Hey everyone. So we've got another minute to go. So while people are getting logged on, I just wanted to say hello and I wanted to make sure that everyone can hear me well and see my screen. So I'm just going to flip through the first couple of slides. And if you could just let me know if you can see me and hear me in the questions box of your GoToWebinar panel, that would be a huge help. All right. Thank you, Debbie. It looks like everybody can see and hear me. So that's good news. And it is just about three o'clock on Eastern Time. It's two o'clock Central Time. I'm on Eastern Time. And so we'll just go ahead and get started. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar on Giving Day Strategy for Give Big St. Cori Valley. I'm really excited to get into this webinar because we covered in our last webinar some of the basics of using the Mighty Cause platform and getting set up. And on this webinar, we're really going to dig into the Giving Day Strategy that will help you meet your fundraising goals and be successful. My name is Linda Gerhart. I'm the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause. And my job at Mighty Cause is mostly marketing, but I also manage giving events. This is my second year managing Give Big St. Cori Valley on the Mighty Cause side. So I manage putting the site together and working with the United Way of St. Cori Valley to get the event ready for you. And last year, we saw some really great results. I know we've got some new nonprofits and some new communities participating this year. So I'm just really excited to see how this event goes. I'm sure it'll be great. I'm hoping that we'll see some good growth here. So before we dive in, I wanted to quickly go over the agenda for today's webinar. First we'll go over the basics of how Give Big St. Cori Valley works. So if you missed our first webinar or just need a little refresher, no worries. You'll know everything you need to know by the end of this webinar. And then we'll move into how to run a successful Giving Day campaign, how to promote your campaign, and get donations. And after that, we're going to move into prize strategy. And we'll be doing a Q&A session at the end of the webinar. And I will be joined by Sarah from United Way St. Cori Valley. And just as a bit of housekeeping since we're doing the Q&A at the end of the webinar, if you have a question that you think of while I'm presenting, just go ahead and type that into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel. And then when we get to that portion of the presentation, we'll make sure to answer your question. All right. And with all of that housekeeping out of the way, we'll jump right into Giving Day Basics. Give Big St. Cori Valley is a giving event that takes place on Tuesday, April 30th, which is the final Tuesday of the month. It begins on midnight on April 30th, and the event goes from midnight to midnight. So as soon as the clock strikes 12 and the calendar turns over to April 30th, the event begins. Give Big St. Cori Valley is hosted by United Way St. Cori Valley, and it's a 24-hour online giving marathon. So your goal as a participant in the event is to raise as much money as you possibly can for your organization during those 24 hours. And if you bring in donations, you'll also have the opportunity to win some prizes, which we'll go over a little bit later on in the presentation in a bit more detail. An important thing to note here is that donations are actually open for Give Big. They opened on March 1st. So at this point, you can now accept donations for your nonprofit, and all of those donations count towards your Give Big St. Cori Valley totals. The first thing you need to do if you participate in Give Big is register your nonprofit. Registration is still open, but it will be closing in the near future. So if you are on this webinar and you have not already registered, please go to givebigscv.org and take a few moments to fill out the form and get registered. You can absolutely open up a tab in your browser and do it while I'm presenting. I promise it won't hurt my feelings because I would much rather lose your attention for a minute or two than to have to tell you that you can't participate because you didn't register. So it's a really short form that you need to fill out, and you do need to sign up for a Mighty Cause account before you can register. There is a $100 registration fee, which just helps the United Way cover some of the cost of running the event. And if you haven't paid that yet, either Sarah will hunt you down, or you can just check your email for the link or just mail in a check to the address that's listed on the registration form. That's just to help them defray some of the costs of running this event. Approval is a very quick process, and most people get approved on the same day they register. And once you're registered, you can add other administrators for your page right on your settings page. So it's a very simple, easy process. If you have any questions or problems, you can always reach out to me or reach out to Sarah or reach out to our support team here at Mighty Cause and we'll help you out. But this is the most important step because it lets us know that you want to participate. So take care of that if you haven't already done so. And if you need to register right now, go ahead and do it right now while we're on this webinar and you're thinking about it. On the gift big site, there is a nonprofit toolkit that I highly recommend visiting, bookmarking, and getting familiar with. In it, you can view past trainings, and that's where this training will be once we're done with the presentation. If you wanted to show it to volunteers or staff members who are helping with the giving day, there are also documents you can download that have tips, how tos, there's a timeline, lots of great stuff to help you get ready for the big day. There's social media and email templates and logos, and just all sorts of helpful goodies. Sarah worked really hard to help get this put together, so please take advantage of it. If you haven't checked it out yet, please go to givebigscv.org and just take a look at everything that's offered there because it'll be a huge help to you as you're planning this campaign. And as you can see on the bottom of this slide, you can see where it's located. It's under resources. Just click on resources and then click NPO toolkit from the little drop down menu that appears. All right, so now we're going to move on to campaign strategy. What I'm going to do is walk you through the pillars of a successful giving day campaign. So you can take what's useful to you and doable for your nonprofit size and capacity, and come up with a personalized strategy that works well for your nonprofit. So we talked about this a lot on our last webinar, but your organization's profile is really the face of your nonprofit during Give Big St. Croix Valley. So it's basically the foundation of your campaign. It's what you're building your campaign around. This is the page that you'll be sharing with donors, and it's what you'll use to tell your nonprofit story. So customizing this page and making it look really sharp is one of the first things you should do after you get registered. On your page, you can add your logo, change the colors to reflect your nonprofit's branding, add images and videos and graphics, and really make this page feel like an extension of your nonprofit. You can also set a fundraising goal that will add a progress bar that allows you and also your supporters to track how you're doing and how close you are to your fundraising goal. The centerpiece of your page is your story, which is where you'll put your nonprofit's mission statement, talk about what you do, how you're part of the St. Croix Valley community, and what you do to benefit residents, and make the case for why people should donate to your organization. This is also where you can add some images, a campaign video, links, and really just represent your organization and discuss your work. So before you even think about social media strategy or start drafting email blasts, really take some time to get familiar with this page and