those times. Definitely using social media can be a really great way to promote your match. So promote it before it goes live so people are aware of it and then also announce when it becomes available and announce when it closes. If you have a website that you update and you're mentioning your campaign on there, make sure that you also mention the match. Basically anywhere that you're promoting your campaign, whether that's your website, direct mail marketing, a poster, a flyer, you want to make sure that this match is mentioned because again it's really appealing to donors to be able to get more bang for their buck. So think about where you're going to be marketing this to your audience and how you're incorporating it into the marketing for your campaign overall. Some other things that you can do to help promote your match are a social media takeover. If you have like a corporate sponsor or a business that you're working with and they have a decent social media presence, something that can be really effective is actually taking over their social media account for the day so that you can reach their followers and they can become familiarized with your organization and what you're doing and you can promote that match. So that's something that you can try if you're working with a business sponsor. Peer to peer fundraising is also a really fantastic way to promote your match if you're already using peer to peer. So if you have an event happening or a team fundraiser or you're just enlisting people to help you fundraise, make sure that they know about the matching grant so that they can help promote it to their people as well because then either you're able to increase your reach and get the word out to more people. Getting your team involved is a really great plan. Having your staff, your board members, volunteers, anybody in your inner circle that works in your operations day to day, have them reach out to their social network and say, hey, I care about this organization. I work for this organization. There is a match available. So if you make your first donation or you make a donation, it'll be matched and that is a way for you to reach more people. And don't forget about traditional collateral like signs, flyers, anything that you would use otherwise to promote your campaign. Make sure that your match is included in those things. All right, so now I'm just going to go through some matching grant strategies and how I've seen organizations utilize matching grants during a campaign on Mighty Cause. So one of the most popular places that organizations use them is for giving days and giving events. So we have a lot of giving events on the Mighty Cause platform. We, of course, have our own Giving Tuesday events and then we have events throughout the year and matching grants are often a really key part of that. A lot of organizations will use them to win prizes. There's competitive prizes in most giving events. So there's leaderboard prizes and hourly prizes and the strategic use of matching grants can bolster your success at winning those prizes. It adds urgency. So for instance, I mentioned before, Giving Tuesday is 24 hours.  And matching grant is perfect at that. So if you have the built-in time limit of a giving day, using a matching grant can be a really great way to get people to stop what they're doing and give now. And then it can also just increase the overall amount that you raise. You're doubling your money. You're getting more for your money as well. So processing that matching grant online especially can be helpful during giving days. And it also just helps you be competitive. So if you're participating in a giving day, it's definitely worth thinking about getting a matching grant for that day. And if you don't know what Giving Days are or you haven't participated in one, we do have one coming up this fall on Mighty Cause that's open to all Mighty Cause users called Giving Tuesday. I'm sure you're all familiar with Giving Tuesday, but we have our own event where there will be some prizes and you can participate in that. It's November 30th this year and you can register at givingtuesday.mightycause.com. If you're participating in another fall event, you can just ignore all of that and focus on your event. But there is an event happening that everybody is able to participate in on Giving Tuesday. One thing that is really cool and I've seen a lot is a board challenge. So it's actually kind of hitting on two fronts. Not only do you have your board members actually providing a matching grant, they're providing it on their own fundraiser. That's a really beautiful thing. So having an event or a team where your board members are competing against each other to raise money for your organization and providing a matching grant is a really fantastic way to engage your board and not only get them to provide a grant but get them to fundraise. So if you haven't tried a board challenge, I definitely recommend giving one a try. We've seen a bunch of them on Mighty Cause and they're usually really, really successful. So a board challenge is a really fantastic way to get your board to do both. You want them to do more and not less. So if you can get them to get matching grants on their own fundraisers, you're really just hitting it out of the park. You can use multiple matching grants. So this is something that is really helpful if you have a longer campaign. So it obviously requires more work but you're doing all this work to prospect and cultivate people. So you may actually end up with several matching grant offers and you can use all of them. So for instance, you can use those for different purposes. You may want to use a large grant that you have the largest one you have available that spans the entire length of your campaign and then have smaller ones work to bolster your campaign as strategic points within the campaign. So you can actually have multiple matching grants running at one time. I know we have somebody in the audience from Park City and Park City is part of our Giving Day Live PC, Give PC, and they use tons of matching grants and most nonprofits have a lot of matching grant activity happening. So you can actually get multiple grants together and make matching grants a bigger strategy where you're using multiple grants throughout the day to bolster your fundraising. You can use it to kick off your campaign. I think this is always a fun way to kick off your campaign and build momentum, get people excited and set the tone for your campaign. So if you're not quite sure where to fit a matching grant into your campaign, just offering it as an incentive for people to give as soon as your campaign starts is a really great way to go. Definitely it helps you start strong and if your campaign starts strong, it'll most likely finish strong as well. You can also use a matching grant to push you across the finish line. So