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


Right. So, I'd like to have the pleasure of introducing Joe Meadows here. I'm a geologist, so I want to say Geo Meadows, but apparently it's Joe. Yeah, it's Joe. It's Joe from Kittimenser, who is going to talk about Beehive Monitor based on a Raspberry Pi. So, I'll turn it over to you, Jill. Let's give him a very warm welcome. Thank you. We've had a little trouble with the display, so I'm struggling with the mouse points. I think I've got the hang of it now. We're on extended screen instead of duplicate, which throws me a bit. Okay. Raspberry Pi, obviously, Honey Pi is a nice name, and we thank the Beatles for the intro. Any Pi will do. I have two of these monitors working at the moment. I hope to show you one shortly, live off the internet. So, one of them is using a zero. Another one is using a two. Three is a bit of a waste, really. There's not that much going on in there, but we'll come on to that. So, let's rapidly progress. Okay. So, the Honey Pi is now on a Raspberry Pi. It started off on an Arduino, and I've got an Arduino I can show you. Anyone wants to have a look later, but I moved on for that because I wanted to add video and audio, and that's a lot easier with a Raspberry Pi as it's doing remote software updates. So, Raspberry Pi it is. Okay. We've covered that. Why bother? Mainly because it's fun and it's interesting to see what the bees are up to. 24, 7, 12, no matter the weather. You don't have to go down and look at them and weigh things and all that. You can be anywhere in the world and you'll get the information you need. Beekeepers have managed for thousands of years without Honey Pi, but they've had some nasty surprises when they checked the bees after being away a while. So, this is the advantage of the remote monitoring. It gets you ahead of the game. For example, colonies die in the winter. As soon as this happens, you will know and you will get the indication that they are in trouble, so you can take avoidable action when they are running out of food because we are weighing the hive all the time. With a bit of knowledge, you know where the danger zones are. Okay. You can also detect the fact that the colony is swarmed and you can do something about that. For example, I was in holiday in Pembrokeshire a couple of years ago. I saw one night I made the mistake of going on the internet to see what my bees were doing, which my wife told me never to do. I saw they'd swarmed, so I convinced her that we had to come back the next day. I was not popular. But the next day, sure enough, I caught the swarm because when they swarm... How many beekeepers are here? Okay. You know about the swarming situation. Yeah. When they swarm, they congregate locally. So, you've got about a day to catch them normally and then they sit there and send all the scouts out trying to find a nice home. And then they decide where to go. It could be a couple of miles away and then you've lost them. But you've got a window of opportunity. So, if you can see they've swarmed, you can do something about it. You can also get in the hive and the beekeepers will understand this. Deal with all the queens. I won't go there. It's to beekeeper stuff. You can also see in the spring, if you're leaving the honey on too long, again, certain types of honey, you need to get out the hive quickly. You can also get an indication of whether the hive's lost a queen. I need to do something about that. So, there's lots of preventative stuff you can do. Okay. This is one of my hives. It's polystyrene stack. You're not seeing the point of what I'm seeing. I'll just see if I can use this. Is that showing through the screen? Yeah. Great. Okay. Well, this is the brood area where the eggs are laid. And there's a soup as well. We try to get the bees to put the honey. So, okay. Now, this is the load cell. And if we just go back to the previous one, what I meant to show you was that on the front of this hive, just about here, there's a hinge. And just about here, there's a hinge. So, it's a cancel lever. All the weight's on the back of the hive. And that's where the load cell sits. So, the load cell screws to the base and takes the weight of the top. So, it sees half the weight of the hive. But that's okay. We've got software. We can cope. So, yeah, that's the load cell. Left-hand side would be clamped to the base. And the right-hand side floats and takes the weight of the hive. All right. So, we can use any pie. So, this offers a low-cost monitoring solution. For about 70 pounds, you can build this. Very rough figures. 10 pound for a pie. 30 pound for the load cell. 5 pound for the temperature sensors. 10 pound for the interface modules. We'll look at them shortly. 10 pound for the box. And the hardware.  