make sure that your profile really represents your nonprofit well, because this is what most people will see when they come to your page to make a donation. So if you need any help figuring out how to edit your page or if you have a question about whether you can do something on your page, our support team is here to help you and guide you. So you can always email us at support at ladycause.com and we'll walk you through whatever you are trying to do and make sure that you have your page looking the way you want for Get Big St. Croix Valley. Another foundation of your campaign strategy is what we call your donor experience, which hits donors at a key point. And that's obviously when they're making their donation. I know we talked about this a bit in our last webinar, but there's a lot you can do with this tool, which you can access from your Mighty Cause Manager or your dashboard when you're on your nonprofit's page. But there are three main things that are important to set in place for your giving day. The first is using custom donation suggestions. These are four amounts that you can choose to display in the window that pops up when someone clicks to donate. This is a really crucial moment because this is when donors are choosing how much to give. So you have the opportunity to suggest amounts that are meaningful to your nonprofit and help you make the case for giving these amounts. As a best practice, it's a good idea to keep these suggestions reasonable with a relatively low entry point. So have an approachable amount to start out with. Most donors are not going to give at the $100 or $200 level. That's just not how most people give to charities. But you want to start out with something that feels doable to the average person. You can also look at what the average donation is for your nonprofit to sort of figure out what an appropriate amount is. By default on Mighty Cause, you'll see $25, $50, $75, and $100 populated in that donation window. But I highly recommend changing these amounts to numbers that are meaningful to your nonprofit. You can also add a description of what that amount provides to help bump people toward donating at those levels. A best practice here is to tie the donation amount to a real-world service or item that your nonprofit provides. That just provides a more satisfying donation experience for most people because, as we all know, people like to donate things. They like to think about something that they're donating being used in a particular way. These aren't promises, but this helps them conceptualize what the monetary donation helps your nonprofit do. So for instance, let's say you're an animal shelter and I'm making these numbers up here so please don't think that these are actual numbers, but $15 might buy one rabies vaccine for a dog, and $35 might pay for enough food to feed your whole cat room for a week, and $100 might help you care for one animal for their entire stay. So these kinds of descriptions help donors connect the amounts you're asking for and to real items and services that you provide to the people or the animals or whoever you serve, and they drive home what kind of work you do. So they help reinforce the message that's all over your page, that's in your story, so that when they're making that decision, we're not there at that critical point and going, how much should I give? How much do I want to give to this organization? You're really reinforcing what your nonprofit does in your community. You can leave those blank, but I strongly recommend utilizing the donation suggestions and descriptions and tying them into the campaign you're running. So for instance, if this is your 50th year in operation and you were really going to capitalize on that for your Give Big campaign, you can have everything go up in numbers increments of 50 to help drive home that message that this is your 50th year of serving the St. Croix Valley or whatever that is. So just pick the numbers that are meaningful to your nonprofit. It's not necessarily the numbers, it's the descriptions and how you can connect those back to your cause that will make this an effective use of this tool. All right, so as I mentioned before, donations for Give Big St. Croix Valley are already open and getting those early donations is a great way to get a head start and build momentum for your campaign. And just to be totally clear, these are not pledges. These are donations that process immediately. They just count toward your totals for the giving event. So not only can these help you rank higher on the leaderboard, which we'll get to in a minute and get a jump on the competition for the unique donor's prize, which we'll also get to in a minute. It'll help you get some seed donations. And seed donations are donations from supporters of your nonprofit that help you break the ice with other donors. People generally feel more comfortable donating to online campaigns when they see that others have donated too. That's why we call them seed donations because they help the overall amount of your donations grow. So you can ask your sustaining donors, staff, volunteers, anyone you know is likely to support your campaign because they already support you. They're in your inner circle. Just ask them to make an early donation. It'll basically just give you a boost and by asking a smaller selective group of people in your inner circle, those people who have shown up to support you and you can count on their support, you don't run the risk of tapping out your donor base too early. Obviously you want to go hard on April 30th, but you can also tap your inner circle to get those early donations now to set yourself up for success on April 30th. So in terms of tried and true fundraising techniques that we have seen work wonders on giving days, there's really nothing quite like matching grants. And a matching grant is basically just a large donation that you leverage to entice other donors to give. When you have a matching grant, you're offering to match each donation for a certain period of time, perhaps for a certain amount. And that helps generate interest and urgency. People can very easily get an email saying donate now and they'll go, I'll give on Friday when I get paid or I'll give it the beginning of next month. But that makes it a lot harder for people to dismiss the email and say, I'll do it later when they have the opportunity basically to multiply their money and give more because you've offered a matching grant. So on Mighty Cause, you can enter the grant onto your page in the donation section of your dashboard and set it for any duration that you'd like. You can also back data, you can set them successive. If you have multiple matching grants, there's a lot you can do with our matching grants tool. So there is a support article that you may want to take a look at in our support library that will help walk you through the different functions of that tool. But our matching grants tool will calculate the grant for you and put a sticker over your donate button so that everybody who goes to your page and sees the donate button knows that you have this match available. So that's all well and good, but the question you may have right now is how do I get a matching grant? And you basically can follow a three-step process to get a matching grant. First, much like you would do with major gift prospects, you prospect, which means finding candidates that might be able to provide a matching grant. Good prospects for matching grants are usually board members, major gift donors, sponsors you've worked with in the past, local businesses you have a relationship with and so on. You basically want to look to your inner circle, people who can give in larger amounts and people who have shown that they like to give to your organization and they can be counted on to do so. So make a list of prospects. When you're considering a matching grant, I recommend starting a spreadsheet with your prospects where you can keep track of important information and log your conversations with them. So then after you've got your prospects together, you'll start the cultivation process, which basically means breaking the ice with them and starting that conversation. We definitely recommend with matching grants prospects reaching out personally with a phone call, a personalized email, or even requesting to set up an in-person meeting just because these are larger donors who are giving in larger amounts. So you want to make that as personal as possible and you want to work on building that relationship with them because that's how that process tends to work. People don't generally, if you're an anonymous person and they speak to a different person every time, they're not going to be as likely to give, but if you build that relationship with one person, they're more likely to want to provide a matching grant for you. And then you just make your ask. Now, this generally works best if you leave it somewhat open and allow the grantor to steer the conversation about how much to give.  