Hi everyone. We're going to get started with webinar number two for Give Out Day in just a minute. There's still some people joining, so one more minute and then we'll get started with everything officially. Okay, we're going to go ahead and get started. So I just want to welcome everyone to today's strategy webinar for Give Out Day. My name is Dawn and I'll be leading you through today's presentation. I do have a few housekeeping notes to mention before jumping into the webinar. First, the webinar will be recorded and it's going to be posted in the toolkit on giveoutday.org under the resources tab. And then you can use the go-to webinar chat module during the webinar to send across questions and we'll get to them as soon as we can after the webinar. I also wanted to let you know that I have Nicole on the webinar from Horizons Foundation. Nicole is the Give Out Day program coordinator over there and she's working really hard on all things Give Out Day. So hi, Nicole. Good morning everybody. I just want to welcome you to the webinar and say thank you for joining us. We're really looking forward to supporting your Give Out Day campaign this year as we have for the last several years. What you're looking at right now is a slide that describes Horizons Foundation's vision and mission. I'm not going to read it. You guys can read it yourself. We're in the 40th anniversary year this year. We've been around since 1980. We were initially sort of involved with Give Out Day from the very beginning as wrangling the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area organizations to help support them getting set up and to participate. And then we took over the event as the administrator in 2016. So this will be our, how's the math work? Our fifth go at it? Fourth go? I'm not quite sure. Anyway, I just want to say again welcome and I'm looking forward to Dawn's presentation today. If you have any questions that are for Horizons Foundation, please also put those in the chat box. And as Dawn said, we will go ahead and respond to questions at the end. All right, I'm going to pass it back to Dawn and let her do her thing. Thanks, Nicole. So here's a look at today's agenda. We're going to be going over some of the basics. So we'll touch on some of the things that we mentioned last week in the webinar. We're going to talk about getting started on the platform and the prizes available. And then we're going to move into a deep dive on strategy and utilizing the tools that come with your Mighty Cause account. And then lastly, if we have time, which I think we will, we'll have the Q&A session. And then if you have a question, again, like I mentioned before, just type it into the questions box of the GoToWebinar panel and we'll cover it at the end. If we do run out of time today, then I'll be sure to email everyone so we get all questions answered. And if there's a running theme with questions, I'm going to be sure to add them to the FAQ on the Give Out Day site so that everyone has access to all the answers. Okay, Give Out Day basics. The 2020 Give Out Day is a 24-hour long event that takes place on April 23rd from midnight to midnight. Registration closes on April 16th, so if you haven't registered yet, be sure to do so soon so you can have as much time to prepare as possible. The really awesome thing about this giving event is that there's currently $72,500 in prize money at stake and lots of opportunities to win. And we're going to go into prizes that are available a little bit later on. So this is the home page for Give Out Day this year. You'll see the URL here on the left. I would definitely bookmark it. Once the Giving Day starts, this is where you'll see the leaderboards that will indicate what place you're in, as well as your prize standings. So make sure to bookmark it now so that you have it when you need it. This page also has all the tools you'll need. You'll see the register button is right there at the top. If you haven't registered yet, again, this is where you can go to do so. And the Give Out Day homepage also has these tabs that include the rules and prizes and resources, including the FAQ and toolkit.  This list is located on the home screen on your nonprofit profile right under your metrics. There are five basic items to complete. You'll need to add a background image to your page, or you can use one from our Gallery of Stock Background Images. Upload a logo, which will represent you throughout Give Out Day. Add a story. Also, call the description that tells visitors to your profile about what your nonprofit organization does. You'll want to build a thank you page for your donors and you'll want to set up electronic fund transfers so you can get your disbursements through direct deposit. So if you click the links in your to-do list, you'll be taken right to the spots on your profile where you can complete each task. So it's really easy for you to complete this list. And this isn't required, but profiles that are filled out do get more donations on Mighty Costs. So before you get into the weeds of planning for your campaign for Give Out Day, I recommend taking the time to complete this list. And if you do need help or you're unsure how to complete any of the items, then just let us know. You can email our support team at support at mightycost.com or check out our support library. We have lots of walkthroughs and videos that can help you out. I also recommend taking time to get to know your dashboard. So your dashboard, which we like to call your Mighty Costs Manager, is the admin bar that appears on the left side of the screen when you're logged in on your nonprofit's profile. So you can see that here in the little graphic visual that I have here. You'll automatically land on your welcome screen or your home screen, which is where you'll find your to-do list, as well as metrics for your nonprofit. So under profile, you can edit your page in the page editor. You can adjust your page settings where you can set your goal for the challenge, the Giving Day, and enable a progress bar on your page. You can also go to the live view to see how your page will look to visitors without logging out of your account. And then below that on your dashboard is the report section. This is going to be your one-stop shop for everything related to donation management. You're able to preview and export your donation report, and you can view and manage your disbursements from here as well. And then part of your to-do list is setting up EFT or electronic fund transfer. So you can do that under reports in the disbursement section. And then signing up for EFT allows you to receive your funds faster. And just so everyone knows, funds are also dispersed by check if you'd like, but there is a $5 fee for check disbursement. So if you have any questions about fund disbursement, check disbursement, etc., you can email our support team at supportatmightycost.com. Our support team is always happy to help. And then next on your Money Cause Manager is the fundraising view. Your donor experience section, which we're going to talk about in a few slides, as well as matching grants, which we're also going to go into detail about a little later on are in this view. And you can manage your nonprofit settings like your URL customization and admin control from your settings page. So your profile is the face of your nonprofit for Give Out Day. So you'll really want to make sure that it looks good and it represents you well. So just so you know, your profile link is the link you'll share with your supporters to ask them to donate on the Give Out Day. So to share your page, just copy and paste the URL into an email or a social post or really wherever you're advertising the campaign. So as you're going through your to-do list, you'll want to customize your profile to match your brand. And there's two ways to start customizing your profile. You can click Profile in your Money Cause Manager and choose Page Editor from the submenu. This will open up everything you're able to edit.  The other way to customize, as you can see on the visual here is to just click Profile and use the little pencil icons that appear on the page to indicate a section can be edited. So just click the little pencil and that section will open up for editing. So one of the really awesome things about Mighty Cause is that your nonprofit has quite a bit of control over the donation process. So this is really unique among fundraising platforms. From our donor experience tool, you can opt into collecting the information that you want from donors like addresses and phone numbers. You can also set up custom suggested donation amounts and you can add descriptions to help tie those amounts to items or services your nonprofit provides. And it really helps strengthen your appeal to your donors. Donor experience also allows you to preview the whole checkout process without actually making a test donation. So you can see what your final process looks like and use that to edit yourself if needed. Donor experience is also where you'll go to set up your thank you page, which uses the same text editor as the story on your profile. So you can add text, you can add links, video or images. You can also add a custom call to action button that tells donors where you'd like them to go next. So a cool idea would be, for instance, maybe asking them to sign up for your email list or directing them to another page on your website just to give them more information about your organization. There's really a lot you can do in the donor experience tool to optimize your campaign and really customize the checkout process for your donors. So moving on from the admin bar in your Mighty Cause account, before we get to the prizes and rules, I just want to make sure I mentioned the really great tools that you can use as you get ready for give out day. And that is going to be your nonprofit toolkit. So the toolkit has tips and tricks, FAQs, it's got walkthroughs. It also has templates you can use for email and social media to help you get inspired and figure out how to promote your campaign. This is also where you'll be able to find today's training recording, as well as more trainings that are coming up that you can register for. The toolkit includes logos and graphics you can download to really start tying your brand into the give out day brand. Definitely check out the toolkit if you haven't already and really refer back to it as you're planning your campaign. Okay, so now we're going to move into talking about some of the awesome prizes that give out day has to offer. So as I mentioned, give out day, Horizons Foundation is offering $72,500 in leaderboard prizes with more prizes to be announced closer to the giving day. There will be three national leaderboards based on budget size, small, medium and large, with $17,500 available to each leaderboard. The leaderboards