Maybe allow 5 pound. The Bosch load cell, it took me a long time to home in on this. It's rated at 40 kilogram, but because the only putting half the weight on it, it can cope with 80 kilogram total hive weight, which I had back in July. All the information here, by the way, is on a website called honeypie.me.uk. And the last slide will give you all the links you need to get the information should you wish to pursue it. Okay. Here's the circuit diagram. Raspberry Pi. Any Raspberry Pi will have the GPIO here. Standard connector. There's a module required to interface to the load cell. The load cell is a Wheatstone bridge arrangement. You get very, very small signal. You need decent differential amplifiers. So it's all built into this module. You don't have to worry about it. Very simple wiring. The analog interface. There's a four-way analog input. So I've just got two sensors. It obviously could be extended. I've home in on LM34s. They're nice, easy ones to use. Just five volts ground and a signal. So, couldn't be simpler. Okay, I think what I'm gonna try and do now, if I can deal with the extended screen problem is show you something from today. I might need a bit of help here. So this setup's not the normal one for me. I want to get onto the internet. That's the one. Yeah, great. Okay. So this is real time. All the way from Kiderman store. Right. Okay, let's see what the Bs are up to today. I can't see that on my screen. Yeah. So, what have we got? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The top left is a day of weight on the hive. What we're seeing is the weights going up a little bit. I suspect by the end of the day, it won't have gone up very much because if you look on the bottom left curve, you've got the weight over 10 days. And forget the drop at the beginning. That's me taking off some supers. But it's generally a downward trend. The Bs are actually going out and expending more fuel in the way of honey than they're compensating for by what they bring back. So it's a downward trip now. It's typical this time of year. They're just consolidating, planning for the winter as bees do. Top right is the brood temperature. All right. It's between 32.5 and 34.5. It's pretty good. It's showing me that there's brood in there. There are eggs, there are larvae. Otherwise, it wouldn't be so high. They wouldn't need to keep it so high. Bees have to keep it at that temperature to maintain the larvae. The outside temperature is the bottom right. Okay. So last night, it wasn't too cold. So there's an attempt. We'll know that. Right. I need to get back on. So I need to do control. That. And that. Excellent. No, it's not that. Oh, great. Okay. Back on PowerPoint. Yeah. So we've had a look at the circuit diagram. We've had a look at today's information from Kiddo Minster. Nothing of great note. Right. The software, very briefly, there's a Raspberry Pi operating system, free download, obviously. The pihive.py is a Python script that I've done available. That deals with the load cell via the HX711 module. And it deals with the two temperature sensors. And it passes data to thingspeak, which is the magic thing about it. We'll come back to that in a second. There's another module which is save zero. This is for getting the zero, the tarring on the system, so that when there's no ways on the load cell, you measure the zero and then the software pulls that in as an offset every time. Now, a couple of test loops here. 859.2.py. That's just a test loop. You use it with the terminal. On the test711 is another test loop. These are all available and downloadable. Okay, we upload to thingspeak every six minutes. Thingspeak's free service for low usage. Takes data, presents it on a series of charts, on an HTML page, so you can look at it on your browser, anywhere in the world, on your mobile phone, anywhere. You can average the inputs to give different presentations. So the top left that we looked at was the days' worth of weight, but below that, there was 10 days' worth of weight. Same information, just presented differently, gives you different information. So let's look at an interesting day in July. Okay. Right, well, this is in the heat wave. Bottom right, you can see the temperature bombing up to 30 yard each day. And if you look at the lower left, you've got a nice weight buildup. It's building up from 60 to over 80 kilograms over 10 days. That's a lot of weight. At its peak, they were pulling in about four kilograms a day. That is a lot of honey for one beehive. Top left is interesting. You can see 0800 on the left side of the x-axis. They go out about that time, well, they were out earlier than that in the heat wave, but they don't bring much back till about four o'clock. I suspect they didn't go out very much because it was a bit hot. And then in the evening, they pulled everything back. They didn't pull anything back in the day. It all came in in the evening after four o'clock. And then they pulled back. What have we got here? Yeah, about over two kilos. That's not bad for an evening shift. So interesting. It was so hot during the day, they didn't bother. Top right is interesting. Well, I think it's interesting. I don't know whether you can see the laser pointer here, but this is the brew temperature. They're maintaining it between about 33 and 34 degrees. So when it zooms up because the temperature outside is high, they will cool it down by fanning and they'll bring it down. It'll sit there and then it'll go up again. So they've got to keep up and down, but they maintain it within half a degree of optimum, which tells you there's a one-degree dead band in the bee's temperature measurement system, which is just as well otherwise to be working their socks off, trying to achieve control that they don't need. One-degree is fine. The part I don't understand about this curve is that the hysteresis reduces as the heat wave progresses. I keep thinking about that