You can also post multiple matches at one time or have them go live at certain times. So if you're able to secure multiple smaller matches, you can either post them separately for little fundraising sprints or bundle them together. And if you are able to secure a larger matching grant, you can maybe stretch that until for the entire duration of the giving event. So how you want to use it is really up to you and the size of the grant and your relationship with the grantor. The tool will pretty much allow you to operate your matching grant in any way you wish. There's a lot of options there and a lot of flexibility. So if you're able to, for thinking about a matching grant, and I definitely recommend it, there's still enough time, we were, you know, more than a month out. So you still can, you know, start that conversation and work on securing that matching grant. Also, just take a look at the tool. It's in the donation section of your dashboard where you would find your donation report. And you just click on matching grants from the submenu and you'll be able to take a look at that tool and explore what it can do. So once you've got the match, you need to add it to your page and the gift big site. And you'll also want to promote it on social media in emails and elsewhere, because like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest, a matching grant that nobody knows about, you know, doesn't actually work. So you'll need to, you know, hit your social media accounts, promote it in emails so that people know that this is available to them, that they have the chance to double their donation or however you want to phrase it to them, let them know that it's there and that you're looking for them to donate on the specific date and time by publicizing it and making them, you know, well aware that they have this opportunity to make their donation go further. And you can see there's a little bit of a screenshot of the matching grants tool. You can see when one is live, that's, you know, all there for you. The tool is easy to use. But if you have any questions about queuing up a matching grant or entering it, you can certainly email support and we'll help you work through that. So moving on to another strategy that's a proven success for giving days is peer-to-peer fundraising. Peer-to-peer fundraising deputizes your existing supporters to fundraise on your behalf. They can create a page on Lady Cause and ask people they know to donate to their page. And there's a few reasons why this is an effective strategy. And the main thing about it is donor acquisition. One of the great things about an event like Give Big St. Croix Valley is that the visibility of the overall event and the work that United Way puts into promoting it can help you pick up some new donors and help you reach new people. And you can amplify that, amplify that even further by using peer-to-peer fundraisers. And that's because, well, you don't have access to your followers and supporters, family members and friends, so that you can ask them to donate and you tell them about your campaign, they do have that access. So they can go to this crop of people your nonprofit may never have had any contact with and may not have permission to contact and spread the word about your work and your message and ask them to donate to your campaign. So it really is a powerful tool. You're reaching new people and you're getting donations on a day when, you know, the reach that you have is critical to your success. Now, when it comes to peer-to-peer fundraising, you need to ask people to do it. Sometimes they crop up of their own accord. People just start fundraisers. But for a giving day, you typically need to ask them. You can do this personally if you have people in mind who might be a good fit for this, if they have a large social network. But you can also put out a call on social media or email asking people to fundraise for you. It can also be a really great fun way for people who may not have that much money on their own to give, to still get involved and raise funds for your organization and help. Since it's free for them to do, they are not donating their own money. They're basically donating their time and their social network. So volunteers and staff members are definitely worth tapping for peer-to-peer fundraisers. And again, your board, it's worth asking them, hey, can you create a fundraiser for us so that we can reach more people and get more donations on April 30th? For board members, it's usually part of their responsibility to fundraise for you and help you in that aspect of running your organization.  And on that note, if you've had peer-to-peer fundraisers before or you're just comfortable with the concept of peer-to-peer fundraising and you really want to kick it up a notch, you can consider utilizing event and team fundraising, particularly if you'd like to get a group of people involved, like your entire board, as we were talking about local businesses and so on. Event and team fundraising allows them to work together and fundraise is a group for a common goal. And it also adds additional layers of competition because team pages and event pages have their own leader board. So it's totally separate from the leader board for the giving event. But if they want to, you know, compete with each other to see who can raise the most money for your cause, they can do that on a team page or an event page, which one you want to choose just kind of depends on the complexity that you're looking for. But that can be a really great way to ratchet up the competition and to raise more, to get people motivating each other and allowing that friendly competition to get them to raise more money for your organization. So it may not be a great thing to try out if this is your first year or you're not really that comfortable with online fundraising. But again, if you're an experienced fundraiser and you've participated before and you've had peer-to-peer fundraisers before, this can be a really great way to just bump things up a notch and take it even further so that you can raise more money on April 30th. All right, so now we're going to shift gears a little bit and go into how to promote your campaign. One of the most important avenues you have to promote your campaign is your email list. So make sure you've got email scheduled that you have a plan. We recommend keeping your emails pretty short and sweet and easy to read with a clear call to action. Most people are busy, they just kind of skim emails for the bullet points. So make sure that your email communicates what you want, but it's also something that people can easily skim to find the most important information. And we also recommend a clear call to action, which we'll talk about in just a second. Segmenting your emails is also a best practice. It kind of depends on the size of your email list. If you have a very small email list, that may not be realistic, but if you have a larger email list with different types of donors, we definitely recommend segmenting. And what that means is splitting your email contacts into groups based on what they have in common, like volunteers, recurring donors, board members and so on. So you can talk more specifically to who these donors are and the relationships they have with your nonprofit, which means they will be more