offering a matching grant during the final day, final hours of your campaign can really push people to take you as far as possible before your campaign ends. And you can also use it for a stretch goal. So if you have one in your pocket or maybe your board member would like to provide one as you're coming up on the end of your campaign, if you've already hit your goal, you can create a little mini mini goal at the end to stretch your goal and you can use the matching grant to incentivize people to donate. It can also be a really fantastic way to get people to come back and give again. So donor acquisition is something you can actually use a matching grant for. We do have a matching grant type that counts unique donors. So if you're really looking to acquire new donors, offering that matching grant that brings that kicks in once you've brought in a certain number of unique donors can really support you in that goal of getting more people to give to your nonprofit. And you really want to approach this from getting your whole donor base involved in letting people know that in order to get this this match money, they need to get more people to donate. So the minimum donation on the platform is $5, getting people really motivated to go out there, spread the word and help you get donors in the door by providing this matching grant can be a really great way to boost your donor acquisition. And donor engagement. So if a donor, if you're looking to engage donors, you can set a match type that's looking for a certain number of donations. That can be a really creative way just to get as many people as possible involved. And it's also a really great way, as I mentioned, to get people to come back and make a gift. So let's say you're running a campaign that lasts a week, somebody makes a donation on day one, and then on day five, you have this matching grant available. Well, they might just come back and make another gift. So it can be really great at getting donors engaged, getting them involved and getting them to come back and make more than one gift. Because if you get donors making multiple gifts, you're going to boost the overall amount that you raise. All right, so that is it. I know I've gone over time a little bit and I apologize about that. So I do want to make some time for questions. And just to answer some questions that are already in the chat that I see, yes, you will get a recording of the webinar and you'll also get access to the slides. So as soon as I'm able to get that email together and send it out to you, you will have that in your inbox. So just keep an eye out for that. And I think I just have to stop sharing to get to the Q&A box, unfortunately. So let's see. All right, so this is a question from Bob. Let's see, I'm just going to read this out. One of the boards in this community is pooling money for a match. How can we consolidate it legally and accountably? For example, can one member's LLC or entity channel the total pool, provide the bookkeeping, disperse the money, et cetera? So unfortunately, you're probably not going to love my answer, which is that I can't provide any legal advice. So what I would recommend is talking to your organizations, your lawyer to answer any questions along those lines, because I just unfortunately can't answer that question. You just want to work with your legal team or have the grantor or some the person who's LLC you want to filter the money through, work with their lawyer to make sure that you're following all of the all of the proper procedure to make sure that that's completely legal. And there's a comment from Bob. This is interesting. A comment on getting a yes. Three types of people to influence those who can say yes, those who must not say no, and those who influence the first two, I spend a fair amount of time learning who they are and cultivating trust with them. Yeah, that's a really fantastic tip. I love that. So I'll make sure that we include that in the email. It's a really great tip. And there's another question from Bob. Must we use the mighty cause matching fund dashboard tool, or may we just enter the grant as matching funds on the donation report page? So you don't have to use the mighty cause matching fund dashboard tool. The only downside to not using it is that then you would lose some of the places where we automatically display it for you. And again, my favorite part is that it does the math for you. So you can actually just it'll automatically close when the match funds are gone and it'll stop when you would like it to stop. So there are some cons to not doing that. You can also just enter it in your donation report. That works as well. And the one thing I did want to mention about the matching grant tool is that if you don't want to process the grant online, you can just sort of add it to your display total. So you can opt to just calculate it automatically. And that will kind of add it in as an offline donation bit by bit. So you can do it really any way you would like. But if you have specific questions about like what should I do, our support team deals with a lot of matching grant questions. So don't be shy about reaching out to support at mightycause.com. They can assist you if you can't figure out what to do. Or if you're not sure what's the best move to do.  There's no rules. We're not going to tell you that you can't do that. You can do it however you would like. I would recommend using the tool just because it does so much for you, but you certainly don't have to. Let's see. Can you this is a question from Kelsey. Can you use mighty cause to create tailored matches, like matches that are live for specific groups, such as faculty, staff, alumni and friends. That's a really fantastic question. At this point, it's kind of just a match for everyone. So unfortunately, we don't have a way of like saying, well, this match is not available to this person because you know, they are not faculty. But what you could consider doing is starting a fundraising page that is specifically for those individuals and then placing the matching grant on that page. So for instance, if you're doing a Giving Tuesday campaign or just a fall campaign, and you're using your organization profile as the main source for that, you could create a connected page. That's just for faculty members. That's just for alumni and so on. And then just put the matching grant on that page. So through the tool, there's not really a way to do that, but you can create a page where only that you're only sharing with people who meet that criteria and just stick the matching grant on that page. So I didn't mention that in the webinar, but you can put individual matching grants on peer to peer pages or project pages, event pages, and as well as teams. So if you wanted to use it more specifically like that, yes, you could do that through creating a separate page, which I hope makes sense. Let's