one, one they'll understand it, but it shows how much you can get out of these charts. You can spend quite a lot of time studying them and thinking about them, as I do. Okay. So this is about the temperature charts we've looked at. I think we've covered all this. Yeah, okay. The hive was getting full. Two problems there. It could induce swarming. And beekeepers do not like swarming. All your workers disappear. Half your workers go away with the queen. You've lost your honey gathering potential. So beekeepers do lots of cunning things to try and get over that problem and try and preempt it really. So that curve of the gradual increase in temperature also tells me it's time to spin the honey, time to pull off the supers, put in the centrifuge and pull the honey off. I've done very well on honey this year. Each hive has given me over a hundred jars. Right, I need to say something about an alternative way of presenting data. If you go on the internet and check out Highstock, the Highstock uses, it's a JavaScript file that resides within your browser page. And it uses the thingspeak data and presents it on a much longer time base. You can show a whole year's worth of data. So you can show historical data. This is a trace from actually the Arduino one because it's got more temperatures, it's got more sensors, it's got humidity on this. I tended to, I decided to abandon that. It wasn't doing me any good. But when I went to Raspberry Pi, I forgot the humidity. So this is one day's worth, and on the bottom here, you can drag that and you can have a variable time. You can pull down more data. You can have a week's worth of data, a month's of data. You can have a whole year's worth of data if you've got the patience to do with it. And just to show that it's possible, this is one year for my two hives combined using PaintShop Pro. So it's two traces. Very similar sort of events are going on, although each hive is different. And there's a lot of detail there that won't show like when they swarmed when I put supers on, took the supers off. But generally, we're coming out of winter, it's building up, that's stepped there. I put some supers on, another super going on, and then a really good honey flow coming here. Took loads of honey off here, and then it goes a pizzas away, and we're back into August and autumn and heading into winter. So the bees are always planning ahead. But that's the information you can get off. Hi, Charles, really interesting stuff. Okay, I was gonna do a plug for PaintShop Pro. Forget that, we're running out of time. This is a classic swarm trace. Okay, there's several pointers. Always happens May or April, sometimes June, July, but I've never experienced that. There's a peak April, May. And usually about midday, and you can see on that chart there's a one kilogram drop. And that one kilogram isn't the waves of the bees, that's the fuel. They're all tanked up on honey. They're away with the queen. Half the colony's gone off with the queen, and they were sitting on a tree or a fence, very local to me when that happens. I've got the parameter that's always the case, they always do it when I'm all on it. I don't know how they manage that, but they're pretty good. Okay, another trace. This is high speak coming out of winter. The danger time in winter is about March because they're eating food, they're preparing the brood, they're always planning ahead, they're getting thousands of young bees ready for the spring. So when the pollen's around and the nexus around, they've got the workforce available. But they need to get that workforce ready in the winter. And of course that means they need to get temperature up to 34 degrees, and that means they need to consume a lot of food. So the danger time is around about here. Coming out of winter, April I think that is, I can't read it backwards. And then magically they take off. There's food coming in. But of course with this system, if I see that weight is getting a bit low, I can give them some food. I can give them some hard food or I can give them a liquid feed. Right, so that's about it. Future work, possibly image recognition. So you can detect swarm patterns on the fronts of the hive because there are certain things. You know, the front of the hive will be plastic, it'll be with bees, you can do image recognition and you get advanced notification. With ThinkSpeak, I think you can send an alarm to your mobile even. So you could do audio analysis, microphone for airborne sound, you have an accelerometer mounted on the wood of the frame for frame-borne sound. I'll finish off with one sound clip, which may not come up. There should be a hyperlink on that. Hello, there we go. Let's have a big round of applause for Joe while I get this up. For the last screener. I want the last screen because of that. Oh, you want the last screener. Okay, yes, unfortunately we're over time so there's no time for questions. I'm sure Joe would be happy to answer your questions afterwards outside the tent. So thank you very much and really appreciate your time and attention. Please remember we need volunteers, so please volunteer at the InfoTent or the Green Room if you have any time at all. I have been volunteering today being the Herald on stage today and I would really appreciate it if any of you who have the time would volunteer as well. Thank you very much.