likely to click on your email, read it and make a donation. People generally like it when you talk to them specifically and acknowledge who they are. Obviously, if you have a volunteer who comes in every week and they get an email that doesn't acknowledge that, that's not a great experience for that volunteer. So segmenting your emails is something you can do through pretty much every email marketing service, whether you use constant contact or MailChimp, that is something that you should be aware of doing or try to do just so that you're talking specifically to these important groups of donors instead of blasting things out to everyone. Obviously a few blast emails, like when the event begins, when you start sending emails for donations and they don't have any specific messaging toward particular donors, those are fine to send blast emails. I'm not saying blast emails are bad, but you definitely want to take some extra time and care with some of these segments that are really key supporters of your organization. Definitely schedule your emails ahead of time and think about the timing. You want to send out some email reminders before the event, explaining, hey, give Big St. Corrie Valley's coming up on April 30th. This is what this event is. This is why we're participating and here's what we're looking to achieve. Here's where you can donate. And if you haven't already done so, you can send a notice that donations are now open and just be strategic about when you send these throughout the day. Obviously not a lot of people are going to be checking their email at 2 a.m., even though people are making donations incredibly at that hour, but you want to think about when people are getting up, when they're sitting down to look at their emails, when they get off of work and are maybe checking their phones for their personal email. So think about key times when you want to hit your audience and make those emails really pop out and be at the top of their inbox. Make sure to choose a mobile-friendly template in your email marketing software because most of your donors these days are going to be checking their emails from their phones. So if your email only looks right on a desktop and it looks crazy on a smartphone, they're probably not going to click through that email. So you want to make sure that it looks good on mobile devices as well as on desktop, especially in non-profit environments, we can sort of work from a desktop and forget that the average person is looking at their phone to read their emails in a lot of cases. So just make sure that when you're going through and choosing a template to create your emails, that it is mobile-friendly. And on that note, Mighty Cause is mobile responsive. So the Give Big Site is mobile responsive. It can tell what kind of device you're using to access it. So it'll look good on a mobile phone, your page will look good on a mobile phone, a tablet, whatever you happen to be using. Just make sure that your emails are also mobile-friendly. And I can't stress this enough, test your emails before you send them. And when I say test them, I mean have several people review them, check you for typos, click on any links to make sure they work. And as a tip, make sure you have a link to your Give Big Page embedded in your images, in your email, because for some reason, I've seen this over years of doing email marketing, people really like to click on images, as opposed to links that are embedded in the email or the CTA button. So just make sure that all of the images that you have have a hyperlink, because for some reason, people are just more likely to click on those than any other links. Check your emails on a couple of different devices and different browsers to make sure that they look how you want them to look. Because sometimes, as I mentioned above earlier, an email will look great in Chrome and look kind of weird in Internet Explorer, so just test them out. And if you need help, you can always recruit volunteers to help you check emails and test links and do that kind of work for you. So it doesn't have to all be on you and your staff, you can always get some emails involved, because that's a really easy way for volunteers to get involved remotely, and it doesn't take much time for them to do. And finally, on the email front, make sure you have a clear call to action or CTA. That means it's not only a button, but your CTA and what you would like people to do, what action you would like them to take, is evident from your subject line, the headline that you use, and the graphics that you use. Make sure you have a working link to the page. That's your Mighty Cause page on the Give Big site where you want people to make a donation and use clear, urgent language, like Give Now or Donate Now. Sometimes nonprofits can be a little bit shy with their CTAs and say things like, thank you for your donation, but data shows that simple CTAs work best and it works best when there's some urgency behind them, saying thank you for your donation before someone's made a donation is not really a great CTA, but something like Donate Now, it's urgent, it's quick and easy to read, it's simple, and if you have a working link behind that CTA button, that's sure to get a couple of clicks. So make sure that you are intentional and thoughtful about the calls to action you use in your emails. All right, so another important avenue you have to reach people, and an important part of a social media, of a giving day strategy is social media. My advice to you is to focus on wherever you have the biggest audience. So if you have a good sized Facebook page that only have a handful of followers on Twitter, don't bother live tweeting on April 30th. That doesn't mean that you should ignore other platforms, but spend the most time and invest the most effort where you have the most people watching. I recommend scheduling your key posts, which you can do through pretty much all of the services, Instagram's a little bit funky and doesn't like to let people schedule things ahead of time, but on Facebook and Twitter and most of the major platforms, you can schedule ahead of time, and that allows you to leave any time that you have for live posting for updates on how much you've raised, time-sensitive updates throughout the day, like if you're really close to a milestone or your fundraising goal, save that kind of thing for live posting and all of your key content, any videos, graphics, stories you want to share on social media, schedule all of that ahead of time, and save your energy for interacting with your followers, responding to comments, responding to direct messages and so on. Just be available to your supporters, be involved on social media, respond to people. If they say, hey, I made a donation, thank them on social media, and you can also involve volunteers in that. A lot of volunteers have social media experience and they're happy to jump in and say thank you and answer questions that they may have. So if you need, if you're a small operation, you need some help with that, you can certainly loop in some volunteers to help you with social media on the day of, especially if you're going to be super busy. It can also be really helpful, especially on Facebook, to budget a little bit of money to boost your key posts. And when I say spend money, I really don't mean much. I mean, $15 can do a lot for your reach on Facebook and it can help you be seen by more people. And if you're not too familiar with Facebook targeting, if it's not something that you use very often, I recommend with sticking to boosting your posts to your followers, which is one of the options you can choose. And the reason for that is that sometimes Facebook's algorithm means people who like your page may not see your post on the day you post it. They may see it a few days afterward, or they may not even see the post at all just because that's the way Facebook is working. It's not chronological. It's been that way for quite a long time, but paying a little bit to boost a post to the right people will ensure that your post with your key content gets in front of the right people at the right time when you're looking to collect donations