see. This is a question from Dallas. If we have a matching grant set up for a Giving Day, the match amount will be counted immediately and count toward a Power Hour prize, like for the highest amount raised, for example. So that's a really fantastic question. And it really actually does depend on the rules of the Giving Event. So for instance, for some of my Giving Events, they choose to count offline donations for leaderboard prizes. For hourly prizes, it kind of depends on whether or not offline donations are counted. If you're specifically gearing a matching grant to help you during a most dollars raised Power Hour, what I would recommend is working with your grantor to have them make that donation through the Mighty Cause platform, because then you can be absolutely certain that it will count. If it's made offline, like you accept a check and you just kind of enter the match, I can't guarantee that it will count because every event has its own rules. So check the rules of the Giving Event that you're participating in. But if you are able to, get the grantor to make the donation online for a Giving Day, because it will definitely, definitely help you. And we do actually have an option for them to pay by connecting their bank account through the Plaid app. That is available, I believe, to most donors who give over $100. And that actually puts a cap on the bank fees. The platform fees, whatever they are for that event will still be in place. But every time there's a credit card transaction, there's a fee associated with that that is imposed by either the credit card company or the bank. But when you use the bank account option, it does cap the fees for the bank account, because those are proportional. So if somebody is giving $5,000 and the bank fees are 2.9%, that can be a lot of money. So you can push them to give using the bank account option through the Plaid app, which is 100% secure and should save them a little bit of money. But if at all possible, try to direct them to do it through the Mighty Cost platform on a Giving Day, because that's really the only way I can guarantee for certain that it will count toward power hours and leaderboards and so on. But just check the rules of the event. Let's see, just to reiterate, if you checked in late or you had to check out early, whatever your situation is, you will get the recording and you can review any parts that you may have missed. Well, this is an interesting question from Tanya. Have you ever had a situation where a grantor couldn't meet their matching pledge and how do you deal with that? I have never seen that situation mostly because you want to work the terms out with them ahead of time. So you want to make sure that if this grantor has $5,000 to give, you're not putting them in a position where they would have to give more than that. So they are setting the terms in terms of how much they can give. You're not going to surprise them with an amount unless you have a unicorn of a grantor who is open to that. You want to try to hammer those things out ahead of time. And if there's a situation where, for instance, somebody promised you $5,000 and they could not provide it, you can always work with them to see if they can make payments or do something along those lines. And if they absolutely just cannot meet the match, I would recommend being transparent with your donors just to make sure that you're maintaining the trust that they have in your organization and letting them know, hey, this grantor unfortunately was not able to provide the match and just let all of the donors who took advantage of the matching grants know that so that you don't break that trust with your donors. Let's see. This is a follow-up question from Donia. Do you feel obligated to inform donors? Definitely. Transparency with donors is really important because it's a relationship that's built on trust. They are giving you money and trusting that you are using that well and that you're being honest with them. So I always err on the side of being accountable to your donors and transparent as possible with your donors. They don't need to know all the dirty details like this restaurant failed, no longer exists. But you want to be honest with them if those match funds were not actually provided. It doesn't affect them in any material way. They only receive credit in terms of like tax receipts for what they actually gave. But yeah, just if you can be honest with your donors at all costs, be transparent with them. You don't need to tell them anything that is inappropriate or too much or embarrassing to anybody. But just let them know if a match doesn't work out and that their donations were not actually matched so that they feel like they can trust you. Let's see. So there's a question from Donna. Do you receive all the funds donated by the match sponsor or does Mighty Cause take a percentage? So there are fees involved in Mighty Cause. I want to be completely transparent about that. We do have a platform fee and we also have bank fees. So the platform fee that is standard on our platform is 4%. If you're participating in a giving event, sometimes that is different because giving events often have their own pricing. So it may be less than that. It may be more if the giving event has an additional fee that they would like to tack on to cover some of their event costs. That is in our terms of use. And it also, your donors have the option of covering any fees for you when they check out. It's just checking a box and we'll tell them exactly how much it is. So we do take a percentage. That's part of how we maintain our business and make sure that our technology is good and solid for you. So yeah, just check our terms of use. If you're participating in a giving event, check the giving event FAQ because it'll tell you there. But we are transparent about that. So you can actually see that on your disbursement report as well. Anything that we take in terms of fees you will be informed of up front and you'll also see in the disbursement. So there shouldn't be any surprises. And again, what I would recommend is if you have a grant or who's paying online, have them use the plaid app so they can save a little bit of money in bank fees. And it just occurred to me now that if you're not getting the grant through the platform, we don't take any fees. So if you get a check from somebody, we never touch that money. So we're not going to charge you for that money. You just use the tool and it's on the honor system that that money exists and is there for a match. But we're not going to charge you for anything off the platform, obviously, because we can't. It's only for transactions that happen through our platform. So that's another consideration. When you're thinking about how you want to manage your grant, is do you want to process it online? As I mentioned specifically with giving days, there can be a specific