I was scribbling out my notes to try to get ready for this morning and not unlike my buddy Barry Stewart, I scribble. I don't type as effectively and after I scribbled and rushed out the door, I realized I forgot my glasses this morning. So perhaps that's a bit prophetic because I feel that after the many years that I've been around the restorative justice and restorative approaches conversations, it's about time that I drop the gloves a little bit, as we'd say in Canada. It's a real honor to be here. I don't do this very often, but I want to acknowledge in particular the courage, the wisdom, the clarity and the compassion of one person in particular who has brought the Nova Scotia restorative justice initiative to places that we could never have imagined. And that person's Jennifer Llewellyn. We had no idea 20 years ago, Bruce, what would become of what it was that we were trying to hatch at that time. But what we sensed deeply was that there was a wisdom that was beneath the surface of what it means to be a Nova Scotian. And I'm particularly gratified that this is something that taps into our Indigenous cultures from wherever you are and however you identify, and in particular the Mi'kmaq people of Nova Scotia and how they have brought to life our Indigenous teachings. So without glasses, I'm going to share with you, frankly, what I think about where we are at this time, 20 years later after starting the Nova Scotia restorative justice program. Restorative justice. Could there be two more compelling words? Who doesn't want to be restored? And who doesn't want justice? But the two words together, however, seem to create more debate than the words Donald and Trump. I confess with apologies to professors in the room that when I was a first-year law student at Dalhousie, when I heard the notion of restorative justice first mentioned, it didn't quite land. Because I grew up in a home of supportive and loving parents where the notion of justice was really determined by the strength of the penalty matched the strength of the offense that I might have committed at that time. So I was all about the red meat of justice. You do something bad, you get punished.  I was one of ten kids in my family. And it was only when I became a defense lawyer that I realized, frankly, that victims were getting the shaft and my clients were getting a free pass. And that communities were left on the sidelines oblivious and making assumptions and judgments about the experience of people on the inside. So back in the 1990s, some of us started down the path of creating the Nova Scotia restorative justice program, which led for me 15 years ago to fortunately being part of the creation of the Youth Criminal Justice Act here in Canada. So the hats that I wear sometime relate to both criminal justice in a youth justice context and restorative justice. Three months ago I was in Tanzania. And I was there, some of you would know or know of Professor Tony Doe, retired professor emeritus from the University of Toronto who is one of the leading thinkers on youth justice in Canada. And the two of us were co-leading a workshop on youth justice and restorative justice for Tanzanian officials, judges, crown, prosecutors, defense lawyers and the like. So we started with youth justice. And Tony and I went up to the microphone and we did our eager beaver best to sort of convey to people the importance of the system that could possibly provide the supports that we need. And I absolutely believe that we turned a corner with the Youth Criminal Justice Act and it's not perfect but big things had happened. But what we realized in 2016, just three months ago, that in 2009 in Tanzania they had passed a law of the child. By and large this law of the child was not being followed by police, by prosecutors, by defense lawyers or by judges across the entire country. And it caused us to think about why is that so? When we mentioned the principles of restorative justice the room came completely to life, stories flowed in, personalities were animated and possibilities were activated. So I've spent the last three months really thinking about what really happened there and what landed for the people there. What I realized was that first the rule of law is a cornerstone of any healthy society. And when one considers the traditions here in Canada of due process it makes me proud to be part of the legal system here in Canada. But laws can sometimes be the BS masquerading as our values. I'm not sure whether BS translates into every culture that's in this room but I hope that it does. Our deepest values can be buried under mountains of institutional rigor mortis that stifle possibilities. The only thing that really matters is our relationship to others and our relationship to the world around us. When it comes to conflict it's hard to imagine that we could have abrogated our responsibilities to reconcile and be in a relation much more than we have in western society. So what does it mean to be our brothers and sisters keeper? What does it mean to love your neighbor? What does it mean to be in relationship with each other? What does it mean to have a good life? Recently I was fortunate enough to read a report from Harvard University, 75 year study on adult development. It examined what made for a healthy and happy life and it examined men across a wide series of demographics and what it determines was that it's not power, money or fame. It's actually the quality of