will be on the live event site. So as soon as give out day begins, you can start tracking where your organization stands. Each of the national leaderboards will have prizes available to the top three organizations in their budget category. So as you can see, first place in each national leaderboard gets $10,000, second place gets $5,000 and third place gets $2,500. The prize levels of the other leaderboards that are coming will be announced in the coming weeks and leaderboard prizes are based on the greatest number of unique donors for each participating organization rather than dollars raised. Okay, so let's jump into the campaign strategy for give out day. So the leaderboards are going to provide some of the biggest prizes available in give out day and the key to winning them is in getting your donors invested in helping you climb those leaderboards. So keep tabs on your position on the leaderboard and keep your donors and supporters updated on where you are. So to do that, you know, continually emphasize how much is at stake, you know, how much could $10,000 do for your nonprofit? You know, what would that help you achieve? Tie that back into your overall messaging about what you do and why you do it to really get people excited about helping you win that money. I mean, another trick is just concentrate on sustaining momentum, you know, keeping the fundraising going and starting and finishing strong. So since give out day is a 24 hour event, the trick to making the most of it is to sustain your fundraising momentum. One great way to do that and make sure your campaign is on track is to set mini goals for your nonprofit to help generate buzz and build excitement. So set mini goals for certain hours of the day so you can keep people excited about your own goals and continue working toward those top prizes. You know, mini goals help sustain your fundraising momentum and get people excited about helping you win the prizes that are available. So to set mini goals, you'll want to think of your overall fundraising goal and what you'll need to raise or how many donors you'll need to get for each hour or each section of the day in order to reach your goal. So be sure to keep in mind when your donors are most active to adjust your hourly or section goals accordingly. And if you know that there are certain times of the day that will be slower for you, you may want to boost that time period by utilizing a matching grant to shake up the campaign. So something else you can do to get your campaign rolling is asking for seed donations. So these are donations from people in your nonprofit's inner circle that essentially break the ice with donors, you know, because no one really likes being the first donor. So the seed donors really help get the ball rolling and, you know, they're called seed donations because they help make the number of donations grow. So, you know, people to ask for a seed donation would be your board, staff members, especially those who are director or C-suite level leaders at your organization if you have them, volunteers or anyone else at your nonprofit who's highly engaged in your work. Seed donations don't have to be huge donations but getting a little bit in the bank and on your page by tapping the people in your inner circle really does help your campaign move forward and get those additional donations coming in. So a great strategy for driving donations on a giving day is securing a matching grant. A matching grant is essentially a large donation that your nonprofit leverages to bring in other smaller donations by offering it up as a match. So for instance, if you had someone willing to give you a thousand dollars, instead of just putting that money in the bank and calling it a day, you could use it as a matching grant. So, you know, the terms of the grant are totally up to you in the grantor but let's say there's an hourly prize available and you'd like to do whatever you can to drive donations during that hour so you could win. So you take that a thousand dollars and say to your followers, hey, you know, between this hour and this hour donations will be matched up to a thousand dollars which basically allows them to double their donation.  The matching grants tools are really cool and complex little tool that allows you to do a lot with your matching grant. And on our platform we've seen that matching grants, especially on its giving day, can be a really powerful way to drive donations. So since, you know, a matching grant is ultimately just a large donation, you'll want to follow the same process as you would when you secure major gifts. So you prospect, you cultivate and ask. People you should consider as prospects for a matching grant are board members. Those are probably going to be the first people that you'll want to go to. You know, sometimes an individual board member will be happy to provide a matching grant. But one thing you could also consider is asking your board to work together to provide a match. So if you're, you know, if your board still has to pay its dues, for instance, you could utilize their dues by turning it into a matching grant. Major gift donors who've given large donations to your nonprofit in the past are also good prospects.  So they're helping your nonprofit grow and drive other donations. And then you can also give the donors some extra recognition when you're promoting the match.  And then corporate sponsors are also good prospects because, you know, it's a fun, proactive way for them to get involved in a public way and draw their attention to their philanthropy. And then at this stage in the game, there's still some times you can start making phone calls, you can set up emails and really start cultivating these prospects by letting them know what you're doing and seeing how warm they might be to the idea of getting involved.  You can have more than one match running at the same time on Mighty Cross. So if you did get a lot of great responses, you definitely don't have to feel like you just need to pick and choose one. So at the end of the day, a matching grant is a really great marketing tool. So in order to make the most of your matching grant, you'll really want to promote it. So the first step is going to the matching grant tool on your Give Out Day profile and adding it there. There are some marketing tools built into the platform for your matching grant, such as putting a sticker on your donate button when the grant is active. There's some changes to your checkout process to reflect the match and the match gets listed on your nonprofit profile. But you'll also want to add some information about the match to your story, especially if it's a big match, and you want to promote it on your social media channels. Send out an email once you have the match and you're ready for people to start donating. Basically, you want to do everything you can to let all your followers know about the match. Countdowns, too, add urgency. So counting down and sharing your progress can be a great way to get people excited and really urge them to stop what they're doing and make a donation to your cause on Give Out Day. So moving on from matching grant, I want to talk a little bit about ambassadors. Ambassadors are people who are usually in your nonprofit's inner circle who can help boost your campaign. So that includes board members, volunteers, especially volunteers who are highly engaged, staff members, and so on. Utilizing ambassadors can help you break out of your list of existing supporters and engage new people, people you wouldn't otherwise have access to. So an ambassador can help you in a few different ways. They can simply share a link to your page with their social circle to ask them to donate and help boost your campaign for Give Out Day. If you have a board member, for instance, who's really well connected, this can be a huge boost or they could help by getting involved in peer-to-peer fundraising. So peer-to-peer fundraising is a fundraising technique where you basically deputize your supporters to fundraise on your behalf. The Mighty Cause platform is actually set up for easy, really easy peer-to-peer fundraising. This can be a great way to shake up your campaign and really acquire new donors, which to win any of the prizes, you want to have unique donors, and so this could be a really helpful strategy for some of you. So if you wanted to try peer-to-peer, basically you would ask ambassadors to set up a fundraising page for your nonprofit on Mighty Cause for Give Out Day. This may sound like a big ask, but it's often a really fun way to engage your biggest supporters and allow them to tell their own story about your nonprofit, how they came to work with you and why your work is important to them. This doesn't distract or draw attention away from your campaign because they're operating alongside your campaign and reaching out to people that they know personally for donations. In most cases, their friends and colleagues and families are not people that your nonprofit would normally have access to to solicit for donations, so you're actually picking up new donors through peer-to-peer most of the time. So for people like your board, volunteers, staff, program alumni, this can be a really great way for them to get involved without just being asked to give money. It can make it be just so much more meaningful for them than just making a donation or sharing a link. It can actually be a part of your stewarding process, a building and sustaining a relationship with that supporter. We've also seen nonprofits get some really great peer-to-peer action going by just inviting people on social media or sending an email asking them for their help. So for younger people who have a big social network and are really comfortable online, but maybe they don't have a lot of cash to give, this can be an excellent way for them to help out and make a meaningful contribution. So to help make things easier for your peer-to-peer fundraisers, you can set up a fundraising template for them within your account. This will allow you to share images, talking points, facts and logos with them. You can also offer to help them set up their page yourself since you should be pretty comfortable on the platform soon. And nonprofits that utilize peer-to-peer fundraising tend to raise more money on giving days, so it's definitely worth talking about how you can incorporate it into your campaign strategy. The timeline is still great for you to get started on this, so come late March you can start asking people to start fundraisers so they can begin raising money for you on Give Out Day. If you do manage to generate a lot of interest in peer-to-peer or if you've done that for Give Out Day in the past and just want to try something new, you could consider trying out team or event fundraising. So team and events can be a great way for groups of people who want