Good afternoon, everyone. So Scott Brinker is not here, but his Martek Super Graphic has made an appearance more than a couple of times. Anyone knows how many logos are there on that map? Ankush, not you, because that was there on your slide. Anyone? So 7040 logos, that's the latest one. And it's been increasing rapidly. So what that graphic reinforces is that this Martek marketplace is evolving very rapidly, and it is a complex one at that. Right now, I don't disagree with that notion, but I do believe that there is a scope for some simplification there. We need to simplify that complexity, and that's what I am. So we've got some strong ideas of our own, based on which we have some, we have learned from our customers what the core pieces of a Martek stack should be. We learned those things from our customers, and some of that is what I'm going to share with you in the next 15 minutes or so. So this is a rather modest graphic of ours. I say modest because it has fewer number of categories, as well as a fewer number of vendors. This is essentially, we are using a subway paradigm to basically organize all the vendors, depending on the functionality that they sell. So there are eight lines here. I'm not sure if you can read them, but there are eight colors that you can probably make out. The first, the web content management in light blue, digital asset management, marketing automation, and campaign execution, and customer relationship management. These have been our traditional lines. I think they have been there for a long time, and we have covered them for a long time, and I would like to believe that most people here are pretty comfortable with those lines. The next four lines, which is starting with orange customer data platforms, journey orchestration engines, operations hubs, and content platforms are some newer technologies that are seeing a lot of traction these days amongst customers who are exploring newer things in marketing technology. Customer data platform, we've talked about some speakers have talked about it. Essentially, if I stick to the subway paradigm, this is like a line which is perpetually under construction, and we are having to add new stations, remove stations, merge stations, almost on a weekly basis. Journey orchestration engines is for those sort of vendors that provide capabilities for managing customer journey. So things like decision making related to what happens when a customer abandons your shopping cart, for example. Operations hubs are like platforms that allow you to sort of provide a cockpit or a command center. So you want to manage all this. And finally, the content platforms are sort of platforms that think of them as a cross between Headless EMS, Digital Asset Management, and Marketing Asset Management. We'll talk a bit more about them as we go forward, but essentially this graphic gives you an idea of what are the core technologies or the core areas that are required for enterprises that are planning to build their own omnichannel marketing stack. If you notice, there are several vendors here, so there are several vendors here who are present on multiple lines. Right now, those are the vendors who provide the solutions across those multiple lines. And if you notice, most of them are sweet vendors. So there's Microsoft there, there's Acoustic there, Acoustic is what IBM was earlier for our purposes. There's Adobe there, there's Oracle there, and there's Salesforce there. There are probably a couple of others, but these are the main sweet vendors. And sweet vendors provide solutions across multiple lines. And because they do that, there is a perception amongst enterprises looking at these kind of technologies that these solutions will be able to provide them an end-to-end solution, or a solution for all kinds of marketing activities. So that's really the context. And that brings me to our first set of best practices related to building versus buying an omni-channel stack. Now because those vendors provide solutions across multiple categories, customers start believing that if they just license a sweet vendors, all their digital marketing problems will be solved. We have learned otherwise. We have consulted with several clients and our research really shows otherwise. There is no such thing an end-to-end solution out of the box platform. So the thing is that most, not all, I'm not saying all, but most of the sweet vendors have really created their solutions by way of acquisitions, right? So when they have acquired products, even though they package it as a single marketing cloud or a marketing solution or a whatever platform, under the hood they are really different products with different architectures, different repositories and so on and so forth. So an out-of-the-box solution or an omni-channel platform does not exist, you need to look for best-of-breed solutions to build your own omni-channel stack. Now I'm not suggesting that you should discard the suites altogether. There are several use cases for when suites are important. So if you do license a sweet, keep these two things in mind. Look at the individual products within the suite for their own merit. So don't just select them just because they are a part of suite. So let's say you want email marketing and you have license sales force, don't just think of using exact target just because it comes part of the license. You need to evaluate exact target for what it is on its own merit. Secondly, like I said, most suites under the hood are a bunch of different products. So don't assume that they are well integrated. You should plan for additional efforts and resources just to make sure that they all work together in the way that you want to. So let's, sorry, okay. So let's build a bit on what we have just discussed. This is a sort of stack model that many of us are familiar with. We have seen a lot of customers who've used these kind of stack models and build sophisticated solutions on top of them. So like all stack models, you have channels on top, there's social, email, website, et cetera. And then you have some production, interaction and delivery services like e-commerce or page layout or mobile middleware. And then you have the content and engagement platforms, they are marketing automation, WCM, DAM, et cetera. And finally, you have the backend repositories or backend systems underneath. Now, while this kind of a stack architecture is pretty popular, I think as we move from 2010s to 2020s, this kind of a model is really dead-ended, right? And there are very specific reasons for why such a model is dead-ended. In spite of what gurus will tell you, this is a very siloed model, right? So it is more enterprise-centric rather than customer-centric. So what that means is that because there are multiple backend repositories, the data gets stuck in those backend repositories and because of that, it is inconsistent, it is inaccessible and certainly not actionable. If it is split across multiple repositories, it's tough to action it, right? In addition, all your content, experiences and rules are platform-specific. So what does that mean? You might have a set of