the relationships that we have as human beings. This gives me hope. This gives me hope about restorative justice because I believe that conflict is an opportunity. I believe that challenge is an opportunity and the greater the challenge the greater the opportunity and I believe that we are entering a period where this challenge is going to be met or not in a way that absolutely can transform the world. Earlier this month I was in my home island of Cape Breton four hours from here and I was listening to a conversation amongst citizens in the work that I do with an organization called Engage Nova Scotia which ultimately respects and trusts the notion that there is wisdom in crowds and that we the great unwashed actually have a great deal to give to the possibilities of how we can create a better world. And someone in the room piped up and said you know what I believe that the walls between institutions and people are thinning. And what came in my heart was a great big hallelujah. About time. About time that we recognize that the values that we hold as humans actually find a way into the laws that we create and the processes that we create as people. And this comes about only by blending our institutional voices as a as a in the criminal justice system or in other systems as a cop as a teacher as a crown as a judge as a victim as an advocate with our personal voices as a mother as a father as a brother as a human being. The invitation for us is to embrace all that it means to be a human being. Restorative justice and restorative approaches provides a window into the soul of the human condition. If we foster the human soul more light and clarity will appear. It's a privilege to be on the path of restorative justice and restorative approaches. I think something even more remarkable is just around the corner. Through our collective courage, clarity and compassion frankly like that of Jennifer we will round the corner and see the possibilities we may not yet imagine. Thanks very much.


Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE covering EMCworld 2015. Brought to you by EMC, Brocade, and VCE. Welcome back to EMCworld, everybody. This is theCUBE. I'm here with Stu Miniman. My name is Dave Vellante. Praveen Akaraju is here. He is the CEO of VCE, Praveen. Great to see you again. Absolutely. Great to be here. Thanks for coming on. And big day yesterday. You were part of the keynote. You made the highlight reel today, I saw. Looking good up there. And life as part of EMC now. Yes. Give us the update. How are things? Yeah, you know, well, you saw a little bit of what we were up to over the past six months since we came into EMC, you know, on stage yesterday. It's been, you know, in a lot of ways, it's been just kind of keep the focus, keep going. V blocks continue to evolve. You know, the business continues to grow. But you know, I think as we talked about yesterday, we do see the convergent infrastructure market mainstreaming and evolving, right? And what we announced yesterday really was how we see sort of the future structure of the convergent infrastructure market. And being in EMC really allows us to kind of take that broader lens, if you will. Yeah, Praveen, before we take it to the tech, I'm wondering if you can comment on the big news of the industry in the week is John Chambers, after 20 years, is stepping down as CEO. He's going to be executive chairman. You know, Chuck Robbins is now involved.  What's your take? Yeah, that was great. I mean, I know Chuck for a long time. You know, he's a great guy. I mean, he's a couple of things, right? He's extremely well connected to the customers. You know, he ran commercial for a while, then he ran Americas before he took on the global sales role and then his new role. You know, what I always found with Chuck was, you know, for a sales guy, he was very technical, right? So we used to have a pretty good engineering conversation. So, you know, I'm pretty excited to see him in that role and I think we exchanged some texts in the morning yesterday and, you know, it should be a fun ride for him. Well, I don't know, Chuck, but I said the same thing. I said, okay, so sales guy. Yeah.  We have deep respect for technology. You're saying Chuck the same way. Oh, yeah. You know, we would basically talk about product architectures and things like that. When I was back at Cisco, I used to run a couple of companies and, you know, he would challenge me when I say, well, why aren't you selling my stuff? Right. Well, tell me, why is it better? So, really, I do think he brings a unique blend of, you know, obviously execution in the field, but also pretty good in-depth understanding of technology, which I think, you know, Cisco clearly will tap into as they transition now. It's a pretty major transition the company's going through and the industry's going through. So how has life now that you're part of EMC changed? I'm sure from a customer standpoint, you know, they're not seeing any big difference, but what has it done in terms of whether it's your strategic plan, your operating, you know, mode? Maybe give us the update on that. Yeah. I mean, I think, really, I think what EMC has allowed us to do is, you know, they have left us alone in a lot of ways.  