advantage to processing it through Mighty Cause. And if you are not participating in a giving day and the donor prefers to give via check or something along those lines, then that's your situation to arrange. And we're not going to touch that money. So we don't have to pay any fees on that. So it's only transactions that happen through the Mighty Cause platform. All right, let's see. Oh, there's a comment from Marvin. It would be very nice if the local newspaper could put a list of 501c3 organizations in their newspaper area and put the nonprofit's website on it so local people can see that the local paper has local nonprofits. I definitely agree with that. I mean, you know, it's community information that should be out there. So I would definitely recommend taking that to your local paper. I don't know about where you live, but where I live, there are a lot of little papers. I'm in Virginia and there's lots of little papers for different pockets of Virginia where I live. So pitch that to your local paper. And just as a tip, if you email them on the weekend, you are more likely to get a response than if you email them, say, on a Monday. So I would definitely bring that up to your local paper. That's definitely a good idea. All right. So I think that's it. You guys had some really fantastic questions. And I will make sure that everybody has a copy of their link to the recording as soon as I'm able to put that on YouTube. And I'll make sure that you also have access to the slides. Oh, and there's one more comment from Laura. They're also more likely to put it in their calendar events of events in the paper. Fantastic. Yeah. I mean, a lot of newspapers, even if they don't put it in the physical paper, they have a community calendar on their website that you can, you know, submit information for so that you can find so that if you have a campaign in the fall, you may want to submit it to your local paper just so it's listed there and community members can more easily find it. So thank you for that suggestion, Laura. But anyway, so I'm just about at time. So thank you all so much for attending this webinar. I'll make sure that you have the slides and the recording. And if you have any questions, you can always feel free to reach out to me. My name is Linda. My email address is linda at mightycause.com. And thank you again. And happy fundraising.


Welcome to today's lectures to the ASP summer colloquium on S2S science. Today we're going to talk about the Madden-Junior oscillation and teleconnections and predictability coming from the Madden-Junior oscillation on the S2S timescale. And our first speaker is Hemi Kim. Hemi is a professor at Stony Brook University. Her interests lie in low frequency climate variability and predictability, topical-extrtopical interactions, S2S prediction, and extreme events such as atmospheric reverse tropical cyclones and tropical cyclones. And she has also dabbled in machine learning. So Hemi, we're looking very forward to your presentation. You're on mute, Hemi. Okay, thank you very much. Let me turn off my video for better connection. Okay, today I will talk about the predictability and prediction of the Madden-Junior oscillation and just to remind you what we have learned so far, because last week at the beginning, first few days, we learned a lot about MJO and then, so I want to just remind you. So we are talking about this S2S timescale, which is too long for the atmospheric initial condition to keep the memory, but too short for the boundary condition to take an effect. So, but this S2S timescale, the forecast scale has been improved a lot in the recent decade. And one of the source of the predictability is the Madden-Junior oscillation. And the Madden-Junior oscillation is not just in the tropics, but the diabetic heating and the related circulation, it has an impact on the globe. So it has a lot of global weather and climate phenomena modulated by the MJO. And also we learned about how the ALC interaction is important for the MJO and also the stratosphere and troposphere coupling is also important for MJO. So I'm sure that you are now convinced that MJO is an important source for the sub-seasonal predictability. And this talk, we will talk about how well do the modders predict the Madden-Junior oscillation. So first of all, for MJO prediction, we need a some good index that represents the Madden-Junior oscillation, such as a lino3.4 index. And here it shows the 3G structure of the MJO. Here you can see the convection and the low-level 850 millibar zonal wind, low-level convergence and upper-level divergence. So the MJO convection is tightly coupled to the circulation. And to define MJO in the real-time forecast, we need some index. And that index is used with this ORR and the low-level wind, the 850 zonal wind and 200 millibar zonal wind. So using these three indices, three variables, we can have an index. This is called the real-time multivariate MJO index. You have heard about the RMM index, and that was developed by Will and Handel in 2004. So what it is, is basically you have ORR and the wind field, upper-level, low-level wind, and then you do several preprocessing and then average it over the tropics 15 degrees south and north and do the EOF. So this is the eigenvector of the eigenvector first and second mode. And this shows the PC time series. So this PC time series is the RMM 1 and 2. And you can see that over the time, there is some time when the RMM index is large. So that is when the MJO amplitude, we say it's big. And then sometimes it is near zero, the anomalous near zero. So we can assume that the MJO is weak. And we also can put that in this phase diagram that you have seen before. And this you can see using this eigenvector and the RMM index, we can define the MJO location into eight phases. So it's from one to eight. And you see phase two and three is when it is in the Indian Ocean. And using that, we also can make a composite. So it's called a life cycle composite. And then you see this shading is the ORR and the wind field, low-level wind field. So we can define eight phases. And you see that, for example, when MJO is in phase two or three, they are in the Indian Ocean. And then we have the low-level easterly to the east. So, and then how can we use this index for monitoring and forecast? So here, this shows an example of a very active MJO event that occurred in April 25, 2019. And that was defined as phase three. So you can see the large convective area here in the Indian Ocean. And here, if you go to the CPC website, they provide the real-time forecast updated almost every day. And then you see this is the observation. So here, the red line is the observation. And here is the April 25. So you see this here. It is in phase three, which corresponds to this pattern. And then they provide the forecast. So this is NCEP GFS forecast. And it provides ensemble and also ensemble