So I am Jenna, you can find me on LinkedIn. I like people and I work with software. And as Alayna already said, we love open source. We do websites, we do CRMs, ongoing support, hosting maintenance, a lot of anything in consultation. But that's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about the internet of things. I tried to find that there's some sci-fi stories of the illustrated man where like the connected house takes over and eats the parents. I don't know, I could have the plot completely off but I love that the phrase is something that sounds foreign to us and really, this is how we are connected to each other and to our communities already. So what is it? It's the system of interrelated internet connected objects that are able to collect and transfer data. So if you're turning on your oven and you're not even in the house, if you're asking to listen to rock music when you're making dinner, all of these things are part of the internet of things that aren't plugged into a wall that we take and walk around in life. And today we're gonna talk about some of the options of what you as a nonprofit can do with it. The first thing that I like to point out is that there is already this massive infrastructure and when there's infrastructures, foundations pop up and legislation pops up and we need to regulate because this is a massive amount of information that we are entering into our phones at all times and that we are trusting organizations all over the globe with information and businesses, nonprofits alike have access to that and can use it in interesting ways. And so what I found when we share slides, you'll get to click through and read some of these resources but in some research from 2019, I love seeing that 75% of people distrust the way the data is shared and that 63% of people find connected devices creepy when we all have a connected device in our pocket and we find it creepy. So we can just be amused at the irony of both our quick adoption and comfort with these tools and also that it still doesn't feel human, right? And to get over that and to see how they can benefit our work. Another thing that should give some peace of mind is the kind of regulation and attention that is being paid to how this data is used, how devices that are connected are speaking together. And so you as a nonprofit, you don't have to solve that. That there's some great organizations you can check out the Laura Alliance, the Open Connectivity Foundation. If you wanted to get into the weeds of how regulation is actually happening and what is being considered because there is a lot of security risks, security vulnerabilities, the ways that we can end up having information about us that we wonder how was that ever even received because we're connecting with these devices in almost an unconscious way. And so a lot of great resources to just check out to know that this already exists and this is about how you can take advantage of that and that there's many people watching your back to make sure that the way that you're using it, the information that your community is providing is done so in a safe and controlled way. So let's look a little bit at what the data says. And this is just a little reflection too on what happened at COVID. So as of the beginning of 2019, there were already 20 million smart speakers within US households, that's just the US. And if we look at the market share there, you can see who's dominating and that's Amazon. And if we look at the change in what happened during COVID, 52% of users are using those devices more than they did before. And that's an even bigger increase if you look at a specific subset of that demographic. And so we're more connected now than we even were because of COVID, we're all in our homes more and that's changed the nature of even how we use our devices. So one of the most obvious ones that we can think of is Alexa and some of the things that organizations are doing with that. And one of the simple ones that right now there's only 378 charities, which is a small number but that's growing every day of what organizations are signed up and registered through Amazon Pay, which is basically the starting point. It's pretty straightforward if you just Google the FAQs for Alexa of how to get registered and enable voice donation where then you can say, Alexa make a donation too and you have your payment account already set up through your Amazon account and then a donation can be processed with voice authorization to confirm that your donation is correct. Or even if you don't want Alexa device enabled having another call to action that could be added to your website and another method of payment that your donors could make. And in all the organizations that are using this feature it's clear that this is a supplement. It's not about everybody running to the next big trend and then putting all of their eggs in that basket that you're not gonna make all your money from Alexa enabled donations. But this could be a supplement and an interesting way to make a campaign more engaging to have a specific period of time where you're really promoting that type of work. And then maybe afterwards you don't even have that kind of tool. Another function with Amazon and Alexa that organizations are using is creating skills. And I love this example from Audubon where you can ask Audubon what a Northern Cardinal sounds like or one of the 600 plus North American bird species. And that's how that organization has used technology to distribute and make this library of recordings available to their audience where they are, to their community, whether they're outside, they're in their home, you're debating with your father-in-law what a bird sounds like. Well, let's just solve this right now and ask the room because Alexa is always listening. Another interesting one is through the American Heart Association where their Alexa skill is basic CPR