personalization rules specific to your website. You might have another set of personalization rules that are specific to your email marketing. And right now, there is no real way to align them or standardize them. You have to have them twice and you have multiple channels, more channels than these two, you got to define your personalization rules at every channel. So those sort of rules are platform-specific rather than enterprise-wide or system-wide. And because of that, your delivery logic or decision logic gets split across different channels. So what goes on your website is decided by your website content management system or a WCM. What goes in an email campaign is decided by your email marketing software and so on. So decision logic is split and therefore your customers and prospects are not able to enjoy an integrated or a consistent experience. So there are several symptoms of these problems will not go into those details, but you can refer to the slide later. Essentially, the point here is that right now, with this kind of stack model, it is impossible to create a consistent customer experience and a unified approach to engagement across channels. So what do we do about these problems? And we have learned some best practices based on our consulting and research. What we need to do is to rethink this stack model. And what does that mean? The first point there is that we need to remove all those silos that we just discussed. So removing those silos, those silos could be in terms of data, data being split across multiple repositories. Those silos could be in terms of user experience or multiple user experiences, multiple types of user interfaces and so on. In order to be able to do that, we need to avoid any experiences and rules that are platform specific. So we can't have one set of rules dictating personalization for a website, another set of rules dictating personalization for email management, right? And if we have to do that, we really have to think hard about where those capabilities exist. Should they exist in your digital experience layer? So for example, should personalization exist in a CMS platform? Should personalization exist in a portal platform? Maybe not. Should segmentation exist in a CRM platform? Maybe not. Right? So the idea here is that we need to abstract those key foundational services away from channel specific products. So move them from WCA, move them from e-commerce, move them from analytics and bring them in a layer of their own. So essentially, omnichannel means key services move lower in your stack. The idea here is to, so 2010 stack, we need to rethink of that by removing CLOS and this is what it might look like. You still have those channels and interaction and delivery service and so on, but you have another layer here called enterprise foundation services. I'll blow that up. So essentially we are suggesting that you abstract all the, all those services that we talked off into a layer of its own and these are the four that we think are relevant for building an omnichannel stack platform and we'll talk a bit more about them as well. They are similar, they are same as what you saw in the map earlier, but this time with more details. So customer data platform is for doing a 360 degree view of customers and doing segmentation, et cetera. Journey orchestration and decisioning is sort of a traffic management system. So you want to make a decision based on what a customer is doing or where are they in a customer journey. So you want to take decisions based on that. Omnichannel content hub is for publishing content to all those channels. So essentially things like a snippet of an offer or maybe an audio or a video image for some advertisement, right? So all those kind of things need to be managed separately and not within each of those platforms and to manage all this sort of a cockpit you need to have operation hubs. So essentially the idea that we are suggesting is that you need to split and decouple your Martek services while keeping in mind the separation of concerns, right? And here are some suggestions based on that. So all the services related to customer management, so 360 degree unified profiles, extended attributes, segmentations, all these should be extracted into what is known as customer data platforms or CDPs. Once you have all that data, you actually need to activate that. You need to do something with it. You need to run campaigns, right? And all that you need to do personalization, right? And all those sort of services get abstracted into what we call journey orchestration engines, journey orchestration systems. Abstract all the services related to content. So not just web content, but all other types of content, your snippets of content, your reusable content and make it as a single source of truth for content across channels. So that's what goes into OCPs or Omnichannel content platforms. Have the operations hub for collaboration, creation, scheduling, internal, external, resource management, making sure all your campaigns are running and that kind of stuff. So I would have loved to spend some more time on these four areas, but we don't have the time right now. I have left these slides for your reference in case you want to go through them later. But we'll move on to our last set of best practices, which is really for the product selection itself. Now they are not specific to digital marketing, but they are very relevant to digital marketing. Most of them are self-explanatory and I won't go into each of them, but I'll pick up the point number two, which is about using a scenario-based approach for selection instead of a functionality-based approach. Now what does that mean? We have seen a lot of customers when they start evaluating their products, they come up with these kinds of Excel sheets with hundreds of rows for functionality and then some way to rank them and if they want to make it more sophisticated, they'll put some weightage and put some more map there basically. And in the end, what you get is a vendor with score 7.78 being better than another vendor with score 6.52 or something like that, right? And that doesn't make sense. So I'm not suggesting you discard this. I'm saying you use this, but don't use it as the only way to evaluate products. Instead, supplement it with what we call is a scenario-based approach. So a scenario is essentially a business use case written in a language that you can understand, your people can understand. So here's an example of a scenario. It uses names that you understand. So your colleagues' names, your employees' names. It uses locations that are relevant to you and it uses description that is based on what you do in a day-to-day work life, right? So when you do that and then you evaluate those products for their support of these kind of scenarios, you will be able to better select products that are more suitable for you. Every product will get a tick mark for the functionality, but the way they support your scenarios, it is what will make them different, okay? That's really all that I had to say, final points. I think again, self-explanatory, but couple of important points there. Don't believe the vendor hype. If a vendor tells you they can do everything, they probably can't. So do your own testing, evaluate them well and then take decisions. Invest low and simplify high. So simplify your top layers, simplify your WCM, simplify your CMS, simplify your email, et cetera, email marketing, et cetera, and invest in a layer below that. So invest in the foundational services that can then serve the layers on top of them. Finally, platforms and vendors are not in themselves omnichannel. So no platform is omnichannel. A vendor selling you an omnichannel platform is probably fapping, right? So you need to build a stack that then can become omnichannel, okay? That's about it. That's all I had for today, okay? Okay.