mean. So the talk today is about how well do the models predict the MJO, and especially the RMM indices. Okay, so this shows the RMM index prediction scale. So when we have the hindcast, we can compare the RMM index with the observation. And this shows the scale of the dashed lines, the S2S models, and the solid lines are the sub-X models. So this is a combination of a few papers. And you can see that the correlation coefficient, if you take the 0.5 as a reference, then you see the black line is the ECMWF model, which is about 32 days. And then except this one, most of the models are arranged between three to four weeks and maximum approximately four weeks. So that is the current, let's say, current MJO forecast capability using this RMM index. Okay, so the MJO prediction has not that long history, actually. And that is because we did not have the computational resources to do a lot of hindcast experiment. So here this shows the lead time in weeks. And this is the predictability. So predictability, MJO predictability is the hypothetical prediction scale, assuming that the numerical model is perfect. And studies have shown that if the model is perfect, then we can predict the MJO up to seven weeks. In the early days, we use, when we do not have the numerical, good numerical models, people use the statistical models based on linear regression, or many, based on linear models. And the prediction scale was about three, maximum three weeks, it was between two and three weeks. And with numerical models before 2008, so here the years represent the publication year. So the studies that published before 2008, they showed that with the numerical models, MJO can be predicted about two weeks. And then in the recent years, we show that on average, they can predict the MJO for approximately four weeks. And I'm not going to cover everything here, but if you go to this, if you read this review paper, there are more details. And I may only cover about 20% of this paper. So here this shows the continued one example of how the MJO has been improved. And this shows the ECMWF model. Here the red line is the point six correlate when we take the correlation point six. And every year, the model is upgraded. And then you see this continuous improvement of the MJO RMM prediction scale. And especially here you see between this 2006 and 2008, there was a big jump. And that is when the model changes its convective scheme in a way that the convection is more sensitive to the environmental moisture. So you see this improvement. And today what I will talk is about the consensus and key issues in terms of MJO prediction. So just to summarize the consensus among many studies is that prediction scale is higher with strong MJO in the initial condition. So when there is a stronger signal in the initial condition, then we can predict the MJO better. And skill is higher in boreal winter. And that's because we have more well-organized MJO, stronger MJO. And skill is sensitive to initial MJO phase. So when the MJO is initialized in Indian Ocean versus Western Pacific, the skill is different. There are and etc. And there are many issues. And one thing that I want to emphasize is the quick decay of the propagation when you cross the maritime continent. So first of all, let's talk, let's see how the ensemble plays a role in the MJO prediction. So here this shows the S2S models. And the yellow is the control run. So this is the focus lead time when RMM skill reach 0.6. So here you see all the control values, control simulations are less than the ensemble mean. And in some models, like the ECMWRF, CNRM, or BOM, you can see a big jump, a big improvement when the ensemble mean is taken. And these are the models which has large ensembles. So if you have more ensembles, then usually they have a better skill. But it's not always the case. The HMCR has also large ensemble, but you can see the decrease of the skill. Another consensus is that the model has, the ensemble system is under dispersive. You have heard a lot about this and this shows the, from Nina Eddard, this shows the solid lines at ensemble spread and the dashed line at the ensemble mean root mean square error. So you can see this ensemble spread is smaller than the root mean square error. And these were the earlier versions of, this was the first hind intracesional hind cast simulation, coordinated hind cast simulation launched in 2009. And even in the current S2S and sub-X models, they are all under dispersive. Another thing that I want to emphasize is the QPU-MGA connection that was covered by Yaga Richter last week. And this is because before this QPU-MGA connection, before we find this connection, there was not much studies about how the large scale climate can modulate the MGA prediction skill. But then a few papers show that MGAO is more active in the E-Cubio winter. So here, this is the difference of the MGAO activity between E-Cubio and the climatology. So you can see this, the Easterly-Cubio winter, they are much stronger than the Westerly-Cubio. And in a recent paper by Jane Martin, you can see that we have a review paper on this QPU-MGAO connection. So we can find more details in this paper. So now, if the QPU modulates the MGAO, then the prediction skill will be different as well. So here, this shows the paper by Shukang Wang. Here is the MGAO prediction skill in the S2S models. And he used the OMI index. OMI is another index. It's the ORL-based MGAO index. So it does not include the wind field, but it's only ORL-based. So it's only convection. And then you see that in all models, the blue is bigger than the red. So that means in all models, the Easterly-Cubio have better MGAO prediction skill than the Westerly-Cubio winter. But then one thing to notice is that even the low-tub models. So here, the green box that represents these models here, which is classified as low-tub models. And still, you can see that there is a big difference in the MGAO prediction skill between Cubio phases. Even the model does not have any Cubio or stratospheric variability. So in our current study, we showed that there is a difference in prediction skill, which agrees, which all recent studies show. But maybe the prediction skill difference is not statistically significant. And here are some nice editor highlights by Xidong Zhang. So emerging controversy in Madden-Julian oscillation prediction. So here, this covers our recent paper. And that is, for example, here it shows the sub-X and S2S models. And this is the MGAO prediction skill in E-Cubio and Western Cubio. And the thick lines are where the difference of MGAO skill is statistically significant. And when you have more samples, there are some more significant times when we have more significant difference. But then most of the models do not have that much, that enough samples to get this statistically significant difference of a Cubio. So that is one thing that