instructions. So an ability to Alexa ask American Heart what are the warning signs of the stroke? And so all the different applications that can then be made available depending on what your work is. You know, there's another organization that has Alexa skills about how long should I have an avocado before it goes bad or what's the best way to store asparagus? That there's all kinds of skills built in that make it a fun connected way for you to share your work, your mission, the skills, the resources that you're offering in a way that we are naturally speaking to our devices now, which 20 years ago would have seemed absurd. And it's not too hard to get started. Go to the developer.amazon.com. There is an Alexa skills kit that you can purchase and in that same space, you can see a variety of vendors. So if you don't wanna do it yourself, hire a professional, they can set it up for you. And so this is just one area where if they have 70 to 80% of the market, this is a pretty easy place to start. So a very different kind of internet of things is all sensor data that exists. And the main purpose for that is how can you connect donors to the impact that you're delivering all the time and the way that sensor data is used by organizations to in real time collect information and then share that on their website, share that from the mobile app that they've developed, share that through SMS campaigns that then automatically are updating donors. So one example is an organization who works in developing countries and about access to quality water. And so having sensors on the wells showing how often people are using that resource and how is that different per time of day or day of the week and then being able to share that in real time. And that's a change that we've seen in donors expecting to know the impact of your organization in a different way than they used to. Another type of sensor data that especially for health organizations and if you watch the Super Bowl, you would have seen this ad of announcing that's better care for people with diabetes, no more stick. And so the way that sensor data is changing dramatically in the kind of health data that's available that's really transforming research that we have more control of our own information, right? Because we can track it on our devices. We can share that immediately with our care providers. We can share that immediately with the advocate organizations that we work with. And all of a sudden with big data, better decision strategies can be implemented. So one of the final is the most common that we don't even think of as part of the internet of things that SMS was doing this machine to machine communication long before anyone had uttered the words internet of things that we've been texting for a long time. And it's a reliable two-way communication and that there's a lot that is a lower kind of a a lower threshold to engage in of having a call to action to easily make a donation, get information, join in, advocate, and that kind of workflow of what responses are and what people should send. None of that has to be monitored by a human. There's a great resource here that if you check it out, there's a bunch of three or cheap tools for how you can get started with SMS and the way that that can even help in to other strategies in the future. So we're already here. We already live in this land of connected devices and maybe if we're like the rest of the participants in that first bit of research I shared, then we find it creepy, but we're using these. So how can we embrace that? This is a funny time we live in, but just like when I talk on the phone and my five-year-old son is wondering why we can't see them, there's this new normal that we're already participating in and is going to become even more normal for everybody who comes after us. And so how can we take advantage of it now to make a bigger impact in the work that we're doing? So I can open it up to questions or if anything has come through in chat, we'd love to know. So I think the one question I saw come through was around whether the Alexa donations were supported in Canada. We've done some back and forth Googling around there, but I don't know if we've found the definitive answer quite yet. And I'll look at some of my links too and just pop those in, because that can be valuable for folks to share. I really, I was very amused when you read the research. I love the point of how unnerved we are by the availability of these resources, but how connected we are to them. And the sensor data, that's a technology too, that sensors are easier to buy than they ever have been. And if you take a look at some of those organizations and the proliferation of different networks that can work at lower band, I'm not using all these right words, but basically you don't have to have the same cellular connectivity to have those dead zones and still have the internet of things be able to function. It's pretty impressive, which is what a lot of those foundations and organizations are taking on. So as software is improving in this space, we can have the infrastructure within our communities, states that are going to support the devices that we're using. Lovely. Well, thank you so much. And as a reminder to all the attendees, we will take the video, the slides and some of the key links that were mentioned in the chat and wrap that all up into a blog post by probably the end of the week and I'll email everyone who RSVP'd with that information. So yeah, we're totally gonna be on top of that for you. So moving on. So next we're gonna be bringing in Lauren Killian, the owner of RXK Consulting who's gonna be talking about how we can amplify human relationships using tech as opposed to just like living just in the tech world. So it's an interesting model for thinking about how we can bring new tools into our work. And with that, I'm gonna get out of the way and pass it over. Go Lauren. Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me today. So as discussed, my name is Lauren. I am a previous owner of C3nami, a digital marketing agency. And what I do is I help businesses really focus on amplifying the human relationship that they're building within their communities online. And I work with both for-profit and non-profit. And what we're going to talk about today is about how digital is now the primary form of communication and really how that affects not just in the marketing, which is a lot of the examples that you'll see today but just in how you choose to build your community overall. And so to kind of give some setting up the scene a little bit before we show very specific examples toward the end is that with lockdown it actually accelerated e-commerce by five years. And what I like to joke is saying that, yes we intellectually have accelerated by five years but that does not mean that we're emotionally ready or mentally ready or have the good social practices to do so. So if you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed with all the new technology, the ever-changing algorithm that is happening every 24 hours, it's okay. We're all in the same boat and learning this together. But there's some key notes to note. The first thing is that there is a whole new audience. These are people that typically prefer to shop in person. They like to touch and feel and get to know the person in person. And so with the pandemic and not being able to interact in person, both all types of organizations are being required to review how they choose to engage with customers and employees. There are two sides to this. And how to continue maintaining that trust. That is the key thing. Trust is what is taken because it used to be that you could just be in the store and get to know someone almost impromptu without a ton of research experience to purchase or buy or be a part of something. And now with the internet, there is this level of I'm not exactly sure because I don't know if it's real or not. And there are bad actors out there who do scams and bad products and stuff like that. And that is the thing. So when you're coming from a perspective of a marketer, it's no longer about how many people I can get through the door, but about how much trust I can build with my audience and how much I can actually be able to get my audience to continue building trust for me to everybody else. Cause that is the most powerful form of it. And this is why when we talk about digital marketing becoming more human and you'll see this if you decide to Google the latest trend data reports is that it is becoming more human because the technology is taking away a lot of the friction that we most of the time assume is there with technology. So this changes the way that we approach marketing in the sense that we are now looking to cultivate engaged customers, like I talked about earlier and social proof and engagement is how brands rise above the throng. It's not about how many times you're posting. It's not about the vanity metrics of followers. It is about engagement rate because even if you have 10,000 followers and if you're only able to engage 100 of them that means you're at 1% of your audience that is actually interested in what you're talking about. Which means all the effort and return on investment is suddenly deoptimized. So just to think about that and social proof is the way to build trust. Because we can't touch and feel something we need to hear from someone else to come through the door. So that's the shift is how do you go from passive consumers to engaged consumers and communities is a wonderful way of doing that. It is a wonderful way for you to be able to have your biggest ambassadors be almost in the same digital networking room as a new customer so that they're suddenly building way more trust that would have taken you five years, so years to build with that brand ambassador to be able to like lower that timeline with a whole new customer coming through the door. So what does this mean for you? It means that you need to tie it back to your foundation and no matter how everything changes and I definitely say it changes like about every 24 hours. I'm not joking. When I talk about a new tech feature that changes the ball game is that there are three things that you need to know. First off, what is your mindset? What is your intention? What is your goals? Just like what Jen I was talking about earlier it's not about here's a new tech feature let's put all of our eggs into one basket. It's always going back to saying what is my end intention that I'm looking to achieve an impact as my organization and what am I looking to achieve? Not just to the end person that I am serving but my community overall and what is the realistic expectation of what success looks like for you? It does not all mean the same for everybody else. It just means what it means for you and knowing the context of your industry and how you can rise above the throng but most importantly it's about the customer journey. It's what I talked about earlier. It's all about how is your customer journey evolving to not just get people through the door but get them to come back through the door every single time and bringing a friend. So this what that really relates and boils down to is something that we call human centered marketing. And this is the power behind the brand. This is how a brand rises above the throng in before because you go from just serving a transactional need to connecting at a deeper human level.  