the next hour I want to unpack what is coming next with fundraising events, why are people holding on to virtual events, are donors going to show up, how can you make your donors show up and also I want to share a lot of insights that my team and I have discovered and walk you through what we've learned as we recently conducted a survey that just talks about the future fundraising events and how that's going to impact your organization. So to back it up just a little bit I am Rebecca as Eli mentioned there a privilege of working at Trellis for about two and a half years now and over that time I've seen a really big shift at first I was solely supporting organizations with their in-person events and then in the last year transitioned to solely supporting people with their fundraising and virtual events and now as we look forward we're really looking at the combination of both of hybrid events and what does that look like and how is that working for organizations and today I want to share what I'm learning and what I'm seeing in the virtual world as well as share some insights that I've seen and I've gained as I work with like I said hundreds of organizations with their events and their campaigns. To back it up just a little bit more Trellis is an all-in-one fundraising platform and so we help foundations charities non-profits with all of their fundraising virtually in person and everything in between. So across North America supporting ticketing and donations, silent and live auctions, raffles, live streaming, the whole piece but beyond being a technology platform we want to also help the organizations we work with. We want to be industry experts and leaders and share new ideas and new ways to increase fundraising success and that's really where this whole talk and this whole idea came from. My team and I sat down and we realized that we just don't know what's coming next in the fundraising world and if we're feeling like that we know that you guys are feeling the same way too and so we've conducted a survey and a research report to just better understand the future of fundraising events. We talked to hundreds of charities industry experts and donors to understand where they see the future going how they've been impacted so far and kind of what their next steps are. We've also taken a look at hundreds of fundraising events that have happened really reviewed them to see what are some common trends we're seeing what's working and also what's not working so that we can help organizations like you guys move forward in the right way. So right now I want to dive into yeah like what was events as we know it like what happened to them and kind of where do things sit now. Talking about the present the rise of virtual events what does that look like and and what can we get excited about and then thinking future forward raising more with in-person hybrid or virtual events what does that look like and what can you do to succeed with those. All of the information that I'm sharing is actually put together in a report and so I highly recommend you guys all download it. There is a QR code right there so you can scan it on your phone to pull up the QR code and you can access it there. I will bring up that QR code at the end though too so it is not gone forever but before we dive too far in and before I start talking away I would love to know a little bit more about who's in the room and I want to ask a quick poll question to see yeah what what kind of where are you guys sitting with your fundraising right now and what does that look like. So you can go to that link right there menti.com and use that eight digit code and throw it in there or super easy again you can scan that QR code so just pull out your phone and do that. The question I want to know is what type of events are you planning for 2021. So a couple different options there and you can select which ones or which few kind of apply to you guys. Lots of virtual lots of hybrid we've got a couple in person and a couple people unsure that's okay. Yeah I mean 2021 the virtual model at this point is what we're seeing to be the most popular because like you guys we just don't know what's coming next but I like seeing that some of you guys are thinking hybrid and as restrictions change and as we get used to what's coming next the opportunities to do hybrid on a small scale in person or and then like a larger virtual option are really exciting that's awesome. Sweet okay this is really similar to what we've been seeing so far so I'm glad to hear that you guys are kind of sitting in the same place and I see some more coming in for hybrid awesome. So the event end of events as we know it to start our research we looked at what has happened in the past in 2020 40 percent of our surveyed organizations hit their fundraising goals and actually given how quick and adaptable they had to be we're actually really impressed by that number but there's a couple things we noticed one the organizations that hit their goals pivoted to virtual events they were agile efficient and they took the plunge to make sure they could still engage with their donors even when the world went online and if you guys want the chat is open so throw in there like did you guys go virtual did you do anything in 2020 what did that look like for you guys? The second thing we noticed is the organizations that their fundraising goals they took responsibility for their own success they had sufficient marketing and communication around their events they utilized and expanded geographical reach so that they could increase how many people were at their event and they also spent a lot of time testing and practicing to ensure that there was a really smooth donor experience moving to virtual after years and years of doing in-person events is not easy and the donor experience that we've spent so long perfecting and crafting for an in-person event everything from the moments people walk into the building till they sit down at their table and then they leave at the end of the night you guys have thought about and you planned it so making that switch and ensuring a consistent donor experience from start to finish when you're virtual looks different but the organizations that hit their goals they did that they thought about that and really identified what does that look like and that was also noticed by our donors and