to fundraise together, so like your board or companies or just volunteer groups. Teams and events can be a great way to get people working together and united for your cause and they inspire some friendly competition to keep people motivated at the same time. The difference between teams and events is basically that an event allows individuals and groups of people to participate and fundraise together, so an event allows people to create their own teams and then individuals to join those teams as well. While a team fundraiser is just that you have a team and individuals can join that team, so everyone's working together toward a collective goal. So the cool thing about using our teams or events products for Giving Day is that there's tools built into it that make managing it really easy. So for instance you can create a template fundraiser that people can use to get set up more quickly and it helps pre-fill some sections of their page and you can email team and event members through the platform to just help keep them motivated throughout the day. So you know teams and events are essentially just more complex peer-to-peer programs and you know they can be a great option if you've got a lot of people willing to fundraise for you or you've done peer-to-peer before and want to try your hand at a new and you know different type of campaign. So your email list is going to be one of your most important tools during Give Out Day. You know emails are a direct line to your supporters so unlike social media you know you don't have to worry about an algorithm getting in the way or preventing people from seeing what you send them because unless they've unsubscribed it'll end right up in their inbox and probably send them a notification on their phone. So I want to talk for a bit about email strategy because that's going to be really important for Give Out Day. In general you'll want to keep emails relatively short, simple and skimmable. Most people read their email on their phone these days so they're not going to read a novel. They want to be able to skim it to get to the point and people are much more likely to read emails that pertain directly to them. So I highly recommend working to segment your email list by sorting donors into a few key groups. So for example donors who have given a lot in the past or donors who give on a regular basis for instance your monthly or quarterly donors. I encourage you to segment your one-time donors as well and then people who you know who have utilized your services but never donated. And then of course segmenting your board volunteers and so on. There's a lot of different segments that you create and now is a great time to kind of go through who your donors are, who your supporters are and start working to see you know what kind of segments make the most sense for your organization. So you know you don't need to craft entirely new emails to each of these groups but you can tweak small things about the emails just to make it more personal. Okay for instance in an email to volunteers you want to acknowledge how they already help your nonprofit and you wouldn't want to send you know an email to a major gift donor asking for a $25 donation. So you know identify your key segments and figure out how to tailor your message to them as those groups. So when an email is tailored to who the recipient is and the relationship that they have with your organization they're a lot more likely to read it and take action on it. And then how your segment you know depends on your program you're using but most services like constant contact and mailchimp use tags to segment groups of people on your email list to try and make it easier for you. And then speaking of constant contact and mailchimp I just want to pause for a second and make sure that you're all aware of the ability that mighty cost has to connect directly to mailchimp and constant contact utilizing our data integration feature that's part of our advanced tools. The advanced tools come with our advanced plan and that is an additional cost per month. However we do offer a free two-week trial that you're welcome to initiate to use for give out day. There's no credit card required so you know you don't get charged once the trial ends and you know the free trial will allow you to check out that email marketing integration plus all the other additional tools available like text to give and custom donor questions. So if you wanted to utilize those tools for give out day we do have that two two two week free trial where you can sign up for that plan. And again once the trial ends it just stops so you could take advantage of that stuff during the give out day day. Okay so Jeremy Mechand one thing you'll need to pay close attention to with your emails is timing especially if you're aiming you know if we do have additional prizes that are based on hours or anything like that you'll want to make sure that you're paying attention to timing so that you can have your emails going out at key points during the day. So I would recommend taking the time to schedule as much as you can beforehand and have a template email ready for things that you need to send out on the day of. So like a blast email asking people to help you get to your campaign goal or if you've set those hourly or day like section of the day goals that we talked about earlier have an email ready to go to people and even certain segments if you want just encouraging them to help you reach that goal that you've set for yourself. And of course if you have any announcements during the day like you hit your goal or if there are you know smaller prizes that are winnable throughout the day then you can always send out great announcements about that too so people are getting updates about more than just you know make a donation. And then as I mentioned before most people read their email and their phones so make sure that you choose a mobile friendly email template and test it out beforehand try it on an iPhone and Android and so on make sure it looks the way that you want it to look. And of course leading up to the event if you're able I also recommend doing some AB testing especially with subject lines because you'll want to make sure people are driven to open your emails for give out day so you know try out a different you know a few different subject line formats like you know you can add emojis you know see what works better so when you're sending out those critical emails you'll have an idea of what tends to work with your email list and what doesn't. And AB testing if you're new to that term is basically splitting an email up 5050 and testing a variable so let's say you're testing a button color or a subject line so half of your list will get email A with one subject line half gets email B with another subject line in whichever email gets the most opens it wins so you know for the button color or placement the email with the most clicks would win you just want to be careful about you know testing too much and throwing too many variables in there because you know then it's really hard to say why something won the test and performed better. But once you have this information and you're ready to start scheduling your emails for the day of it makes it a lot easier to know that these email subject lines will work and knowing that people are going to open your emails the day of and take action on them. And then lastly your your call to actions within your emails should be clear and action oriented. So you know you don't want to send an email to a donor that you know they don't know what stuff to take next you want to make sure that you're telling them exactly what they need to do so they you know can take that action. So you know give now donate now help us today more passive calls to actions like thanks for donating or please contribute those aren't as effective so you really want to be crystal crystal clear and urgent in your email so they know exactly what steps to take and can can take them from the direction that you give in your emails. So for a high stakes day like give out day we really recommend staying in your comfort zone when it comes to social media you know go where your audience is. So you know what I mean by that is if you've never logged into into TikTok before in your whole life then do not use that for give out day. If you have a thousand followers on your Facebook page but you know you only have a handful of followers on Instagram then you should spend way more time and effort on promoting your campaign on Facebook rather than Instagram. You know stay in your lane and put your efforts into the platform where you're most likely to reach people and have an impact and and then I definitely recommend scheduling any posts that you can ahead of time just to save yourself a lot of trouble during the giving day and leading up to it so get your key content scheduled with you know Facebook's publishing tools or Creator Studio go into TweetDoc and schedule your tweets really save any live posting for stuff that needs to be done same day so you know thanking a donor updates on your progress price announcements etc so to that end you'll you'll probably want to assign a point person to monitor social media so you can quickly respond to comments and interact with your followers since you know that it's important on social media and an interaction also helps you in terms of the algorithm since most platforms do show priority to posts with lots of engagement so making sure that you schedule ahead of time really plan out what your social media strategy is going to be so that you're not scrambling last minute let everyone in your organization know we're going to post this message this day this time and then that way people know exactly what's going on and when so everyone can be on the same page so lastly I do recommend if you're able budgeting a little money on just to boost some posts or promote some tweets and on social media really $20 for an ad can can actually go a long way so you'll want to make sure your ad is targeted properly and if you're not sure how to target an ad that's okay you can always default to targeting the people who like your page or already follow you so in terms of the type of content that will do well on social media it depends a little bit on the platform but in general photos and videos do really well and you you know you may want to consider doing something out of the box like a facebook live video or a watch party for a campaign video to help generate some buzz some buzz while delivering um you know algorithm friendly content I've seen a lot of nonprofits have success uh with doing you know like behind the scenes live videos during a giving day just to show their supporters and donors how hard they're working on the giving day um so you know they their supporters can see what's happening behind this giving day