for Give Big St. Cory Valley. I definitely recommend focusing on algorithm-friendly content. That is to say that Facebook and Twitter, they all have algorithms and those algorithms tend to prefer certain types of content. We see that they get more engagement overall, and that includes video and photos. Empirically, these just get more engagement than just text posts. That means clicks, that clicks, that means comments, that means likes, retweets, all of that is included under the umbrella of engagement. So definitely work on getting some assets together for social media, whether that's a video you want to share or images you want to share. That'll be a huge help on social media, and these can also pull double duty because you can share them on Mighty Cause and in emails as well. So now that we're a little over a month out from the event, it's a great time to start pulling those assets together and start getting ready to post them on social media so that you have them in the hopper and they're ready to go on the day out. Just like with email, you want to make sure you include a strong CTA on social media as well. Sometimes we can forget about that on social media, but once you've told this great story or shared this awesome video, people want to know what to do. So you need to say, hey, go here and make a donation and obviously include a link on Facebook, on Twitter, everywhere. If you post the most amazing story in the world and the most amazing video, but you forget the link to donate, then you've probably lost some donors. So be really careful about making sure that it's clear from your post where people are supposed to go to make a donation. All right. So one thing that's really important to consider, especially if you've done Give Big St. Croix Valley in previous years, is donor retention. People who've donated to your Give Big campaigns in the past are low hanging fruit. So it's a mistake not to try to bring these people back. You can download a list of your previous donors on your donation report on Mighty Cause. We recommend doing some outreach to these donors in particular, sending them some dedicated emails that acknowledges that they've supported you for Give Big St. Croix Valley in the past, with messaging like we know we can count on your support again this year. And this is an area where email segmentation really comes in handy. You can just make quick tweaks to your emails that are going out to everybody else in your email list.  In addition to retaining these donors, you'll want to aim to get their donation a little bit higher. You want to bump them up to the next level. So if someone has donated $50 to your nonprofit for two years in a row, why not send them a personal email and say, hey, you've been a great supporter of ours. I see that you've given us $50 for previous St. Croix Valley giving days. Why can you give us 75 this year? I mean, finesse it a little bit more than that, but reach out to them and ask them to make a donation and try to bump them up a little bit. We also recommend tracking this on the big day, which again, you can use your donation report for. So if you're falling a little bit short of your goal, or if you're trying to get to a milestone for fundraising, you can pull together pretty easily a last minute email to your previous year supporters who have yet to donate this year. And that can be the big thing that pushes you toward that milestone, toward that goal. So pull that list, get it out of Mighty Cause and know who those donors are and keep track of whether you retain them this year so that if you need to have a last-minute effort to get yourself to where you want to be in terms of fundraising, you have them ready and you can communicate with them easily. So donor acquisition is, as we discussed, a really big part of giving events. But donor retention is a key part of how nonprofits who participate in giving events year after year can make those events successful and make them a, you know, cornerstone of their fundraising calendar. So it's important to pay attention to it, especially if you've given, if you've participated and give big in past years. All right. So one last note on campaign strategy is to follow up because it is not over when you've got someone's donation. That is the beginning of the stewarding process. So make sure you've got a plan in place for a prompt and personal thank you. Mighty Cause does take care of sending out receipts to donors. Donors will get those receipts as soon as they complete their donation on the platform. But there's a few things you can do as well to, you know, thank them personally and make sure that those donors have been properly acknowledged. You do have a thank you page. That's in your donor experience. They'll see that as soon as they're finished making their donation. You can put a message there from your nonprofit. You can put a thank you video there. And we also recommend, especially for people who give in bigger amounts, sending out a quick email saying, Hey, thank you for your donation. Just from somebody real, that's something that's not automated. One thing that you can also do, you can choose to collect a phone number in your donor experience. And you can set that so that you're getting phone numbers from people making phone calls can seem kind of old fashioned. But it is a really nice, lovely touch to have someone call you after you make a donation and say, Thank you so much for supporting us and talking to them and building that personal relationship. That is what the stewarding process is all about. So you can, you know, choose to collect phone numbers. You can even get volunteers to make those calls for you. I donated to a nonprofit for a giving day that I was managing at the end of last year. And within the hour, I got a really friendly phone call from a volunteer, just thanking me for my donation. And it was such a nice touch. So think about, you know, what you can do at your nonprofit based on your capacity, how many people you have working on this event to do just a personal follow up to, you know, make sure that these donors feel thanked and feel special. Data shows that not only the promptness with which you thank them, but how well you thank them plays a huge role in whether or not people choose to come back and support your nonprofit.  And when it's over, just make sure you follow up with everybody as a whole, not just to thank them, but to share your results and show the impact of their support on Give Big St. Croix Valley. Pay special attention to first time donors and make sure you get them into your donor pipeline. That can mean sending them a welcome packet in the mail or a welcome series of emails so that they can learn more about your nonprofit. But the important thing is that you don't lose contact with them after Give Big St. Croix Valley because that's unfortunately one of the things that can happen. Nonprofits across the sector lose about half of the donors that they acquire. So you really want to make sure that when you get these new donors for Give Big St. Croix Valley, you're making good use of them. You're putting them in the pipeline. You're building a relationship with them and you're staying in contact with them so they're not just hearing from you next year when you participate in the giving day. They're hearing from you on a regular basis and building a relationship with you. And that's true of all of your donors. You'll just want to stay in touch and especially if you were fundraising for something in particular, like if you had a fundraiser going for a new roof for your building or you're starting a new program, set updates to the people who donated to help you out during the year and just let them know what you're up to, what you're doing, and what they've helped accomplish or helped your nonprofit accomplish, and just continue stewarding those donors. It's a year-round on-going process and definitely you don't want to think of the end of the event as the end of your communications with these donors. You want to have a plan to follow up so that you can retain these donors. You can get them to come back to support you time and time again and really make that giving day experience worth it for you as a nonprofit. Okay, and now we're going to shift gears totally and talk about prizes for Give Big St. Croix Valley. There are two leaderboards for Give Big St. Croix Valley and that's where all of the participants are ranked.  