is that I want to highlight. And then another key issue in terms of MGAO prediction is the MGAO propagation. So here, let me show you this one first. So here what is shown is the amplitude bias. So Y axis is the initial phase. And this is ECMWF model, which is in the S2S database. And here the brown shading is the weaker. So that means when the MGAO prediction starts in all your phases, when it is in the Indian Ocean or over the Maritime continent, then it loses its amplitude very fast compared to other phases. And that is actually in most of the models. You can see in NCAR CSM1, you also lose the amplitude fast. And then in the later phases, it's getting stronger. But in overall, in all models, you can see that in all your phases, when the MGAO is over the Indian Ocean, then it loses its amplitude faster. So there is a quick decay of MGAO signal when the MGAO starts in the Indian Ocean and propagates through the Maritime continent. And this shows the paper by Ritard et al. And it shows the percentage of MGAO events not crossing the Maritime continent. So the MGAO is talking from Indian Ocean and not crossing the Maritime continent. You see in ERA interim, they are only based on their metrics. It's only 10% that do not cross the Maritime continent. But then in the S2S models, you can see that they are almost twice as large as the observation. So that means there are more events that do not cross the Maritime continent. And we call this as MGAO Maritime continent prediction propagation barrier. So if you put that in this phase diagram, so here you see the composite of multimodal mean. So this is a multimodal average of eight subjects and S2S models. And here the black line is the observation. So composite observation and the blue is the multimodal mean and the open circles are the individual models and corresponding observation. So for example, can see that for example in phase two, the model cannot, this is a three-day average running mean. So you can see that the model already have a big discrepancy between the initial, like in the first three days. So they're already weakened. And also in the phase and then as it propagates, the amplitude gets weaker. And then in some phases in the later phases, they are actually a little bit stronger. And then in some phases, there is an amplitude error and also phase error. And especially the Indian Ocean, these ones, we try to understand why they lose their amplitude so fast. So this shows the first day forecast after initial MJO phase two. So here this shows the NOAA and the ERA interim window normalize. And here is the observation. I just called this as an observation. And then you have the MJO and associated low-level easterly wind to the east of the convection. And then this is the ECMWF, the first day forecast. And you already see that the convective anomaly has weaker amplitude than the observation. And then if you put that in the Hofmuller diagram, you see this is Y axis is forecast day. And here you see in observation, the shading is ORL and the contour is the U850 anomaly, taking the average between 15 degrees south and north. And see this in the observation, it propagates through the maritime contour, which is approximately 120 east. And then what in the ECMWF, it does not. And the reason why I showed the ECMWF model is in the paper, we have all models, but this is because it's the best model. So we try to understand how does the model mean state or the mean bias impact the MJO propagation processes. And this is from Monday's Chidong's lecture. And here is the, here, there are many theories, as you have seen before, but we try to understand this maritime continent barrier using the motion mode theory. And long story short, if you just focus on the eastward propagation, it is that the largest scale horizontal and vertical motion advection by the circulation that moistens the trapper sphere and then makes the convection center to move. So here you have to the east, we have this advection and more moisture so that MJO moves to the east. And we show this is the observation, for example, here is the winter mean moisture Q850. And there's a specific humidity at 850. And the reason why I'm showing only one level is because the sub-X models only provide the Q850. So I have to match this. And here, this is the mean state. So here, there are many other terms, but if you just focus on this moisture advection, this is the V prime, that gradient Q bar. So Q bar is the mean moisture and the gradient of mean moisture. And we have the MJO wind, right? So here on the bottom, it shows the day one MJO in the observation. So let's say we have MJO active, MJO active convective convection in the Indian Ocean and related cabin wave response. And then the suppressed MJO induced the rugby wave response. And then there will be a moisture advection because the mean moisture has its maximum near here. So the gradient will make this the moisture advection with the wind. So and then if you compare the observation, the moisture advection, you can see that moisture advection is large in this area. And then after 10 days in observation, they propagate through the maritime continent, MJO propagates through the maritime continent where the moisture advection is large. And of course, there are also other processes, but here I will just focus on this one. And then the question is, then if the modus, the sub-ex and S2S modus, do the modus capture this moisture advection? And maybe not because they do not propagate very well. So here, the bottom is the same with the previous one. And then here this shows the moisture advection term average over this region. So here in observation, in the first 10 days, there's a positive moisture advection. But in the multimodal means, sub-ex and S2S modus do not have this strong moisture advection. So they get much weaker, very fast. And these are the individual modus. In observation, the moisture advection is strong, but the individual modus or modus have weaker advection. So if you think about this term, the MJO wind can also impact this advection term, but studies have shown that the mean moisture distribution is important for the MJO propagation that you showed last week from Charlotte DeMote's presentation. And here this shows, again, the observed Q850. And this is the bias. It's this multimodal mean minus observation. So what you see here is that all modus actually have this very dry bias in the lower troposphere. So this is 850. And then you see this dry bias. So the modus are drier. And if it is dry and more dry near the equator, then it will weaken the gradient of the moisture. So there will be less weaker moisture advection because the gradient is weaker. And then the more ECMWF model provides all level of the specific humidity. So we can make this plot here. And what you see here is the Q bias as a function of lead time. So what you see here is at the beginning, there's