we actually talked to our donors about this too and they said while most of them do enjoy participating in a virtual event they actually loved being able to do something virtual as well it was more affordable and they could participate from the comfort at home and they loved being able to easily access the silent option or the different fundraising elements and they could actively check in on it or monitor it as things are happening making donations on a credit card was really attractive to our donors when they looked at virtual events and then also the ability to see speakers that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to see and having an increased and more diverse group of speakers and entertainers was really attractive our survey also realized that donors contributed just as much if not more virtually so for organizations the impact of that was so significant and honestly such a great benefit I want to throw another question out into the survey I'm actually going to throw two out at one time here but we know that virtual events were key to succeed in 2020 I mean I just just shared 40% of organizations did it well but I want to know what you guys think about where the industry is headed and what type of events will allow us to keep moving forward and hitting our goals so I might need to open this up so you guys can start filling that out so do you think virtual events will outlook the pandemic and then will in-person events have their moment post pandemic as well we're seeing some yeses and definitely is on there I'm going to give you guys a few more minutes to throw some more answers in there yeah it's funny I think the the idea of a virtual event post pandemic at first glance I'll be honest doesn't sound that appealing like I've just spent the last year and a half on zoom but I mean the results and what I'll share it here in a second too like people are able to engage with their donors in different ways and they're able to raise more money with their donors virtually and then it just opens up so many doors so I'm excited about that but on the flip side yeah in-person events having a their moment post pandemic I mean I think we're either torn half of us are dying to get out of our house and see people and see their smiles in real life and other others of us are kind of happy so I'm kind of happy being at home so I think yeah it's it's such a toss-up but I think the the in-person event will have its comeback and I think a lot of organizations I'm talking to right now are really excited about that too awesome so first let's just dive into the virtual event and then afterwards let's go into specifically into in-person and kind of what that looks like but really similar to what we just saw as you guys are all putting in your numbers there too our survey results show that 92 percent of charity professionals and industry experts believe virtual events are worth keeping after the pandemic so really consistent with what you guys just said and they listed some of their top reasons why they think that's the case first cost and time saved on average charity spent half the time planning and executing their events and half of their usual in-person budget yes there is different expenses but mapping everything out all together it actually ended up being a lot cheaper ease of execution virtual events are now just a new charity or a new tool in the charity tool box virtual events take less time and money and can easily be produced in addition to other yearly events a little sneak peek let's dive into that a little bit further as you get towards the end of this presentation here beyond that increased geographical range we're no longer bound to even like this we're not just bound to people in lower mainland we've got people all over the world joining us today cheaper for donors lower cost for charities meant that they could actually increase potential donor reach but the end net amount that they raised still ended up being the same as a result less manpower required imagine canada did a study and saw that one third of charities in canada had seen a reduction in staff due to layoffs and with virtual events we actually don't require the same level of staff and volunteers to execute and so organizations were still able to go forward with them regardless of those changes and then virtual event fundraising elements on average organizations that included three or more fundraising elements doubled the amount that they raised compared to organizations that did two or less fundraising components and the ability to create those opportunities for your donors to contribute even if they're not in the room or they're not participating in the event allows you to go a lot further with how much you're able to raise so we can see that virtual events and organizations that took the plunge to do a virtual event in 2021 succeeded and we know that virtual events are here to stay I mean you guys said what 8.9% or 89% of you said yes our other studies in 92 so very comparable numbers and we're seeing that there is advantages that our donors are recognizing as well as our charities but the next question is how can we maximize our fundraising potential when we're doing the virtual event and what insights can we pull from organizations that raised more or less and what are some key takeaways that you guys can use now into implementing your organizations as you approach the hybrid and the virtual events you guys just said you have coming up so first I wanted to take a look at what we can learn from organizations that didn't hit their fundraising goals are actually raised less by moving to virtual the first they made this switch to virtual really last minute given the urgency and the challenges that we saw in the first times that we saw with 2020 this is honestly so understandable but not giving yourself enough time to plan an event if it's virtual can be really detrimental to hitting your fundraising goals next thing they removed a crucial fundraising element so maybe you've always done a live auction in person but you pulled the plug for your virtual event even when planning your virtual events it's important to make strategic decisions and considerations around what are going to be best approaches to moving forward with your event and hitting your fundraising goals and in the report too we actually talk a lot about around what are the fundraising elements that are most popular and most effective for virtual fundraisers from the perspective of our donors that we surveyed as well as the organizations we talked to number three they feel that their donors were less engaged so survey donors have told us that event programming and entertainment is like one of the key reasons that they attend event so think about that like what can you do to engage your donors it's a virtual setting so what are you going to do to make sure that they stay attended and they stay focused about the entire event and they felt like they didn't have sufficient marketing yeah definitely switching to virtual it's important to think about your new marketing streams what are you doing and what's working for you