It's not just, oh, you're helping me but in so doing helping me we're helping so many other people and there's a sense of belonging in place to that. If you tap into this human relationship that makes you uniquely you then you'll be able to realign everything together. There are two general parts into building a relationship. The first part is tactical. So these are like how are you tweaking the feature as new features come out tactically into your customer journey but the key is emotional. It's about what is the mindset that I am having and walking my person through that gets them from someone that just heard about me to the same time for the first time to becoming a die hard fan because in these emotions is actually where we build trust. We are emotional creatures. That's the part of being human. That's what makes us amazing and powerful and if you can connect on that emotional piece then you have tapped into a value and a connection and I will make one single final note. The next generation connects digitally without physical barriers and they connect on a username and what words you're saying not what you tactically can offer. That means that the next generation connects purely on values first needs second. It is counteractive if you grew up in an analog arena where you are introducing and getting to know them first get to know them and how they can offer in the outside world. So it is changing all together and that's just something to note into that space. So how you look into that is where are you building trust? This is the key funnel to look towards when we're talking about new customer guiding them into becoming a full excited fan and it's knowing where they start and knowing your audience. It's not just like, I serve everyone. That's not the case. It's not just demographics. It's not just psychographics. It's about where are they in that psychological journey? Are they only feeling awareness points? Do they actually understand the issue that you are solving? And then how do you explain who you are in that decision stage to where they are excited to work with you above everyone else and why they stay with your brand is that larger mission that I talk about. So I'm gonna give some very specific examples about ways that you can incorporate. So these are more tactical. I just explained the emotional side. Your emotional side shouldn't change drastically in terms of building that relationship and customer journey that we talk about. The tactical side will change depending on new features that come up. So one of the new terms that you'll hear throwing around a lot in the marketing arena is the concept of social commerce. This is different from e-commerce. E-commerce is about being able to go ahead and like go to click to the website. Social commerce is buying and purchasing everything within the Instagram app. The power behind this is that every single part of from a post to a video to your influencers videos and posts and reels are all shoppable. So being able to connect in that space there's also a donation button for nonprofits. That's all connected as well. So shopping and reels in social commerce but the power behind that is that it's more than just this functional need. The reason why the shopping and the reels is so powerful is because it's storytelling in spite chunks. You can also do storytelling in post. This is an example of H&M really tackling about the sustainability cause. This is a for-profit company but nonprofits can also do it too. And when you're in the app you can actually click it and it's all shoppable and it goes straight into their shop section for that collection. And but the most impactful thing for nonprofits is user generated content. Not content created by you but content created by your audience. This is the digital reflection of what you typically see in nonprofits whether you have an event, they get a sponsor, they get pitched by the sponsor and then your awareness is butts and seats in the event itself, digital or physical and then the conversation afterwards. User generated is movements, keynote movements. If you have a movement like this one hashtag do good from home challenge it is inviting people to write, to create a post, to share the messaging of the nonprofit and then you can get sponsors because what you're telling your sponsors is I'm not only showing people from our postings and what we get from our posts in this challenge but because every single user generated content is a minimum 500 reach. If you get 1,000 that's 50,000, 2,000, 100,000 you guys can do the math. That's extrapolating way more in power that your sponsors want to see. So because your sponsors at the end of the day care about impressions and this is one of the most powerful ways to do that. Finally, regardless of what features are it's all in throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks methodology. So create the content, engage with your audience and reflect, keynote reflect. Know what's doing good for you, what's not doing good and remember, influence happens one drop at a time. I'm Aisha Samret. I'm Keela's visual designer. For those of you who haven't heard of Keela before Keela is a Vancouver based tech startup that offers nonprofits powerful intelligent tools to manage their donors, mobilize their volunteers market their nonprofit and raise more money. In this session, I'm going to be discussing some compelling points on why nonprofits need to embrace artificial intelligence. Nonprofits are just starting to dip their toes in the proverbial water. So it's completely normal if you're struggling to stay afloat in the sea of change that artificial intelligence can bring to your organization. Technology for nonprofits is more powerful and more accessible today than ever before. At Keela, we see a bright future where accessible cutting edge tools serve the nonprofit sector in multiple ways from automating administrative tasks to advising on fundraising outreach. Artificial intelligence is changing the way nonprofits work for the better. But before we dive into the wonders that artificial intelligence can help you achieve what is the first thing that comes to your mind when someone mentions AI? Sci-Fi movies with shiny robots taking over the world? Well, the truth is that the concept of AI has been around for decades and it's all very real. It's just that AI is becoming more powerful today and that's mainly for two reasons. First, there's more data to process and analyze than ever before. And second, the computing power has improved dramatically over the last two decades. At this point, you might be wondering if you really need AI for your nonprofit. For a lot of organizations, embracing artificial intelligence raises a lot of questions around how it will impact human jobs. Will AI replace humans in the workplace entirely? Probably not. Once you take the time to understand the benefits, you will see that artificial intelligence has positive implications in nearly every industry and that includes nonprofits.  