effort that you're putting into it and usually they a lot of times I've seen it get them really excited because they know you're working hard so they want to almost reward you for that hard work that you're doing because of the you know they believe in the mission that you have and you're clearly putting effort towards that mission in a very tangible way on the giving day um and finally you know when you're planning your campaign follow-up is really important to consider um so when you're planning the content you'll also at the same time want to plan your thank you to donors um things like making a video or a photo of your staff can be really great for this um be sure to talk about the impact of the funds you raised and and close the loop on your campaign so that means you know if you are fundraising for something specific like a new piece of equipment or improvements to your building or something like that um or you know a specific program that you're running that you're you know looking to raise funds for on give out day um you know you'll want to send emails periodically on your progress um just so people can stay up to date um on you know how much money you were able to to raise for this specific program um if you're able to make it super tangible how many people you'll be able to help um or you know whatever it is you are planning on doing let people know um after the giving day is over what you were able to do with their gift that they've contributed um and then of course you'll want to make sure you've got an onboarding plan in place for new donors so they come back to donate again so you know if you collect addresses um an idea would be mailing them a welcome packet that can be a really great way to get them onboarded um you could also create an automated email journey where they can get more information about what you do and why it's important to support your work um give out day is a really amazing opportunity for you to get new donors for your organization um not only will that help you win some of the prizes that are available but then you are able to utilize these donors um year round so making sure that you spend a fair amount of time on planning your giving day follow-up and making sure that those donors are taking care of um will really help you uh get the most out of your give out day experience um so as we wrap up um I just want to make sure that I share our support team's contact info for you here um they're a really great resource before and during the giving day for anything you know campaign related so if you need help setting up your EFT uh if you need help figuring out how to strategize around any of the the prizes um if your donor just needs a receipt resent um you can reach out to them anytime uh and I would highly recommend um you know taking a screenshot of this uh slide or um you know writing this down uh that way you have it handy um so their email address is right there um they're available Monday through Friday 9-5 Eastern however on the giving day they will be available 24 hours so um on give out day uh someone will be available to answer your questions um very quickly uh and then their phone number um you can reach them at<PHONE_NUMBER> okay so um let me take a look and see what questions we've gotten um Nicole do you have anything to add while I peruse the questions? um no I don't have anything to add at this point unless there's any questions for me okay okay so um the first question is um how does the early giving period work all donations must come through the unique URL um so yes that's correct um donors can um well actually Nicole I can let you take this one okay so um we previously we had the ability to do pre-scheduled donations um and they would all process actually on give out day um we don't have that capability with uh the new platform uh which is fine um and but so instead what we're going to do is open up giving on March 26th so any donations that come in between um midnight on uh when March 26th becomes March 26th um to midnight at the end of the day on give out day will count towards the leaderboard totals and uh yes um all donations must come through your give out day link so when you're visiting your organization page um it's it's branded with give out day so it should be fairly obvious that you're you know on that you're a participant in give out day um but in your actual URL it will say giveoutday.org you know forward slash organization forward slash your organization's name so um the URL that you're sharing to make sure that your donations are counting towards those give out day leaderboard prizes um they will need to be made through your specific give out day link. Don I have a question um also uh is it is it possible to embed it embed the like the donate link um on an organization's website so if uh donors go to the website and they click that it takes them to the the give out day site? Yep yep so yeah if somebody wants to take their um you know give out day URL and put it on their website by you know making a a button a special button or something and connecting their give out day link to their button um if somebody clicks you know whatever you have the button say on your website it it takes them to that organization's give out day um site or uh what you know the give out day page that they're fundraising on and that those donations will count um towards give out day. Great thank you. Uh let's see so the next question is do the donations through peer to peer count towards prizes? Yes um as long as uh the URL is still within the give out day brand um which uh if your peer to peer fundraisers join or create their pages under your give out day um organization page which is connected to give out day then any page benefiting your organization um will any funds raised on any of those pages will count towards your give out day total um so if somebody randomly comes and on give out day or before and sets up a peer to peer fundraiser for you or if it's through a concentrated effort from your organization um then as long as it's under the the give out day branding um which you know you'll always be able to tell in the URL it'll say giveoutday.org then any of those funds will count towards your give out day totals. Okay so the next question is are the only prizes the top in each budget category and what are those budget categories? Nikola I'm gonna let you take this one. Okay the budget categories are different um depending on which of the leaderboards we're talking about the national leaderboards the categories are um organizations small budget is organizations with a budget um of uh below $100,000 a year um the middle size is anything from 100,000 to 600,000 and then the large leaderboards are any um budget over 600,000 and we'll announce the other budget categories for the for the other leaderboards when we announce those. Perfect um okay so then the next question is um are there more webinar scheduled and how do I access the past webinars? So in order to uh access the past webinars and also the recording for this one um you'll want to go to giveoutday.org and then under resources uh in the um there's a menu bar um on the main giving day site so on that menu bar it says resources if you click resources you'll see npo toolkit so click on the toolkit and all of the webinars um as well as other resources for your nonprofit will be posted there um so there's a couple additional trainings that horizons foundation is doing that you can register for that are up there and and you're able to register for them now um we do have last week's uh webinar recording on the toolkit as well um so you can listen to that on demand and then this one will probably I'll probably be able to put it on there um tomorrow so this one will be up there tomorrow so if again if you go to giveoutday.org and go to resources on the menu and then choose npo toolkit then you'll be able to access the toolkit with all that information and I just want to really quickly plug the one that we're going to do next week um all of the webinars are scheduled on on Wednesdays at the same time so just keep that in mind um so there are three more that are the next following three weeks next week is going to be about working with peer-to-peer fundraisers so we'll go a little bit more deeply into that volunteer management and how to help people ask their friends and all of that kind of information perfect uh okay and then the last question that I have is um if we have had a page in past years do we have to make a new page each year um so since this is the first year on the mighty cost platform everyone will be making a new page essentially um since you know it's a completely different uh platform so next year um for give out day though if you wanted to reuse the same page you know if you wanted to reuse your organization profile page that um if that's the page you're using this year um you can definitely reuse it we have uh page metrics within your um profile section that you can set a new goal bar you can reset when your donations are counting on your page just so you can you know or visible to the public rather uh so um we do have a support forum as well um so I will um trying to figure out the best way to um anyway I'll make sure that that information is available on the toolkit as well just instructions on how to get to it that way you know um you have that information and then next year you are able to reset your page um so you can continue using the same page year after year um so those were all of the questions that I had um so yeah I mean uh Nicole if you have anything else to add um then uh you know go ahead um just want to uh remind folks that they can reach out to mightycause at any time for at mighty at support at mightycause.com um for any questions about the platform or working with the platform and if you have questions about you know give out day rules or um anything that's not about the platform specifically then please reach out to us at horizonsfoundation at giveoutdayathorizonsfoundation.org that email address is also um one of the beginning slides of this presentation so it'll be available on when it's loaded into the website and also you can there are places on the giveoutday.org that you can just send an email to horizons. Awesome um if anyone does have any additional questions that they think of after the webinar um you are welcome to email us uh at support at mightycause.com and we'll be more than happy to answer your questions um other than that I just want to thank everyone for taking the time to attend today's webinar um I hope that you all learned a lot um just on you know the different tools and strategies you can take to really make the most out of this year's giveout day so we're really looking forward to it and um thanks again everyone and I hope you all have a great rest of your day. Goodbye thank you everybody have a good day.