we have seen organizations use network or influence for marketing newsletter and social media with the most success over the last year and then lastly less people attended or it was easier to leave so give them a reason to stay that's actually totally in your guys' hands what are you doing to engage them what's making it really exciting what's worth sticking around till the very end these five challenges that we saw they don't actually exist anymore anymore they're all things that we can be proactive about as we think about our events and as we move forward with them and it also gives us some more opportunities to think about what can we do to not just hit our goals but now surpass them and so that was actually the next thing we did too is we took a look at what are organizations that are raising more doing and we came up with kind of our top three this list is a lot longer but these were kind of the three that continue to surface for us so number one the event is now going to be a bit more accessible financially so you've got a bigger reach so we're seeing organizations try lots of things from trying a lower ticket price to give more opportunities to give and donate throughout the event or having a higher ticket price but more value-based so you get a meal you got all these different elements with it so think about that for your organization we now have the ability to expand our donor base what does that look like and how do you engage them number two no location barriers for your for your virtual event this one it's really important to think about how you can capitalize on this so we can now have donors and participants engaged that aren't in your city or in your town and so how and what are you going to do to make sure that out-of-town guests feel welcome what are you going to do so out-of-town guests know about your event and may tune in or may want to watch and participate and then number three reduce costs compared to in-person events the reduce costs do mean more space to raise more but I also want you to think about what does that look like and how can you actually invest those funds differently so that you can give your donors a better experience because a better experience will internally to more money raised at the end of the day some other quick ideas I just wanted to mention like I said we've supported over a hundred of organizations in the past year and a half as we've navigated COVID and from virtual in-person and hybrid these are some ideas that really help other organizations hit their goals and so I want to just throw them your way as well but while I'm sharing this if you guys have other ideas of what's worked for you or if there's been something that you've really enjoyed throw it in the chat as well and I would love to love to hear from you as well but the first is creating a bank campaign so introduce and use different elements to engage your different donor types leading up to the event raffles silent auctions a live auction and a fund a need on the day of maybe give your donors different and more avenues to participate in your cause it just creates more energy and just improves your donor experience maybe I can't afford to bid on a live auction item but you've got a raffle or a 50-50 and so I can put in a hundred bucks there instead maybe somebody else is more excited in the live auction rather than the chance to win in the 50-50 but we can both be engaged and we can both be really excited about what you guys have planned when we have a broader broader options of how we can give the second one is start marketing and your outreach early don't leave this to the last minute and get really creative around how you get the word out younger donors are all over social media but like don't forget about your newsletters your website promoting your event and other events are leading up to it whatever you can do to get the word out and continue to remind people that your events coming up the better chance that they haven't actually attending and number three invest in the experience so I've mentioned this a couple times but it's honestly so key give your donors something to talk about with their colleagues on Monday morning and I think if you guys have that as your goal as you're planning your event and as you're planning the entertainment it would probably be a really great place to start a virtual bar tender that can keep your attendees topped up throughout the event maybe you try a virtual cooking class or virtual wine tasting or dance class oftentimes you're going to have your prospective donors attending the event before they make an investment in your cause so seamlessly mixing those heartwarming moments and stories and awareness about your cause with some really engaging and entertaining elements throughout the night is going to do you guys such a great service and helping to build more excitement around what you're doing so I want to jump back actually to our live survey results and take a look at what we said for in person events so in here we said yeah 89% of us said that in person events will have their moment post pandemic as well and again just like the the above point when we did this survey with our industry experts donors and charities they said 93% of them agreed that in person events are definitely worth going back to when it's safe to do so in our survey we also talked to Lane the auctionista they're an amazing auctioneer in Canada here and so if you guys are yeah ever interested yeah definitely somebody great to talk to you about auctioneers for your events but they said that there will be charities whose donor bases will crave in person and in person is not going to look the same but now needs to be reinvented and we honestly love that how we engage with our donors moving forward will change but we're going to jump more into this into in just a minute first I want to go back to why our organization is excited to move forward with in person events so the first is pressure from their donors donors are keen to get back into the room and are asking the organizations they support to prioritize this as soon as they can we're also seeing the other side of pressure which is donors are encouraging and positively pressuring if I can say others to give they're spurring each other on and that spirit and excitement in a virtual event is just harder to capture so people are so excited to get back into the room to have that pressure and that excitement happening again second is engagement so engagement with donors and attendees looks different when we're when we're online we all know that we all feel that I mean this conversation would look really different if we were in the same room right now connections with donors the ability to make meaningful connections with donors has also shifted and it's become more challenging with virtual events you know I can have a different conversation when I'm in person with somebody and I might have over chat or over a zoom call not to say they're not great but it just looks really different and then networking donors and organizations like are both looking forward to being able to network from or