Give Big has a most unique donors leaderboard and a most dollars raised leaderboard, which how everybody is ranked on those leaderboards is slightly self-explanatory. On the leaderboard you'll see all donations made from March 1st on. March 1st is when donations open through the end of the event. After the event the leaderboards themselves kind of freeze so you won't see those amounts go up. It just includes every donation that was made during the duration of the event from when early donations open until the event concluded. One thing to note is that the leaderboard total does not include offline donations because our system has no way of verifying offline donations and it also does not include matching grants unless the case was that your grantor fulfilled that match online by making a donation through the Give Big site. So your leaderboard totals are just the amount that you've raised in online donations but this is really where the competition is on the giving day.  There is a prize for the people who have the most unique donors so that's an important leaderboard to keep an eye on. The top seven on this leaderboard will qualify for a prize grant. As for what a unique donor is that is one person. So if you have one person making seven donations throughout the day that does not count as seven donors that counts as one person that's one donor. This competition has started it is underway it includes all of the pre-event donations so it's anyone's game at this point so you can stack the deck in your favor and get a jump start by getting those early donations. You can start the day with a bunch of unique donors already in the bag and rank on that leaderboard so that would be an action item if you've already got your page set up is to start getting those unique donors and climb up that leader board. The next way you can win are golden tickets and golden tickets are hourly prizes they are $100 prizes and they are randomly awarded so every hour at least one nonprofit will win an extra $100 prize and basically how these work is that any nonprofit that receives a donation during the hour that is there they're eligible for a golden ticket and the more donations you have the more likely it is that you will win. If you think about it like a raffle if you purchase multiple raffle tickets you're increasing the odds that you'll win each time you purchase a ticket except in this case the tickets are donations so to win golden tickets you'll just want to drive donations every hour of the event and again these are worth $100 each you can win multiples and basically how this works is if there's a 9 a.m. golden ticket being pulled meaning that that golden ticket is pulled at 9 a.m. all of the donations made from 8 a.m. to the very last second of the 8 o'clock hour will be eligible for a golden ticket so just to clarify they are of limited to the hour so donations made before the event starts do not count toward golden tickets offline donations do not count toward golden tickets matching grants don't count toward golden tickets unless you have your donor your grant or make that grant online so like I said it's an hourly opportunity to win it's really an equal opportunity for every nonprofit to win because if you're behind and you're not ranking high on the leaderboard if you have a donation or two come in during an hour you have an opportunity to win a golden ticket so in a way it kind of evens the playing field by having this on an hourly basis and you'll be able to see who's won a golden ticket with a little table that will be on the live event site you can see that on the the slide here and it'll also show on the leaderboard you'll have a ticket next to your a nonprofit's name that indicates that you want a golden ticket and the cool thing that is that happens with golden tickets is that it's associated with a donor so as you can see on the random hourly prizes chart on the slide Tanya Franta donated to an organization her donation was the winning donation and she helped the nonprofit raise a hundred dollars in prizes so the nonprofit could go to Tanya and be like hey you helped us raise win a golden ticket thank you so much and it creates this great interaction with the donor obviously that will not be there if the donor has chosen to remain anonymous you'll just see the name anonymous under donor and you won't be able to contact them but that is a really cool way you can you know interact with your supporters on the giving day is if they help you want to go and take it reach out and say thank you and let them know that their donation had a 100 dollar boost added to it because they helped you win that prize and just to let you know we do have a fall back in place in case there are any hours where there are no winners because there's no donations so if there are any overnight or morning hours with no winners we'll push through an additional winner for each hour at 11 a.m. and at the same thing if there are no out or there are any hours throughout the day in the evening with no winners we'll push through additional tickets at 11 p.m. we're going to have a schedule of golden tickets put on the rules and prizes page on the Give Big site so when that's ready you'll most likely get an email about that letting you know because some of the the hours may have two or three golden tickets awarded so there will be a schedule that you will have access to but for Give Big St. Croix Valley there will be at least one every hour of the event so there will be at least 24 golden tickets and most likely quite a bit more so we'll have that schedule posted for you and in the events that there's no winners we'll have an additional we'll have additional winners for however many hours were missed at 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. we did not have to do that last year I'm happy to say that there were donations every single hour of the event but that's also something you can think about a little bit as you're thinking about your strategy is you know who's making donations at 3 a.m. if you you know play your cards right and do some outreach that could be you and so since there's a smaller pool of people who are making donations and those wee hours of the morning you can you know sort of put yourself in a better position to win a golden ticket by having people donate during those overnight hours or you know you know making your staff aware that if they donate late at night they can help you so there's a lot of things you can do to strategically win these even though they are random but that's how golden tickets work and again there will be a full schedule of these and how many will be awarded during each hour on the give big site soon so you'll get a notification when that goes out and that will help you understand how when you can get golden tickets obviously if there's more than one being awarded you want to go hard that hour and get as many donations as you can during that hour so you can increase your chances of winning all right so that is all I've got for now Sarah if you would like to unmute yourself we can start taking questions so if you have a question about anything that we've gone over in this presentation just type it into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel because we're going to we're going to make plenty of time to answer everybody's questions and we've got one here somebody who missed the beginning of the webinar and just as a note this will be posted on the give big site under the non-profit toolkit as soon as as soon as we're done and I can post the recording basically so if you missed a piece you can certainly check back on in the non-profit toolkit okay this person asked on the give big website is each organization expected to start a fundraiser or create a fundraising event or is it automatically added to our page if we registered for give big okay so every non-profit with the exception of a few that maybe don't