for late in sports, cards rip in one box of 2022 Bowman Chrome Baseball Sapphire for Alvin S. Good luck Alvin. It's Nolan Aronato. And Wilson Contreras. Yellow Sapphire to 50. Anthony Volpe and Bryson Stop. Son Dominguez. And rookie Aqua Sapphire to 99. Wander Franco. I think that's the variation. There you go. Congrats Alvin. South Freyla Mackenzie Gore. Derek Mitchell. Jeremy Pena. Rookie. And Rosamond Verdugo. Aqua Sapphire to 99. Luis Rodriguez. Harry Ford. Julio Rodriguez. Rookie. Nice box for you here. Boba Shet and Eddie Slayinard. Roderick Arias. First Bowman Sapphire. Rizzo. Wander Franco. Rookie. Yeah, there's the non variation. And Denzer Guzman. Anthony Gutierrez. Mike Trout. And Jay Malinde as Rookie and Tatees. They might be and they stay healthy man. So, it'll be fun to watch the Orioles. Adrian Plasencia. Ryan Mountcastle. Juan Yepez Rookie and Carson Williams. Alright, last pack. Ryan Belade and Rookie Orange Sapphire to 20 or to 75. Edward Cabrera. Rain Don Cone and John Kenzie Noelle. Alright, that'll do it for your box. Appreciate it Alvin. We'll get these right out to you.


Everyone, thank you so much for coming. My name is Jessica Eldridge. I'm a front-end developer at Shopify, and today I want to talk to you about taking notes. More specifically, I want to talk about taking awesome notes by practicing sketchnoting. How many of you guys have heard of sketchnotes before? Oh, great! So exciting. Is anyone sketchnoting right now? I love you guys. Please share afterwards. We're going to tweet all the photos. So if you haven't heard of sketchnoting, let me explain. I like to describe it as visual note-taking. It's the practice of combining hand-drawn elements and text to create visually-compelling notes. Are you familiar with mind maps? Show hands? Anybody done that before? Yes? Who's used a whiteboard when designing software before? All right. See? You guys got this. You're already familiar with the concept of sketchnoting. Basically, it's the difference between notes like this and notes like this. I first started sketchnoting because of a man named Mike Rody. He's a designer who lives in the Midwest, and he coined the term sketchnoting. I was preparing to go to South by Southwest one year, and I was searching the internet for photos, trying to get an idea of what I was getting myself into, and I stumbled across his notes. And he's been doing this for a long time, at least since 2008. And he does it when he travels, when he goes to conferences, meetings, and I just went into this rabbit hole of looking at his wonderful notes, and I thought, you know, I think I can do this, or I at least want to give it a try. So I started practicing. I did it at that South by that I attended, and local meetups, and meetings at work, and I totally fell in love. So I was going back through the archives, preparing for this talk, trying to find some of my first sketchnotes, and these are my very first sketchnotes. It's probably kind of hard to read, but the first speaker I saw was actually DHH. I had no idea who he was back then. What is this, 37 signals, I don't know. My sketchnotes have changed a lot since then. Get ready for some eye candy. These are some notes by Paul Supeset. He's one of my favorites. I really love his handwriting. Veronica Erb likes to incorporate illustrations into her notes. She's got a really playful style. Sasha Chua, she's from Toronto. She goes to a lot of technical talks, captures a lot of content in her notes, and she actually uses a tablet PC and a stylus. I like that there's a lot of dense content here, but you can still kind of tell what's going on because she's highlighted the key points. You can also use an iPad. There's various apps on the iPad. Use a stylus to take notes like Daniel Kirsch. Super condensed, simplified. I love the pops of color. You can still get the point across. So there's a couple of different ways that you can take notes. There's live and there's later. Live sketchnoting involves taking the notes at the same time that the presentation is happening. You're doing it in the moment. Later sketchnoting is kind of where you might be able to jot down some bullet points, maybe using your computer, maybe on another piece of paper, and you go back to your sketchbook later and draw them out. I prefer to do live sketchnoting because I'm a developer. I like to keep things dry. I don't want to repeat myself. When the talk is done, my notes are done. I can immediately share them, and I can move on and enjoy the next talk. So for the rest of this talk, the techniques I'm going to talk about mostly refer to live sketchnoting. So why do we want a sketchnote? Firstly, I think there's inspiration in analog processes. Taking yourselves out of your computer, we're all developers. We spend a lot of time on our gadgets and our devices. But spending some time with just good old pen and paper allows for a change of perspective. You get outside of your comfort zone and you start seeing things in a different way. Hopefully, while slowing down, you can clarify some ideas that you already have and maybe come up with some new ones. Some famous sketches that didn't do it for a living include DaVinci, Kurt Vonnegut, Darwin, and Freud. All of those people are amazing. We know what they've done. They use sketchnoting to help clarify their ideas. Sketchnoting also allows you to focus.  Basically, the computer is a rabbit hole of distractions. So when I sketchnote, I try to put things away. I keep my phone out in case I need to look up words that I'm not familiar with. But all I have is my sketchnote in my pen and I'm listening to the content. Once you're on the computer, there's just way too much stuff that can come up. And I really like stepping away from that. Sketchnoting also helps to improve your memory. There's this concept called the dual coding theory which was proposed by Alan Pivo. It's saying that we process information in two different ways, using verbal and visual information. And if you utilize both of them, you have a better chance of remembering the content later. So sketchnoting, you can use visual elements and you're using your handwriting. And later, hopefully, you have a better chance of remembering the content that you were trying to capture. So all of that stuff I just told you is what you're going to tell your boss to prove that you're not doodling in the meetings. The real reason to sketchnote is that it's just fun. I love talking about it. People like looking at notes. I like looking at my notes. I think it's a really great practice. And really, I just don't need an excuse. I try to find out a way that I can do it whenever I can. So let's get to the good stuff. But maybe you're thinking, Jess, I can't draw. I hear this all the time and it's the reason why I'm giving my talk today. And I'm going to debunk this in one slide. So what do you see up here? We've got some shapes. If you can draw any of these shapes, then you can sketchnote. If you can't draw these shapes, please come find me. We will pair. I'm willing to take the time to practice with you. And we can get those done. Using these shapes and practicing is how you're going to sketchnote. You use lines, arrows to connect ideas. Use the boxes and the clouds to add emphasis. Those shapes also form the basis if you want to go and do some illustrations or icons. These are all the fundamental building blocks that you need. You're also going to need some other tools. This is what I like to call my sketchnoting config file. I prefer to use a plain sketchbook. I use Moleskine, something with heavy paper. I'm a very ham-fisted drawer and I write really heavy so I don't want it to bleed. I use a uniball pen for most of the writing. It's very smooth, something like a rollerball. I know people that like gel pens. There's a couple of other art pens in there that I use for bolder notes and I've been using a Faber-Castell artist pen for shading. So kind of pick what works for you. A lot of people like to start out with grid paper too because if you feel like you can't write in a straight line then the grid lines kind of help you keep everything in place. And obviously like I talked earlier about some of the electronic devices that you can use. So if it makes you feel better to use an iPad, absolutely go for it. So here are some sketchnotes in mind where you can see some of those building blocks being used. We've got a cloud and some arrows and lines and boxes. That's pretty much all you need. So here's the good part, right? How do you actually do this? And for this I'm gonna turn to one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, who wrote in Sometimes, Instructions for Living a Life. Pay attention, be astonished, tell about it. When I was reading this poem again recently I thought these are really good advice for sketchnoting as well. So how do we pay attention? The very first thing I wanna tell people about sketchnoting is that it's not about drawing, it's about listening. It requires active listening to really focus on what the speaker's talking about. Sketchnoting helps you focus on the important parts of your presentation. Listening is different than thinking. Sometimes a speaker might be talking about something controversial, maybe other ideas come up in your head while they're speaking. You don't wanna let your emotional reactions get in the way of capturing content. So if you disagree or maybe, I mean you might think of something else or oh, I wish you'd said this, like you don't wanna let that get in the way. You really wanna focus on what the speaker's saying and then let the emotion come later. I also advise to follow the speaker and not the slides. We live in an age when most speakers are gracious enough to share their slides on the internet with us later so you can kind of get that content if you need to later, most of the time. The good stuff's not gonna be on the slides though. The good stuff is gonna be with the speaker. You have one moment