We have, you know, the trust of our customers. And, you know, we have been able to create this market and be able to provide leadership and thought leadership in this marketplace. So what EMC's really done is they've consolidated all of Converge Infrastructure under VCE. So they've brought the V-specs, the V-specs blue products under VCE. So now we have sort of a unified strategy and vision to the market for Converge Infrastructure. They've also consolidated the global solutions team. Essentially, is where you have solutions like the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud and big data into one team. So we think about, really, the evolution of Converge Infrastructure horizontally in terms of, you know, different instantiation of hyperconverged and different platforms, but also vertically in terms of different pieces of infrastructure integrated into the stack. So that's kind of, you know, the way we've evolved, if you will, from a thought process perspective being inside EMC. We've spent a lot of time at EMC World every year talking to the solutions group. So I wonder if you could talk about kind of the difference between a solution and productizing something that. I think I see, you know, with solutions reporting to you, people underestimate the difference between what was the IBM Red Book, which was a great tool for, you know, a long time in the industry, versus, you know, something that I can just deliver easily and fast. Like what you've done with VCE. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think in a lot of ways, our genesis wasn't that solution's sort of, you know, space, right? We started off, when VCE did, initially started off, it was, you know, let's kind of put this recipe together and maybe, you know, we can execute as a reference architecture and see how, where this goes. What we found was, well first, it was, it's extremely hard to, you know, deploy solutions at scale in a consistent manner unless you, you know, start to build a lot more rigor and process and a product around it, which is how the We Block essentially came about.  Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, I'm sure you guys have done the double click on it, right? I mean, it brings together the entire VMware stack, the connectivity to the cloud, even things like firewalls and being able to bring all of that together and get a customer to have it on a We Block, get up and running, right? In 28 days once the infrastructure's installed, that is revolutionary. So, it's a lot of heavy lifting. It goes back down to the fundamental thesis, which is, it is about simplifying the complexity in the IT environments, right? That then unlocks speed, it unlocks efficiencies, it unlocks cost savings. Without necessarily ripping in your, and replacing the processes around it, I mean, you did a lot of work on this with David. So, yeah, we've more than double clicked on that, didn't we still? Yeah, absolutely. And the other big thing I see now is your announcement this week, I wonder if VCE was a separate company, would the VX rack actually be a V-specs because it might not fit under the VCE umbrella if it was kind of external today. Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing that obviously being an EMC has now done is to be able to kind of think about the market space, right? Outside of the construct of, you know, three companies and the products and technologies and that three companies, right? So, you know, for us the V-Block is going to be a flagship platform. It is what we're going to make our bread and butter on every day of the week, right? And that's going to continue to be a Cisco architecture. So we're going to get the latest UCS, latest Nexus, incorporate that with EMC and VMware. And now we've created a separate category, which, you know, it goes after different space. It's a, you know, white box architecture, completely software-defined, allows us to bring in the power of EMC's technologies, and the scale I owe, and the Federation technologies from VMware, and go after a different segment of the market. So I think that's the evolution. So, in thinking about what's going on in the marketplace, you can't not look at what's going on with hyper-converged. Everybody's talking about software-defined. What's your strategy there? What's the play there? Tell me about that a little bit. No, I think hyper-converged is, you know, it's a great value proposition of the customer, right? It's super simple, you know, it's very compact. You know, you just kind of roll these things and go.  It comes up, self-manages, gets the applications up and running, right? So when we think about it, I think, from our perspective, we have seen a lot of hyper-converged deployments in parallel with V-blocks and data centers. That's sort of the state of play, if you will, today. So V-specs Blue is our sort of entry into this marketplace. It leverages Evo Rail. You heard Pat talk about it. We talked about it yesterday. We have a pretty robust roadmap on that. You know, capabilities coming as well as, you know, working with our partners to really simplify the go-to-market. So early days of that product, but, you know, our goal is absolutely to establish a premium hyper-converged appliance. And then the racks essentially brings together the engineered system concept and the experience, right, to build data center-scaled systems with the simplicity of the hyper-converged billing blocks. That's really where we saw a market opportunity. I want to ask you about management orchestration.  