have their own 501c3 or a very new 501c3 organizations has a page for their organization on Mighty Cause so you don't need to start a fundraiser you don't need to create a fundraising event what you want to do is create a Mighty Cause account if it's your first time you know using Mighty Cause on on the or the give big platform so you will need a an account with Mighty Cause in order to sign up for the event that's one thing that you will have to do and then you just have to register your non-profit will already have a page that's associated with your your EIN your non-profit status and then you'll just have to go in and customize that page so you don't need to create a fundraiser you don't need to create a fundraising event you just need to sign up for a Mighty Cause account and then you'll do that on the upper right hand corner of the page if you're you know you don't currently have an account and when you log in you can search for your organization's page in the registration form so that you can easily find your non-profit if you're not finding them there or if you have a unique situation where you have a fiscal sponsor just let me contact Sarah or contact me my email is linda at mightycause.com you can also contact support there's a link there that you'll need to click to give us the information about you know what your situation is if you have a fiscal sponsor we just need documentation in place but we can add you but it should be pretty simple for the average non-profit to get signed up I would say all of those prompts to start a fundraiser a creative fundraising event ignore those for now unless you are intentionally looking to create a fundraising event within this giving event you don't need to click any of those so I hope that makes sense but yeah you don't need to create an event or create a fundraiser unless you want to yes I will send Sarah a copy of the slide deck so that you can she can distribute that to you guys but yeah we'll send out the slide deck and you'll also have access to the reporting on the toolkit um let's see and Sarah are you on yes I am okay cool looks like most yeah I can hear you I just I kind of plowed right into the questions without saying hello that's okay all right most of these are technical questions though but I did want to you know keep you there in case you have any tips or one of them is event related that's kind of outside of my my wheelhouse um so let's see this one is about the mobile friendly website um and how to make sure that your emails are mobile friendly um is it easy to make sure that they are mobile friendly in most cases if you're using something like constant contact or MailChimp or campaign monitor whatever email marketing service you use um you there's you can tell when you choose a template that it's mobile friendly um and it'll usually have an icon or it you know some of them may have all mobile friendly templates but some things that can really go a little wonky on mobile are newsletter formats with lots of little boxes next to each other because what happens when you take an email that's got you know a newsletter format where you've got lots of boxes next to each other a phone a smartphone browser takes those and stacks them so if you have you know five or six different columns that you've you've written into your email or however many columns you have or side by side boxes those are all going to be stacked and that can look really funky in an email and be hard to read and it makes it harder for people to get to the bottom of the email or wherever your cta is so check with you know there's probably support archive archives where you can find out you know exactly how to tell if an email is mobile friendly um you know in whatever program you use whether it's constant contact MailChimp or any of the other multiple email marketing programs there are um and the other thing is test them so send an email to test email to yourself to you know see and open it up on your phone open it up on a tablet open it up in a different browser that's kind of the testing I was talking about to make sure that you know everything looks good from device to device because most people do check their email from their phone I know I do so just pull it up on your phone send it to your personal email address and check it out on your phone if you're a droid user and somebody else in the office has an iPhone send it to them see how it looks just as you're testing them out especially with these key emails now this is only with you know email marketing software if you are super small and you're you know personally sending you know things to contacts in gmail and you're not using something like constant contact then that doesn't really apply but if you're using an email marketing program like constant contact or MailChimp you should easily be able to tell if it's mobile friendly either by looking at the template you're choosing or by testing it and just keep in mind that anything that is side by side on an in an email is going to stack on mobile so lots of things next to each other is generally a recipe for disaster with mobile emails but yeah I mean if you you know want to reach out to me I'm happy to help you if you let me know what email service you're using I'm happy to you know point you in the right direction all right so someone has a question about what is a unique donor so a unique donor is just one person so if you make 20 donations to your own nonprofit on you know give big you are one donor you are one unique donor so that's basically the just of it is you know people you know trying to donate multiple times they that's that they're one person they're one unique donor so you can you have two ways you're being ranked one is by the volume of donations you bring that you bring in or the amount of donations you bring in in which case having people donate multiple times especially when it comes for golden tickets that can be really helpful and useful it will not affect the unique donor count because it's the number of individuals who donate so it's just a unique person I'm an individual I donated 20 times but I'm one person so in terms of how that looks on the back end I unfortunately can't get into that but basically one person equals one unique donor and that's how that works so you know if we do take a look at things that happen throughout the day you know if somebody is creating lots of multiple accounts that can sometimes be considered cheating so generally one person is one unique donor you know and that's that's how to especially because there's prize money behind this you know unique donors just counts how many donors you're able to bring in and the purpose of that as Sarah's I'm sure can attest is to you know help you guys grow and get more donors that's really the mission of give big St. Croix Valley is to help out nonprofits so one person equals one unique donor so I hope that makes sense Sarah do you have any anything to add on the unique donor situation no that's what I've been communicating as well so okay cool yeah it's just one person and we do see a list of who donates what so definitely finding creative ways to make one person count as 30 people we do tend to pick up on that you know I'm able to see that during the day but generally just you know one person is one unique donor and that's that's the end of that story I think let's see oh okay another question I'm sorry did you say we will have access to listen to this webinar again yes so that once I'm done with the webinar and I've uploaded it to YouTube we'll put it on the give big site so you just go to resources and npo toolkit and you'll be able to access it there you can fast forward some of the talking I did that maybe wasn't so interesting or go back to the question and answer section if that's what you want to do or just share it with people but yeah you're going to have access to the recording we'll post it on the give big site probably I would say no later than tomorrow YouTube's a little slow unfortunately but yeah so we'll have this available to you and Sarah I will send you the slide deck if you want to send that out in an email to everybody all right so there's another one can I