to be in the presentation with them and to really hear what they're saying. If you know a speaker's style, it's a little bit easier to plan your notes. I've been going to enough tech conferences that I kind of get an idea ahead of time. DHH is gonna be super colorful and crazy and controversial. Erin Patterson loves to tell a story. There's like cool jokes in there. Glenn Vanderberg, great storyteller, very linear format. So as you practice, you'll kind of get an idea for that. I would follow the speaker's body language, their speech patterns. Maybe they like to take dramatic pauses. It's a time for you to slow down also and pay attention to what they're saying. So how do you listen for key points? This is pretty hard. It requires some multitasking. Firstly, I would avoid summarizing everything. I think when you first start sketching, it's really tempting to try to get everything on paper. You don't wanna miss stuff but you kind of gotta let that go. The talk title is the first clue to what the important content's gonna be but it's not always accurate. Sometimes the speaker's gonna be really cool and nice and tell you ahead of time what they're gonna cover. The opening slide and say, I've got three things that I'm gonna go over today but you're not always gonna be able to rely on that. So one thing I like to tell people is if you had your phone out and you weren't taking sketch notes right now, what would you tweet about? So anything that you listen to that you're like, man, that's really awesome. That's what you wanna get down in your sketch notes. So we're at a technical conference. I'm talking to developers who wanna do this. There's gonna be a lot of demos and live coding and my advice to you is don't sketch it. I tried to do it once. It's really hard. I tried to actually sketch code samples. It's really hard. It's also gonna look kind of boring because it's code. If you do wanna sketch note during a demo though, I think there's still some tips you can follow. You wanna listen for gems of advice. Usually there's a reason why somebody's demoing. They wanna show you that something's better than something else or kind of go through a problem solving exercise. Maybe there's code libraries, gems, plug-ins that are mentioned during the talk that you've never heard of before. I usually like to jot those down to go look up later. A lot of times pros and cons. Obviously, if somebody's showing off something that they did, they might say this is better than this other way. Those are things that you might wanna capture as well. It's virtually impossible to write as fast as somebody can speak. So sometimes you need a backup plan. I like to carry around some scratch paper. I advise using post-its to just kind of like jot down ideas real quick in case you can't keep up with the speaker speech. There's usually also lulls between the main ideas, people pausing between all of their main points. That's also a good time to kind of go back and fill in if you missed something earlier. You can also use post-its to hold on to a note or an idea while you're waiting for the connection. Sometimes they'll bring up the problem and talk about the solution later and you wanna just like hold on to that thought.  Like maybe something better's gonna come up next. So you can use the post-it to sort of be a placeholder and a backup plan in case that following idea doesn't pan out for you. It's also important to be astonished. You might wanna share your notes with the world and show them to other people, but ultimately, your notes are for you. You wanna capture what stands out to you in the moment and not worry about what anybody else thinks. Also, feel free to fill in gaps and add your own sort of notes on the side. I used to be really worried about capturing what a speaker said extremely accurately and I didn't wanna misrepresent what they said in a talk and I learned to sort of let that go because I need to remember what they were saying. I need to interpret what they were saying. So sometimes, I'll write something off to the side just to add in and enhance what they're saying so I can remember later. It's all about listening to what's being said and interpreting it in your own way because you wanna remember what happened in the presentation. It's really interesting to see that a bunch of people can attend the same talk and come out of it with different things. These are some sketch notes by Caroline Soule of Brooklyn Beta, she went to a talk by Tim O'Reilly. I went to that same talk and these are my notes. So vastly different styles. Other fun things to capture include jokes and quotes and F-bombs. If the speaker's funny, capturing a joke is a great way to enhance your notes. I mean, it's what everybody remembers.  Cuss words usually used for emphasis which means that it's something important. If you want great colorful notes I advise going back and looking at all of DHH's talks in the past. I also listen for quotable moments. Anytime a speaker makes a dramatic pause, maybe they've repeated a phrase over and over again. Listening for metaphors and similes, that's a great chance for you to kind of visualize something. The speaker's doing it for you, they're giving you a hint, this is like this. And if you can come up with an image that captures that, that's a good way to enhance your notes as well. So speaking of F-bombs, these are some notes by Aaron Hawkins. This talk looks like it was really fun to go to. Another thing you can do is to create your own visual language. And that means kind of coming up with a style or some sort of cue that helps you remember certain things in a talk. So what's an example of a visual language? Maybe if you're trying to take direct quotes from a speaker, you can use quote marks, speech bubbles for direct quotes, question bubbles for maybe something, a question you asked yourself and you wanna look up later. Like an eye and a circle for info or tips. I read on a blog somewhere that this girl likes to put titles of books inside a picture of a book. So she knows when she scans through her notes if she wants to go buy a book later, she can find it very quickly. So here's some examples of Eve a lot of Lambs notes and she's using little highlighted quotes everywhere. It's an easy way to pick out the speaker's direct quotations.  I went to this keynote, it was way over my head. Sometimes you just gotta be in the moment and you can't get it on paper. So the last step is to tell people about it. I really think it's important to share your notes. I think it's a great way to continue the dialogue after a conversation. I use Twitter is the main avenue for my notes. I always use the conference hashtag and at mention the speaker. You can also upload to places like Flickr, Instagram or Dribble. There's a blog called Sketch Note Army which is run by Mike Roddy. He takes submissions, you can just tweet at him, you can email him but he's also got a committee of people that go around the internet looking for sketch notes whether it's on Flickr or Twitter and then he features them on his blog. And it's really a nice way to share with people but also thank the speaker. Speaking of thanking the speaker, they're gonna be really grateful if you share your notes. I didn't actually realize that this was a thing until about last year when I was really getting going with this and people were tweeting back at me like, thank you so much, this is amazing. And it's kind of weird that I didn't think that it was something that other people would care about but it's nice to have an artifact of your talk when you leave. It's also nice that people are talking about your talk after you leave, you kind of want that. So sketch notes are a good way to, I think, thank the speaker and prove that you were there and you really listened and captured the information. A lot of times in your sketch notes you'll realize that you captured information that the speaker didn't even intend. They didn't think it was that important and then here you're getting feedback from people saying, no, this was really cool. Your boss will also be impressed, I think. No one else in your meeting is probably going to be taking in sketch notes. You're going to capture different ideas and it's a good way to enhance team dialogue when you're like sketching out ideas or thinking about really hard problems. Sketch notes will add a diversity to the conversation. So this isn't all, there are some actual practical tips that I can pass on to you. The first one is to get comfortable. I always go to a meeting or a talk early to find a good seat. The aisle is great for elbow room. It's not so great for people flowing into the room and you constantly have to get up and be interrupted. So I actually recommend a middle seat. I also try to tell people to find a good light source. They'll dim the lights in a lot of conferences so you want to try to find some way that you can look at your sketchbook. I'm also that jerk that will put my purse on the seat next to me so I have some room. I'm sorry, Marty. I mean, it's really hard when you're squished in and people are sitting next to you and typing on their laptops. Sometimes it's nice to have a little bit of elbow room. I think also getting to a talk early means that you can write down the speaker's name, their Twitter handle, the title, get that stuff out of the way so that you're ready to go when they start. It's also important to slow down. When I did a practice run of this talk at Shopify, some people came up to me and said, well, my handwriting's really bad. So what do I do about that? And I advise this person to slow down and write your letters as if you're drawing them. When you slow down, you have to be deliberate about it. Also, trying to draw larger letters will force you to slow down and I think make you really pay attention to your writing. If you're doing your normal handwriting, it's easy to just go really fast and it turns out a little bit sloppy. So if you slow down, I