Absolutely. And that was really your first sort of homegrown product. Yeah. Talk about the importance of management orchestration. How much of a competitive differentiator is that for you and why is that? Yeah, no, management orchestration is critical, particularly as we go into, you know, some of these more, you know, scale-out type architectures, because we need to be able to, and Pat said it well today, right, we got to automate. Right, you have to automate the ability to provision the infrastructure, to manage the infrastructure, to get telemetry out of the infrastructure. Right, there might still be a human element to kind of decision-making, right. And in some instances you might trust that, but I always think there might probably be an element of human, you know, element in the decision-making. But you want to really dramatically simplify the ability to roll out and scale this infrastructure. So, you know, when we originally started this journey, we started with a vision product, which essentially was more about telemetry, getting information, you know, flags, policies, right, utilization rates and such like, and plugging it to vCenter, so you can click on a vBlock and see what's going on in it. So what we're now doing as we evolve into the extracts is, we're going to take vision, a lot of great IP there, a lot of good experience on roadmap, and plug it in with some of the other intellectual property that EMC has developed and acquired over the past couple of, I would say months, right, to build a truly, you know, comprehensive management orchestration system for hardware. Right, there's another management orchestration system at a, you know, at a, we realize at a, you know, UCS director level, what we're talking about is a hardware infrastructure management program. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about vScale, because I look at what happens with vScale and it actually helps for me, I mean, eventually I think the vision should be pulled together, I've got vBlocks, I might have those extra compute and storage nodes and I even hyper-converged, whether it be the vSPEX or the VXRack, and it can pull all those together, turning it from products to a platform that's extensible. Absolutely. You know, this is our long-term vision of a unified data center, right? So the first instation of vScale is storage capacity, so when our customers came to us and said, hey, I love the vBlocks, but you know what, if I want to add more storage, I got to buy a new vBlock and that's a problem, right? So vScale allows you to be able to add more storage capacity to the existing vBlock as you go. So that was the first phase of vScale. The second phase of vScale is to enable sort of scale out of vRacks, right, vXRacks we saw yesterday, those thousand nodes. They're going to be connected to that data center fabric and Cisco Nexus 9000 is a great fabric switch for us to be able to do that. The third phase is what you were talking about, which is mixing and matching these into what we call a unified data center. So I think that's the journey we're on. Again, the goal is to kind of create the right architectural constructs. You know, the management orchestration, the data center fabric, right, the different pieces and puzzles of convergent infrastructure to be able to build that unified data center vision. Let me talk about the brief time we have remain, just a competitive landscape. You guys, and actually, you know, I correct myself, I always say you guys in Oracle were first, but really Teradata was kind of the first, a couple of decades ago, but you in Oracle, different strategies, and then everybody sort of else came into the marketplace. You're leading, the numbers show that. Talk about the competitive landscape. Where do you win? Where don't you win? What's your comfort zone really? You know, I think when we were sort of in the past life, I guess, free this announcement we made on Monday, you know, we were very much focused on you know, a classic data center, tier one kind of use cases and workloads, right? Customers would look at the V-Block and say hey, here's a great foundational building block for my SAP transformation, for my ERP, for my exchange, right, the applications that you're used to in a classic data center. And we would basically, the hyper-convert space was something that we never really paid a lot of attention to. We knew there was a lot of, you know, attention and traction in that marketplace. EMC had just announced respects blue, right, but that was an area that we had, we hadn't really sort of really thought through a lot. So we knew, customers would come to us and say we love the fact that we have this building block in the data center, but you're missing a piece of the puzzle. So we would explicitly stay out of those markets. So I think now, with the strategy of block stratum appliances, now we have the ability to go after and tell the full story, right. So I feel much better now from a broader competitive perspective. There's no other player in the marketplace today that has that comprehensive of vision and the experience and more importantly, the trust of the customers. So, you know, when I look at it competitively, we have a lot of competitors in different, I guess, spaces in the blocks, racks, appliance space. Nobody's got all of them, right. So I feel pretty good about where we're going to be positioned. Coming to theCUBE, it's always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Thank you. Alright, keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE. We're live from EMC World 2015. We'll be right back.