already dry atmosphere. And then it continues to get dry and continues to amplify. So yeah, so there is a bias in the mean state. And that may impact this propagation and prediction scale. Of course, there are many other theories and that can be applied. But we use one theory. Another approach is so here recently, we did some applied some deep learning for MGA bias correction. So the hypothesis is, you can see here that the bias, if the bias is systematic in a specific MGA phase, for example, in Indian Ocean, they always get weaker systematically. And in the Western Pacific, they are always stronger. Then it can be corrected by optimal bias correction method. So it hasn't done before. And what we use is to correct this, the bias, we use the LSTM. So this is the long short term memory. There are many different approaches in the deep learning, but we use the very simple one. And here, the input is the SGS model RMM 1 and 2, and output is the observed RMM 1 and 2 during the training period. And then in the real forecast period, we can put the SGS models, and then get the corrected RMM index. So this model is built separately for each phase, modern forecast lead time. And we did the real time forecast and also leave one near our cross validation. And this is the result. So here, again, the black and blue is the blue is S2S, black is the observation, and then the red is after applying the deep learning method for the bias correction. So what is interesting is that the first day is closer to the observation, and then the following predictions is also closer to the observation. So even in the later phases, like phase six or seven, they get closer. The stronger amplitude gets more realistic, and the bias, the error is reduced. And then the NGO propagation is this is observation, this is ECMWF model. We see that the weak amplitude after 14 days, but then after making this deep learning correction, it is almost, we can see this propagation. And that is where the anomalies are significant. And this is the focus error using the deep learning method. So here, this shows the subjects and S2S models. So first of all, this is so we can divide the focus error into amplitude and phase error using some metrics. And then here it shows the multimodal mean. This is four weeks average. So here, the blue shadings are S2S, and then the red or pink shading is after deep learning. And the light shading is the amplitude error, the dark shading is the phase error. And you can see that it's on average about 84% reduced. So let me summarize. Yeah, so we have seen a lot of progress in the last decade. And we still have about three weeks room for improvement. And I like to share some thought in terms of the in terms of the current understanding of MGO prediction. So challenge it and question. So first of all, is the MGO predictable up to four weeks, really? I mean, here it shows the four weeks, but keep in mind that we use the RMM index, which is highly filtered. You take the latitudinal average. And then in this index, we use three, three different variables, but mainly the upper level with the U200 takes the dominant role. So if we use the OMI index, where only index or maybe SUE is a large-scale precipitation tracking method, maybe we don't, we may not see this good prediction skill. Or even the, so these are just the index, right, the RMM-OMIR index, the time series. And can the model actually capture the spatial pattern? And here it shows the ORR pattern correlation skill over the Indo-Pacific. And here the blue, this is the correlation coefficient. And the blue is the ECMWF model. So if you, if we compare the ORR pattern correlation to capture the ORR pattern related with MGO, it only goes up to six days. So it's not that good. So keep in mind that the RMM index is a highly filtered data. And also it has the more impact from the upper level win. So it depends on what you defined as MGO. If you, if you think the convection is the MGO, then the RMM index may provide too optimistic a view on the MGO prediction skill. Another thing that is to how to improve the MGO propagation and the related 3D structure. There have been some studies with changing model physics resolution initialization, et cetera. But as you know, they are mainly based on the case studies because to do this, the sensitivity test of these changes, then you need a huge computational cost to do a long-term hindcass simulation. And also do model simulate diverse MGO types. Again, the presentation by Shui Chen last week, there are diverse MGO types. For example, here, this is a paper by Bin Wang and it shows different four types of MGO. This is standing MGO, jumping MGO, slow MGO, fast MGO. So do the model simulate all these types and also the related physical mechanism. The last one I want to ask is to model capture the largest climate modulation on MGO. For example, not only the Cubio, but maybe also the Indian Ocean dipole may have influence on the MGO. But again, to understand the largest-scale climate modulation, we need even more longer set of the high cast, right? Only like 15 years is not enough to separate it into a linear phases. So that's and I'm happy to take any question. Thank you. Thanks so much, Hemi. It was a very comprehensive overview of MGO.


Hey, stay with me. I'm about to give you three specific tips for closing more deals using this thing over the phone right now. These are three sales techniques that I use a lot and I can promise you, you are about to use them too as we walk through how to close more deals with phone. Who doesn't want to close more deals over the phone? I can tell you. As soon as you adopt these techniques, I'm going to share. Revenue goes up. Income goes up. Sales goes up. You help more people. So let's jump in. Week number one is, and I haven't talked about this a lot, but I'm telling you I should have because it's extremely, extremely important. That is tonality. What type of tonality do you have? My tonality right now when I'm talking about videos and when I'm helping you or when I go soft to really get your attention. Or when I pick it up to really drive home a point. You can see the difference in tonality and how it can affect you and everything that you're doing all the time. But tonality, here's some of the things that help along the way with tonality. One of the things you have to do is you must smile when you are talking to people. You can feel it. You can see it. Even through the phone. I'm telling you, even though they may not be able to see it per se, they can hear it in your voice. We're getting on the phone right now. You would feel it and hear it because why? Because smiling is contagious and it creates some energy. You must have energy. Have this big time energy. It helps you be better over the phone. So instead of me talking about, like a lot of people talk about with tonality, like match theirs. A lot of times I'm trying to get them to match mine. So that's where I think a little bit different on the fly when it comes to like being in control of your tonality is okay, are you changing it up? Think about this. Would you rather jump on a roller coaster ride or the rides like this? Or would you rather jump on a roller coaster ride where it's like freaking this man? Or even some upside down turns and everything else? You'd rather the below, correct? The same thing in a sales process.  