back in person and again totally different experience as you guys know so thinking about virtual thinking about in person the question comes at the end of the day who will win and which direction are we taking with fundraising events and so as the world continues to change so will the popularity between virtual and in person events I mean 16 of you guys said that you've got a virtual event planned 14 of you said you've got a hybrid this year two years from now will those numbers look the same I don't know but the focus on those ones will will begin to shift for 2021 and 2022 virtual events will win so let's just embrace it hybrid events will also be grouped into that and they will continue to win and in 2021 the survey that we conducted told us that organizations again like you guys are hosting 30 more virtual events than they have in the past but beyond that we're also seeing fundraising elements like silent options ticketing and donations funding needs will continue to shift and remain online for an easier donor and charity experience so the idea of doing a virtual silent option or selling tickets online or handling online donations actually still exists and we realize that people love it and we're not going to lose that moving forward so that takes us to what we're calling the new kid on the block it's in person events with your virtual fundraising elements this honestly gives us the best of both worlds as we host events like we have in the past but also hold on to the best parts of virtual fundraising which is the actual fundraising and the raising money pieces so let's take a look at the different benefits that we've just discussed for virtual events as well as in person events for virtual affordability for donors virtual fundraising elements diverse speakers and entertainment and an increased reach geographically as more people can participate from anywhere on the other side we said for in person events pleasing our donors and looking forward to don't in person events increased engagement more opportunities for meaningful donor connection and the ability to network with donors and attendees once again when we think about that new idea I just mentioned of in person events with a virtual fundraising elements we can actually capitalize on all of this affordability online fundraising elements speakers and entertainers of different caliber or locations and increased donor geographical reach and we meet our donor requests we engage we connect and we network with our attendees like we have in the past so there's a couple different ways that we can approach it and I wanted to kind of map out like what do these events actually look like walk you through some ideas because I mentioned to a couple of you guys at the beginning I want to give you some actual ideas that you can walk away with so you feel really confident about what your modern fundraising events look like if that's 2022 2021 or beyond that as well so here I've kind of put on a scale a couple different options you'll notice that all by itself we've bought the in person pen and paper event that event is done the idea of doing a silent auction on a piece of paper kind of makes me cringe because it just feels like so much work and so that's done and it should come back if I'm allowed to say that but these other four ideas will allow you to engage with your donors at different levels on a virtual and in person scale so the first one in person with virtual fundraising let's dive into that first this is what it could look like it's your virtual fundraising elements your silent auction like you can see on the right side of my screen there you've got your ticketing online donations online maybe you even do your live auction online the bidding for it online while people are all sitting in the same room but you've still got the in person connection and engagement and you've got ease of donor participation leading up to the event one of the things that our donors mentioned up at the top about virtual events is that they loved that they can monitor the silent auction with something like this yeah it's still an in person event but they can still monitor that silent auction for the two weeks leading up to the event I might get really excited about it before the event actually happens same thing maybe I bought some raffle tickets that I can buy leading up to the event to give me a better chance of winning some awesome prizes during my in person event the next is going to be in person with a small live stream audience so this picture on the side here you can see you've got an audience of people in front and we've got a projector and a big kind of screen up there so for this type of an event maybe I'm just sitting behind these people I can see their heads in the background but I've just got my camera on there for a live stream audience to also participate in maybe for this one you've got 10% of your attendees participating virtually and the rest are all in person so you actually host your in person event just like you have in the past but now that we have that camera there we can still increase our geographical reach what I love about this is again ease of donor participation leading up to the event people can go in they can participate and as well on the day of the event your attendees that are in person but also watching remotely can all participate together we can all bid on the same silent auction items we can all put money into the same raffle or make donations or give through a fund-aid moment at the same time but we still hold on to that ability to for in person engagement and connection and we get to appeal to a wider donor base the next one is a virtual event with a VIP in-person audience so now we're doing a bit of a flip instead of having 10% of our attendees virtual maybe we have closer to 60 or 70% virtual with an in-person VIP experience for a certain number of guests what I love about this is again we've got that increased geographical reach we've got an or appealing to a wider donor base we've got a great donor experience and that probably looks a little bit custom for our in-person VIP guests as well as something a bit custom for our at-home attendees as well and again for our guests that are in person we've got connection and networking opportunities with our guests but like you can see in this picture it's not just a big stage and one camera that's pointing at it now it's a bit more tailored it's a bit more catered to the people that could be watching from home because it could actually make up a really large number for you and then lastly it's our purely virtual event so just like we've already talked about a lot of those benefits are still going to exist cost and time saved ease of execution increased geographical raise the reach story cost savings to donors as well as less manpower required to support them and as you can see here it's a totally virtual experience I can see my host or my auctioneer talking I can see a live auction and I can see bidding history coming up as well I can see a chat so people can participate that way too so last things I want to leave you guys with are like what