What's up guys my name is Michael and welcome to my YouTube channel. Today we're gonna do another leak code grind challenge. This one is merge two binary trees. So you're given two binary trees and you want to merge these two trees into one tree. The merge rule is that if two nodes overlap you sum up the new value. The new value is that you sum up the two values of the the nodes okay. So you just sum up the two values of the nodes if they overlap right. Otherwise whichever node does not know would be the one of the new tree. So given this tree this is one this is the root one two we're gonna add up because one and two overlap we're gonna add these up one two the new tree is gonna have three three and one they're gonna add up the sum of three and one that's gonna be four two and three is gonna be five all right all right. Now we know that there's five five is here but there's nothing no five here right so it's just gonna add five to the new node okay and four is here but there's not nothing there's not nothing on this tree so it just add takes four here all right that's what they mean by whichever node is not know will be the one with the new tree and seven is here and there's nothing here on this right tree on the right side here on this right leaf you see it you see it all right there's nothing here so we add seven here okay so that's basically how you do it all right how now how do you do this please take some time to figure out how you would do this it sounds very difficult at first but the solution to this is actually very easy okay I'll give you some time to do it take one to two hours if you can't figure out in one to two hours and come back to this video and I'll explain to how to do it to you okay all right guys so how do you do this first of all we need to check if t we need to return the whichever node that is not null would be the one for the new tree okay so how do you do that well if t1 is null that means we got to return t2 do you guys understand why think about it t1 is null we return t2 because t2 is the one that is not null right if one of them is null if one of them is null return the other one that's basically what this means not no node would be the ones to use a new tree right all right now what now we got to check if t2 is null t2 is null we return t1 why because if t2 is null that means that if t2 is null t1 must be the one that does not have anything there okay at this point once this condition hits here t1 must be the one that has something inside that node okay so this is checking the other condition where t2 is null we return t1 because we're using we're trying to return the node that is not null the not no null node would be the one that is the new node of the tree okay that's what we're doing now hard part we want to merge these two trees so how do you do that well you got to call merge trees how do you merge trees you pass in the left we got to merge a left one t1's left and then we got to merge t2's left okay this is going to call the same this is recursive method call calling the same function again we're going to merge t1's left and t2's left now what are we going to do with that we also have to merge t2's left t2's right oh wait no my bad t1's right with t2's right that's basically what it means it means you're you're you are essentially merging whatever is left is going to be left whatever is right is going to be right now now now is the tricky part how which tree am I going to return though you have to basically create a new tree and then set whatever the sum of these two added up and then set the left its left node to be the merged of t1 and t2 and the right node to be the the merge of t1 and t2 the right of merge of t1 t2 but what I'm going to do is I'm going to return t1 as the merged tree all right so I'm basically going to take t2 and merge it with t1 and I'm going to return t1 as the merged tree so how do I do that I'm going to take t1's value whoops my bad t1's value I'm going to add it with t2's value okay this is going to sum up t1's value and t2's value okay so then what am I going to do I'm going to set t1's left is going to now equal to the merge of t1 and t2 and t1's right whoops is going to be the merged trees of t1's right and t2's right then I'm going to return t1 my new merged tree let's run the code something's happened what is the issue the request value is the pointer oh okay so it's a pointer so we got to use the arrow and the solution is exactly the same thing as how I expected we're going to submit it and it got accepted so if you guys understand what I was doing is basically these two conditions just returned whichever node is not if the first one's not we return this the second node right if the second one node is not we return the first node so this just ensures that whichever node we're returning is not the one that is null okay then I'm merging my second one my second tree's value with my first tree's value okay by plus equals this adds a value after that I recursively call I merged t1's left left node with t2's left tree right t1's left tree with t2's left tree merge the left part and I set that equal to my new left my I merged the trees of t1's right tree with t2's right tree and set that to equal my new right side of my tree then I return my new merged tree okay so that's basically what I did if you have any questions please shoot uh please like write down on the comment section below write a comment subscribe I'll check you guys later peace