It neither does the prospect. Are you fun to listen to? What type of tonality are you using? And what can you do immediately? I want to know in comments below what can you do immediately to drive up your specific tonality right now? So think about that. Talk about smiling, energy, and control. Tonality is extremely important to you being better. And we're talking about all of this right now because I'm literally tomorrow, okay? So if you see this too late, I'm sorry. I've got a millions by phone live virtual workshop with hundreds of agents right now. It's only $49 because I want you to help you close where those are phone and be fantastic at working the phone. If there's one thing that is the most valuable sales tool on planet earth, it is the phone, man. It is the phone. Okay? How good are you at using the phone? It's the phone. And it's so important. Okay? Number two is questions. Are you asking the right questions, right? Are you asking open ended questions? Okay? When it comes to questions, are you also uncovering their pain points, right? I always talk about problems and solutions, okay? To keep me in control. I always talk about literally using questions to find their problems so that I can start offering solutions. I talk through that in my sales process pitch, right? You guys have seen that. Are you asking good questions? Are you asking open ended questions? Like when I'm selling over the phone and I'm going from fact finding to actually from warming up to fact finding, I'm going to ask some questions like, hey, we got you thinking about this. Okay? How long have you been looking into this? Why is this so important to you? How long have you been looking to accomplish with this, right? Like these specific questions, freaking legendary, are you using these right now? Every single call. Okay? Because what a lot of people do too is they make the mistake of they ask a question and then they skip and they move on and they start telling, okay? I ask a question. What I do is I ask a question. I get an answer. I go ask another question. I get an answer. I go ask another question. I get an answer, right? And so this is the visualization of doing that because what I'm doing is I'm going deeper into that specific question so that I'm getting the answers and what that's doing is it's allowing me to have more information. Okay? The more information you have about the prospect, the easier it is to close them, yes or yes, right? Oh, 100%. And that's how you get to where you close more deals over the phone and utilize this sales tool immediately, okay? Then number three after you go from tonality, good questions. Okay? I want you to rate yourself on these by the way. One to 10. How good are you doing on tonality? Ask in the right questions. Okay? One to 10. How good are you doing to ask in the right questions? And then three moves us into actually closing, by the way. Okay? That's a horrible circle. Okay? That's closing. Closing individuals. One of the things I love to do a lot is I will use what I call hypotheticals. Okay? Hypotheticals. Right? I will also get to where when I'm closing, I'm using things like one to 10 because this also reminds me of like what if, like I love like what if, right? When you're ever asking people questions over the phone and you're asking like for example, if you're asking your spouse where he or she wants to go to dinner and they say I don't know, what do you say? Like if you were to ask a prospect, you're on the phone, you're trying to close them, you're trying to sell them and you need to, sir, do you have any life insurance or do you know where your policy is? What are they going to say? Everybody says I don't know because why? Because it's human nature to say I don't know. When you get, I don't know, use a hypothetical and a what if. So when I hear that, if you knew where it was, where would it be? Okay?  Or would you rather Mexican, Chinese or Italian? What do you think of those three? Probably definitely not Chinese. Okay. So Mexican or Italian, right? Yes. Which one are you leaning more towards? Mexican or Italian, right? I'm funneling the answers down in this funnel from the top, right?  And I continue to ask questions until I funnel down, until I get the answer that I want or at least get someone to do what? To make a decision, right? This is the funnel I call of getting people to make decisions when you're utilizing the phone and you're trying to get people to close over the phone, right? Now think about this. And I'm going to go over this and also like 80 other pages in a workbook and like six or seven hours on this millions on the phone workshop tomorrow. And what I'm going to talk through is how you can utilize questions, how you can utilize tonality, how you can get to where in the close, you're asking some existential questions like I'm talking to you about now because when you get to the end and they're like, well, I don't know, man, you know, I'm not really sure. Well, help me out on a scale of one to 10, one being, dude, I definitely don't want to own it. 10 being, I'd love to, where do you currently sit? Help me out. Like those are the types of questions that will at least get them to start to move in your direction. It'll give you information on what you need to do to help them move forward, right? Because closing over the phone, what we're doing, the whole goal of working the phone, by the way, the entire goal is to do what? The entire goal is to get them to make a decision and to help them. The three things that can help you, helping people make decisions and getting better at getting closer to the goal, by the way, okay? Because you're going to have a goal when you go into a call, right? You're going to have a target. You're going to have a mission. You're going to have an objective. That's what it should be, by the way, okay? However, the things that will help you get closer to your mission and your goal, and only the millions on the phone workshop tomorrow, which the link's in the description below and I want to see you there. Also, even if you watch this video later, tonality, questions, and closing deals. If you love this and you're like, man, dude, I want more, I'm hungry, okay? Five steps to becoming a freaking millionaire. It's right there. Click on it. I'll see you. What responsibility? Who here has a tendency to blame someone else? I'm raising my hand too, okay? And if you're not, we'll need to fix-