does it take to actually succeed this is a new format so how does it work and how can you actually hold your events to make sure that it's a success in your end first is creating a seamless donor experience using the approaches we just talked about make your donor experience stand out before the event make it easy and make it fun for them have tickets raffle tickets and silent auctions online on the day of the event encourage people to use the chat if we're virtual or donate and bid as the event's actually happening and make it easy for people that are also engaging with their friends in the room think about the different elements and the different components of your event what does it look like if I'm experiencing it while I'm in the room or what does it look like as I experience it from my home think about how that works and think about what kind of elements or key moments you really want to highlight the next piece just like we just talked about so give your donors options to participate in person or virtually depending on their preferences and number three increase the amount of fundraising elements you include to impute appeal to an entire audience I said this a couple times before but you know maybe as a donor I can't afford to give to some higher priced items but a small donation or small raffle ticket actually something I can afford to do and at the end of the day it does all add up remember that what you are doing is actually a fundraising event so it is okay to ask your donors to give but when you do it make it easy make it simple so that they actually feel like they can give rather than having to jump through a whole ton of loops so as we're wrapping up here and I like I said we're going to open up this the floor to some questions here too because I really want to hear what you guys are thinking but where do we go from here I just shared a ton of information right now so the first thing you're going to want to do is pull out your phone again and scan that QR code and download the report that I just mentioned because it does dive really deep into some of these findings as well shares a little bit more insights especially around the donor side around what does it look like what are donors liking or what are some things that we want to shift towards moving and then you're going to want to ask yourself some questions what have I done in the past that's really worked what do I want to keep what do I want to improve or what do we know we want to bring back on the flip side what do we know we don't want to bring back what are some things that we know we can that we can change I'd also encourage you just like we did don't be afraid to talk to your donors about it ask them that what they want to see ask them what they're excited about to kind of gain some of their insights and then think about how you can create an inclusive experience with plenty of ways to give for all of your donors regardless of who they are and then lastly I would just encourage you to check out some of the resources that any of my team have put together the report is a great first one but another great resource if you actually just go to our website here and I believe there are some of the one or two of the people from my team are also on this call so they want to just throw it in the chat but if you just go to our website we've got a whole section on fundraising resources these are free for anybody to use so you can just come here and check them out the report that I mentioned you can access it here as well we've got all sorts of resources from golf tournaments to virtual events some recorded webinars that you can check out at any time again all of these tools really just here to kind of help you make sure that you can raise more for your organization and also just learn more about where to start or what that looks like so what we know is 89% of donors expect to attend a virtual event in 2021 76% are expecting to attend one in 2022 as well so think about those numbers think about what you can do to meet your donors exactly where they are I'm going to leave it there I know you guys back up here so we'd love to open the floor up to questions but download the report I've got the list of kind of our four fundraising events that you guys can move forward with just kind of keep in the back of your mind and I would love to answer some questions here lovely well thank you so much for coming and sharing the best practices and the results of the report your colleague Emily has of course been super active in the chat knocking down questions bang bang bang so a lot of the platform specific questions are being addressed right there but yeah I would encourage everyone will we have this moment to sort of add some more questions into the chat right now but let me start that off with one question to buy you all some time so we all agree that hybrid events likely are the future but I think not just really have a great sense of what that could look like no wonder if you maybe are able to share a good example of an organization that has done a hybrid event that you thought worked well and what what made it made it worked well because I think we've all sort of tried the oh there's a live stream camera in the back of the room and then we just ignore that those people exist so that didn't work when I tried it in the past can you share some ideas around that yeah definitely so thinking about that and what you mentioned there you lies kind of like the number two here right if we look at this as a sliding scale of like you said we've got an in-person crowd that were obviously there right in front of us that's kind of our top priority but we've got the camera in the back and hopefully the audio is okay and hopefully they can see the slides but I have seen some organizations do a really good job with the number three here kind of like the number three in our scale of the virtual event with a VIP in-person audience so what I've seen people do is at the beginning of an event if you're just walking into an in-person event if we all kind of go there mentally right now you walk in there's registration maybe there's a band playing maybe there's yeah some pictures or some locals on this on on a screen for our sponsors we can see them while that's happening if I'm sitting at home I don't really need to watch people move but what I could have is maybe a custom video that just it's a pre-recorded video it highlights the organization talks about some exciting things that they've got going on as the event progresses everybody's up and they're grabbing drinks from the bartender so maybe we have another pre-recorded video just for our attendees at home where it's that virtual bartender that comes up that gives people some drink suggestion during the actual event maybe we've got our MCR host talking now and we actually have some of our volunteer team or our staff team actually go out and do a house delivery to somebody that's watching virtually we pull it up on the big screen so now the people in the person get to experience what it's like to be a virtual attendee as well so thinking about things like that like what