think it really helps. Also try to play with layouts. Normally when we're writing just regular notes on pen and paper, we're going top down. I think kind of stepping outside of your comfort zone and trying something different will really help. There's different ways to do that. I tended to do sort of a popcorn style where I just fill in notes anywhere there's space on my page. People can also do columns. That's really great for panels. You can do a radial style or maybe you start in the middle and sort of map out kind of like mind maps. There's also sort of the winding, story-lane sort of style. You can go left to right, left to right. But basically it's important to try to challenge yourself and do something different. So these are some examples from Veronica Arab again doing sort of a radial style. You can see like the title up at the talk and she's sort of going out. Add the decoration last. This is gonna be really tempting too when you're sketch-noting. You wanna make it look really pretty and you're trying to capture everything. But I said before, there's always these moments in the talk where people are pausing or maybe transitioning or maybe the speaker's kind of boring for a little while. And you can use that time to sort of add all those boxes and arrows and shading that you weren't able to capture earlier. And you can also use your post-its again to keep that backlog and sort of help you pace yourself if you can't fill up the space. I like to go back after the talk as well just really quickly before I share to sort of add some more detail and boldness if I'm like reflecting on the talk and realizing that something was extra important. I'll try to go back and add some embellishment. It's also important to embrace mistakes, especially if you're live sketch-noting, it's gonna happen. There's no way to get around it. It can be really scary to use a pen and paper. You might wanna use pencil, but I really encourage you to just go ahead and use pen. I bring a bold marker just in case I need to fix something really crazy, but be okay with scratching out a word. If you didn't spell it right the first time or if it was wrong, it's totally okay. So here's some notes that I took and there's like smudges. And this word right here, that was the first time I spelled entrepreneurs wrong. I tried again. I still spelled it wrong. So that's gonna happen. As with anything, practice makes better. Here's some ways you can do that. I advise people to start out with already recorded conference talks like TED Talks, do it in your meetings at work, even reality TV. I have sketch-noted real housewives before. It's really fun. Watching videos at home on your own takes the pressure off of live sketching on you a little bit. You've got a pause button. You can sort of figure out your pace. As you practice, you'll also get a really good sense of how much information you can capture in a given amount of time. I used to take up two pages for every single talk no matter how long the content was. I've now gotten everything down to a page, like whether it's an hour and a half talk or a 30 minute talk. And so as you practice, you'll sort of find your own style. Here are some of my notes. Name the movie. So there's some notes by MJ Valenti. She was sketch-noting a BBC episode. Get inspired. When we all started out developing, what did we do? We just copied other people's code and then we tried to make it better. And I advise doing the same thing for sketch-noting. I, when I first started, just went on the internet just through Flickr every day looking for other people's styles that I liked and I tried to just copy it. As you become more comfortable, you'll find your own style. But it's okay because even if you're trying to copy someone else's style, it's never gonna look exactly like theirs. So it's always gonna be your own. Some good resources for that include sketch-note army, like I said before. There is a hashtag on Flickr and there's various user groups on Flickr devoted just to sketch-noting. I actually found a bunch of boards on Pinterest. So that's another great resource. So experimentation is how you're gonna find your own style. And what I advise doing is start with the copying and then copy another person's style and then copy another person's style and start mixing and matching and you'll sort of find your happy place. I mean, I spent a lot of time trying to match Paul Supasette's handwriting. I've never gotten it quite right. But I've taken elements of what all of my favorite sketch-noters do and tried to add them to my own. Mike Rody wrote a book that covers a lot more than what I was able to tell you today. This book is amazing. It's actually got some really great hands-on exercises that you can do. I highly recommend it. So at the end of this talk, I've sat here and I've told you all about how to do this and you're like, just, I still can't draw. You haven't told me how to draw. But that's okay, because you can sketch-note. So please go do that. Okay, so the question was this talk focused on sketch-noting for yourself and is there any advice for communicating with other people? Yeah, I mean, I think, like, I mentioned different ways or different places that you can sketch-note. I sketch-note in my meetings at work. I don't do a great job of sharing them with everyone, Nick, I'll do that next week. It is, I think that is a good way. Sharing them actually helps other people too. You'll find in meetings, there's not actually a lot of people that take notes. I mean, it's kind of surprising sometimes. We all think we're gonna remember when we walk away. So if you're the one that sketch-notes and you find it fun and other people find it fun, sharing it right afterwards is actually really, really helpful. We've done a lot of whiteboarding sessions. People take pictures with their cameras to capture that. Your sketch-notes add another layer to that conversation. And so I think just bringing all that together helps sort of document what happened so people can remember. Does that answer your question? Thank you very much.


I worry about Harry Potter fans because they should be over that by now. Actress Miriam Margolies has had some choice words for adults this week on the socials in a couple of interviews throwing adults under the bus saying, you need to get over Harry Potter. It's for children.  I take all the Umbridge. Let's talk about it. It's for children. I think it's for children. But they get stuck in it. Listen, I don't really care about Miriam. Professor sprouting off at the mouth about this. That's fine. That's her prerogative.  And that's about fandoms and why it's OK for adults to partake and to enjoy things we did as a child or even further, enjoy new things that are coming out aimed at a younger audience. Because believe it or not, as you get older, life gets a lot harder. And sometimes it's OK to delve into the fantasy into the sci-fi, into the movies we grew up with or we love today. Let's talk about it. Very quickly, if you wouldn't mind casting a spell on the subscribe button, assuming you haven't already and you're new here, I would appreciate it. As I post lots of movie related content each and every week, it's nice to have more bodies in the room. As previously stated, like 20 seconds ago, I don't care about Miriam's comments.   I'm sure I still will in the future, but I want to take what she's saying and run with it because the gist of it was, hey, adults need to move on from Harry Potter.  This thing's 25 years old and you should really focus on reading things by Dickens and watching the stock market. That's what adults should do. I don't claim to have the answers to life and its meanings or purposes, but we live in a society. We live in a social construct. And it's one of our own making. It's one of our own undoing at some point, I imagine. I'm just a guest here on earth. And from my limited time, from my limited experience, I have determined this. We don't know what the future holds. So we should try to enjoy ourselves to the best of our ability while maintaining some sort of semblance of responsibility. This Miriam individual has a very, I think, stark, bleak look at society and how it should operate. When I was a kid, I was taught the right ways to adult are to get married, have kids, get a job, get a house. These are things that make you successful. Now that I'm here, I don't think that's necessarily true. Having a family, if you want, go ahead. Getting married, sure.  I'm joking, Lindsay. I'm joking, honey, I love you. I've been married to the same person since high school. We're high school sweetheart, so it's OK. I'm just joking. And we should be able to joke. While still being respectful to each other. But that's maybe for a separate rant altogether, comedy and how it's kind of dead in some ways and not in others. And it's just messy. Everything's messy now. My point being, I have taken stock of where I'm at and I understand that's not where other people are. I understand that there are huge swaths of individuals that are lost in the world, still trying to find their way. Or maybe they just grew up kind of lonely and they're looking for an outlet to share, to express themselves. And so when something like Harry Potter comes along decades back, opens up this wizarding world, this magical place where you can escape with friends and go attend this regal school known as Hogwarts, you take a train, a magical train, a hidden away in a brick wall that you have to run through.  