enter cash and check donations for give big yes you can enter them as offline donations and they will be added to the total on your page though one thing I do want to make clear though is because this is an online giving marathon they don't count for the total amount raised for the event and they will not show on your leaderboard so sometimes if you know you look at your nonprofit on the leaderboard on the day of and you're like hey there's a there's a discrepancy in most cases that is an offline donation so certainly if you receive cash or check donations you can enter them on your site so that they're reflected in the total amount that you've raised and the fundraising that you've done they just won't appear on the leaderboard and they do not count toward prizes and that is really just to keep the playing field fair because we can't verify that an offline donation was actually received just somebody wants to enter in a $300 donation and you know bump up their amount we have no way of verifying that so just as a general rule they are not counted but definitely if you want to reflect the the full spectrum of all the fundraising you did you can enter them as offline donations that is in your donation section on your dashboard where you'll find your donations report it's just right there you just say add an offline donation and enter in the donors information and then it'll add that to your total but yeah they you can add it you can have it reflected in your organization's total it just won't show on the leaderboard and it does is not eligible for prizes all right oh this is a good one for Sarah are offline donors able to drop at specific give big locations again i'm not fully sure that that means but you might know yep yes we we will be having some drop-off locations in the communities we're working with a couple of the sponsor banks that have agreed to be that location that being said if there is a nonprofit that you know if you have volunteers or something that would like to set up a location in a local coffee shop or a restaurant or the library or something like that and you want to let your people know that that's where you'll be on that day that would be fine too but i'll be communicating as soon as we know time frames and which banks and in which communities i will communicate that in the email awesome thank you um and then the follow-up question to that was when do those get added to our page those would be um yeah we would sorry um my understanding is those get then mailed to the nonprofit um unless um we would be after the fact because they would be um we're getting them on the day of so unless the nonprofit wants to come and pick them up if they are received let's say we get a check for an amary nonprofit at the amary location and they could certainly come and pick up the check at that location on that day um but i'm not a hundred percent sure on how that was handled last year um being new so i apologize i can get that answer as well and communicate that when i send out the slide okay cool um there's a few more questions um one is a question about matching grants um do i have to collect the matching grant donation on the give big site um the answer to that is no um you can collect it however you want with your donor the thing to keep in mind about that of course is that if they give you a cash or a check it's not counted toward prizes um so it's not counted on the leaderboard and it's not counted for golden tickets so you can certainly log it on uh you know obviously the large donation a lot of people prefer to write checks or send you the money in some other fashion so they don't have to make the donation online that's totally up to you and your relationship with the the person who's providing the grants um they can make the donation online so if you you know got a five hundred dollar matching grant from them and you were able to raise five hundred dollars and they they can fulfill that online um so they can they'll get an email if you've entered in their email address that'll send them an email saying hey this has been fulfilled go here to you know make your your donation they can ignore that if you've already got a check coming in from that or if you've already collected the check um but they you know they can do either or depending on their preferences so um there's you're not locked into anything there um the only thing I will say is that if your donor would like to fulfill the match online then you do not want to count it um in your and basically you have the option of auto calculating so when somebody donates twenty dollars if you have a match in place it'll say forty dollars in your total if you have the donor making that um donation online that would result in it being counted twice it's not the end of the world we can definitely correct it after the fact if like you know there was some breakdown in communication and they donated online and you were thinking they were going to give you a check it's not a big deal we can help you out at support um but you know that's the only caveat I would put to that if you have it coming in online and you've already come to that agreement um then don't auto calculate it um with each donation um basically it'll add an offline donation for each donation that gets you to the amount of the match if that makes any sense whatsoever um but yeah if you need any help with that you can always contact us at support at ladycause.com but you can do whatever you want with your grantors um we don't lock you into anything and one last question I know is a little bit after uh time right now um but there's a great question to end on which is where can I go if I need help with my page um the answer is go you can come to Sarah um but typically you want to go to support at ladycause.com particularly if it's a technical issue an issue with a donation a question about your page um we have support staff available to you um so that support at ladycause.com often email is easier we do have a phone number if you would like to call us um but email is a lot easier because you can sort of tell us what the situation is we can look at it um on our end it's a little bit harder to get things like email addresses correct over the phone um so support at ladycause.com is your friend make sure that you have that address in your um in your contact list in your email um and just as another note um as part of the the giving day and how it works um we provide support to your donors as well so on the day of if you get questions from donors that are like you know oh gosh I'm getting this message when I'm trying to make a donation or did my donation go through twice or whatever you know questions your donor has has you can send them to support as well and we can look at it and make sure that they are able to successfully process their donation um so yeah support at mightycause.com where your friends were here to help you uh don't be afraid to reach out to us um but yeah I think that's it for now if you guys have any other questions especially related to giving day strategy you can always email me I'm available to you um my email is linda at mighty cause.com that's linda with an i at mightycause.com and I think that's it for today thank you so much Sarah and thank you everybody who attended thank you Linda absolutely have a great day and enjoy the first day of spring guys


Gehr pulls a special place in the history of our unit, and it sets the perfect backdrop for this next chapter in our Guinness Legacy. We begin this next chapter as we deploy to the Verbenfels on other days. On April 16th, 1986, this combat invasion for Gehr was born in Oddsbach, Germany. The iron patch we all wear on our shoulders is a well-known symbol of both in Germany and throughout Europe. It symbolizes the power of spirit in the United States Army's premier fighting force, the Perth Army. Our allies and partners know this. Our adversaries know this. And upon completion of the Army's ninth rotation to a land resolved, the world will know this. The Iron Eagle combat invasion of the United States is ready. Ready to train. Ready to maintain. And it called upon. Ready for combat. Iron Eagle. Iron Souls. Iron Star.