does that look like how can you kind of combine those two pieces is what I've seen be really successful love that idea of the live delivery and like sort of bringing that live footage in I think it yeah brings like a real moment where people are like oh I gotta watch this now because it's happening it's real and it brings the two experiences together I also have seen people have really great success with VIP experiences because it's a way for you to segment out your audience too because some people actually want to pay more than your gala ticket price and this is one way to allow them to opt into that opportunity yeah definitely and yeah you're right sometimes those VIP in person tickets are like 600 bucks and for some of us that's great and we're happy to do that and others of us we can't actually afford to do that as often so a 20 dollar ticket where I can have that experience at home it's kind of like watching the Oscars I don't pay to be there but I get to see the action as it's kind of happening so I've got another question coming in from Laurie and it's a more general fundraising question around online fundraising raffles what is like the current licensing regime here in British Columbia I like to get involved with that do you have a good sense of that yeah great question so you would go through BC Gaming they fund a licensing group there and every single province and state will have it I don't know if we didn't see any US attendees today but any province or state would have them and so you would work with them to get your license in BC I know there's four different types that's it depending on how much you want to raise and then you're going to work with a platform that is a verified raffle provider so they're going to be able to support you make sure that yeah you can sell tickets you know help you create those custom tickets and do all of that piece and so very small draw list plug we're actually so close in our process to become a verified raffle provider and so Laurie if you have questions around how that works I'm happy to send along some more resources I think Emily threw my email in there and we'll make sure that you guys all have my contact details or it's on the slide too so you can reach out to me directly and we can try about it lovely and I've got a comment here coming in from Dave Frank who says the license is not that expensive but the paperwork is brutal so start early because it will take some time to work its way through the system yeah absolutely I couldn't agree more I know I feel like they try and make it hard for us sometimes with those gaming licenses and applications but they are fun when they're up and running for sure excellent yeah if you had another question here coming in from Wendy who's wondering if the Trellis platform could work for an event that's not so focused on fundraising but it's more sort of an expo with virtual booths where people can come in like have sort of a more educational experience could it be adapted in that way yeah we have seen some people do use our platform for like a marketplace kind of idea so you can learn about different organizations we are primarily a fundraising platform and so the features that we have Wendy are really tailored towards that and I think Emily mentioned in there like we don't offer like the booth experience in the same way but yeah we definitely and again feel free to show me an email I would love to to send you some examples of what we've seen other people do to do more of like an awareness campaign or share details around a handful of organizations lovely and I'm seeing here in the chat we've got a lonely American Pam here was wondering if anyone else can help brainstorm some good recommendations for like online raffle services in the US so if others want to jump into the chat you're welcome to go in there but I won't put poor Rebecca on the spot it seems cruel and who was that was that coming in from Pam green from Pam Pam I actually have supported a handful of us raffles as well so I may be able to help or at least help point you in some directions so again feel free to shoot me an email and and happy to chat that way too I'm happy to get on the phone to talk about some ideas as well with any of you well we've just filled up in your dance card Rebecca and I will make sure your contact information is included in the post event email as well as well as the video as well so you can everyone can come back and capture some of the insights that you've captured in your slide and from the room that sounds great so what do you think friends we probably have time for one or two more questions so this is your moment to drop something in the chat otherwise will those final things are coming in this is where I should do a little bit of my own like tooting of the horn so let me turn on the screen share and I'll show you what's going on over here if I could take over from you absolutely love it thank you so we are doing these events often our next event is scheduled for September although one or two might sneak in through the summer as well but next on our dance card here is on September 14th we are going to be tackling google analytics for nonprofits and in google analytics is important mostly free and huge and terrifying so we're going to ignore most of it and we're going to focus up on only the most important 25 percent that you actually need to pay attention to to you know really figure out what's happening and how you can market more successfully within your nonprofit so if you haven't yet come and join us and register for the event it'll be noon on September 14th and you can find it again at events.techsoup.org so super excited to see you there for that next event as well all right let's see did anything else pop into the chat scrolling so uh yeah we've got a couple questions here so one is a question coming in from Ron who's saying when will the recording be available and the answer is I should definitely have it out for you by Friday at the very latest and everyone who registered for this event will receive an email with that link so you will make sure that you see that I've also got a question here from adi which is like does tros offer like a watch party option or some way for people to have that kind of interactive experience yeah we don't have a and it looks like Emily's responding at the same time as you can run a large streamed event through our platform so you can have actually really similar to this where you can see your speakers you have the chat going and so that's how a lot of people are making it really engaging we do and we have seen some organizations host a bit more of a watch party comes a little bit more complex because often time is you'll use something like a google hangouts at the same time so you can watch the event with your friends virtually but what we're seeing is the chat tends to be a really great way to engage your audience for a virtual event and and the chat feature similar to this would work the same way on the trellis platform fabulous well thank you so much Rebecca such a pleasure


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