It was so whimsical. It was so it was so light. But there's also that dark side with with Voldemort with the evil death eaters. And it was it was very intense. And as the books grew, the audience grew or vice versa. I don't know. The books maintained a pace with the kids reading them. So by the time Deathly Hollows comes along, we're adults. I myself didn't read Harry Potter until I was already an adult. I was completely captivated. I already liked the movies. The books made me appreciate them even more so. And then seeing Universal Studios open up the wizarding world, going around drinking butterbeer, taking these rides, going through the castle, freaking amazing. It was amazing. And this is me being an adult, being honest with you. Wow, you can have both, Miriam. You can do both things. Isn't that crazy? You can pay your taxes and also cast a spell, a pretend spell. We like watching actors perform. I don't think we look down on them, at least not for their craft. Oftentimes envy them. Maybe it's secretively so, but it's there.  I don't get paid anything for what I do, which is far stupider often. But again, to the point of the lonely folks out there, this is an outlet for them. This is a way for them to reach a community of like-minded individuals that just really like celebrating this kind of stuff. You look at Taylor Swift's fans going to her concerts, celebrating the music, just being happy and excited. It's electrifying.  And this goes for Taylor Swift fans as well. You can quickly fall into a dangerous place, a cult-like behavior, a mentality where if you don't like what I like, you're suddenly the enemy. You're suddenly the problem. If you criticize even a little bit some of the songs or some of the movies or some of the books, you're in trouble, fam. Because I'm not just going to yell at you. I'm going to target you.  We're going to try to cancel you or dig up dirt on you. And it becomes this awful toxic place to be. But I'm not here to talk about that. I've talked about fandoms in the past. I believe that's a completely different situation from what I'm referring to. What we have here are just adults trying to not only relive their childhood. I don't think that's fair. I'm not trying to relive my childhood. I didn't have a childhood with Harry Potter. I had a childhood with Ghostbusters and Gremlins and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers and He-Man.  Others, I'm excited to see more, but I'm also very jaded and kind of a cynic prick when it comes to movies now. I don't believe they have my best intentions in mind or they're trying to put the best piece of product out there. They're just putting product out there. And that's really what it is. The art is long gone. The magic is as far removed. But when you're working a nine to five, oftentimes longer from any individuals, the last thing I personally want to do is more work or think about the bills that I have to pay.   I also find it funny when some people scoff at that stuff, even like the Brony community. You remember that? I don't know if it's still a thing, but My Little Pony used to be a pretty popular show for a few years and there was Brony conventions and kids dressed up and adults dressed up as different characters from that.  But or how about people that are sycophantic with sports? That's different than being a sports fan. But even a sports fan, how are you really that different?  You put on a jersey of your favorite player. You go to a game.  You have a draft where you go to your friend's garage. You watch the TV for hours. You yell at each other. You get riled up. This is what people do. We try to find things that excite us. And at the end of the day, that's all it is, of course. And I just said this a while back. You can get stuck in this. You can make this your identity. And I don't think that's a healthy place to be when you are just 24 seven hooked on this one specific thing. But what a sad existence it would be if we didn't find joy in some of this stuff, some of these pointless things. I get pumped up when Back to the Future comes on TV or goes back to the theaters. I get super excited when I get to show one of my kids a movie for the first time. In fact, we just watched 300 a day ago. My whole family watched it. I was really excited to see my kids reaction. It's my favorite Zack Snyder movie. I think he peaked there personally. And this movie is still holds up fantastic. I actually, if you're interested, have a vlog coming out on it where I talk about this movie, my kids review it. It's at the mithril membership level at patreon.com slash Adam does movies where there's multiple vlogs every month for you. Anyway, just a little side advertisement for myself. The point is this, be excited for things.  You are just a cog in the machine. Have an identity for Christ's sakes.  It's really fun being on the other side of it, going to a con, try it out. See how excited people get. See how energizing it can be put out of your comfort zone. And next thing you know, it's very comfortable because it turns out a lot of these weirdos, a lot of these people that are quote, unquote, not adults and their children still. They're actually more mature and capable of handling different situations than most so-called adults can because they put themselves out there. They're free to be themselves and have a good time. All right, that's my rant for you. I safe to say completely disagree with Miriam.  And you know what? Someone's got to bring the kids to these events, these movies, these locations. What are you going to do?  Looking at your boring bank reports or whatever adults are supposed to do. Or do you enjoy this with the kids and have fun on these rides and go get these experiences that you will only have with them for a limited amount of time? Art's going to be there.  And you can appreciate that now, too. You can you can do two things at once. It's wild. You can do multiple things at once. All right, rant over. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Please, again, think about subscribing to the channel. Adam does movies. I don't just cover movies. I also rant about things in the industry. I do roasts, live streams, and I just like to talk to you like we're buddies. Hopefully I did the job. And again, one more time, patreon.com slash Adam does movies, 300 exclusive videos at any membership tier level. And once you get into higher ones, you get vlogs every single month. All right, hopefully I see you soon. Take care.


Okay, so Irene says guy I was with was saying he was afraid of letting his feelings go Afraid to take a step even though he wanted to I pulled back when he when I did I met a wonderful man Now this other man wants me back because he feels more comfortable Well, and then that's a typical situation right so So if a guy's not stepping up and he's afraid and he's all that kind of stuff what ends up happening And usually what we end up suggesting which is the creating the abundance principle, which is exactly what you did You're like, okay.  How do I make him step up and the answer is that you don't make him step up? He needs to decide that he wants to keep you and that you're too important to him To let you go and then he needs to step up and the best way to do that is to To let him go and be like, look, this is what I want if you can't give that to me. That's fine But I'm going to move on with my life and I'm not going to get caught up Because what a lot of women will do is they'll just stay in the situation and the next thing you know, they'll end up You know being in a situation that they don't want to be in With a guy that they want to step up, but he's like, hey, I'm getting all my needs met. Why would I do that? and it's not always the situation that you move on and then the guy comes back, but You know, you're either going to get into a situation You don't want to be in or you're going to find a new situation that you do want to be in And so the best thing to do is let go And so Irene says, so how do I let him down without hurting him? I don't really want to tell him I met someone else because I don't want to hurt him. Well, here's my suggestion Stop being so worried about hurting him, right? He's people Fall in love they get attached to people and they get hurt. That's a normal part of life, right? And you can be compassionate with him, right? Like I'm not saying that you should try to hurt him But if you're with a new guy and you really like this new guy and you're not looking to get back with the old guy Then you have to let him know you have to let him know and just tell him and just be honest with him You know, and at the same time be compassionate to him and just let him know You know, it's it's really one of the best ways to do it is to is to compliment him first and just tell him that you really like him and you enjoyed your time being with him and You appreciate him coming back to you and stepping up But that you've already found somebody else and that Um, you know, you're really sorry, but you want to see how things go with this new guy that you're with You know, and and yeah, that sucks It sucks to hear that as somebody who connects with somebody and really likes somebody and wants something to work out with them But at the same time it's like He you know, he has to hear that and the sooner he hears that and he knows that you're not available And that nothing's gonna happen anymore the faster he can get over it and move on with his life Whereas if you just kind of hold on to him or you try to you know, sneak around it Or you try to tell him something that's not really true or whatever all you're doing is prolonging his pain and even making it so that he might end up having more pain in the future because He's getting even more attached because there's more time and and now he's he's trying harder and all these other things And so if you if you stop it at the very beginning, you're just like, hey, this isn't going anywhere It can't go anywhere This is what's going on then it's it's a lot better. It's actually a lot better for him, right? It's actually being a lot more compassionate to him. You're not gonna not hurt him. He's gonna end up getting hurt, right? He's he's already emotionally engaged in this and that's fine, right? He's a he's a grown adult He can handle it, right? And so you need to just be honest with it You need to be a grown adult a mature grown adult and let him know what's going on with you