So AI automates time consuming work. So artificial intelligence-based tools can alleviate the burden of mundane repetitive tasks such as monitoring financial transactions and detecting discrepancies in your data. AI can also predict donor behavior and forecast giving trends, allowing you to quickly tailor your fundraising campaigns to a specific audience without sifting through data for hours. With more time back in your day, you can focus on what matters, building relationships. By automating administrative tasks, AI is not killing jobs. Instead, it acts as a smart assistant to enhance your work, helping you prioritize human connections and do more good. Secondly, AI is becoming accessible. It's no longer a complicated tool built exclusively for large tech companies, data scientists and engineers. Non-profits CRM providers like Keela are not only embracing AI-powered technology, but they're making it accessible for every organization, small or large, novice or experienced. And lastly, AI helps you make more sense of your data. You already have access to a vast wealth of data, whether you keep it spread across numerous Excel spreadsheets or organized within a CRM. But how often can you spend time combing through data that to extract useful information? Artificial intelligence empowers you to act on data in more meaningful ways. It combs through your database to find patterns and trends that will improve your programs and campaigns. It can help your nonprofit strengthen your fundraising performance, identify your top donors and create marketing campaigns that will get you the biggest bang for your buck. Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology are redefining the nonprofit landscape. Now let's look at four use cases that show how AI can help nonprofits raise more money and understand their donors in new ways. Mission-based AI tools boost nonprofit impact by improving the way they solve societal and ecological challenges. One of the most impressive applications of mission-based AI is the algorithm used by Crisis Text Line to predict suicide risks by analyzing online conversations. By analyzing 65 million text messages, the AI model recognizes what words are most statistically associated with high risk of suicide. Thanks to this tool, the organization can prioritize high-risk messages and is now able to service 94% of high-risk textors in under five minutes. Considering that every minute of response time matters, this is a game changer for Crisis Text Line. AI-powered fundraising tools help you understand your supporters. In the nonprofit world, this means that you can use AI-powered tools to go through previous donation amounts, event attendance records, and volunteer shifts. For instance, Kela CRM offers an AI-based feature called donor readiness to help customers understand their donor pool. Donor readiness tells you how likely your donor is to donate within the next two weeks. We calculate donor readiness through a machine learning algorithm that analyzes contact interactions, giving history, and even variables like contact location and weather. Since good timing greatly maximizes the chances of giving, there's no doubt that this AI tool will help boost your fundraising results. AI helps you engage more efficiently with your audience. AI solutions can not only send meaningful content to the right audience, but also help you understand when it's the best time to reach out what communication channels you should use. For example, some nonprofits are using Prasado to automate their communication channels with personal and authentic content. Prasado uses artificial intelligence to understand language and make recommendations to tailor content to a specific audience. Such tools can be used for a wide range of content formats from email subject lines to Facebook ads. AI tools reduce your administrative burden. Imagine how much you could get done if you had a virtual assistant to manage time consuming tasks like scheduling, organizing, and reporting. Artificial intelligence can automate tedious tasks, freeing up your time to do what's at the heart of your work, achieving a mission. For example, many nonprofits are now using chatbots to automate conversations with supporters who have basic questions or want details about a particular campaign. In a world where users expect to get answers in seconds, being able to hold conversations 24 seven through an AI chatbot is a true asset for nonprofits. The rise of artificial intelligence has given nonprofits a serious competitive advantage when it comes to pursuing their mission and raising more money. At Keela, we believe that artificial intelligence can change the way nonprofits work for the better. That's why our new software includes a suite of nonprofit intelligence tools to help organizations make better decisions. And that concludes my presentation for today. So thank you all for attending. I hope the session was helpful in learning how artificial intelligence can help elevate a nonprofit. Good afternoon, everyone. Yeah, so today we're going to talk about the alternative source of funding. Hold on. One second. I wanted to share my screen earlier. Success, go for it. Oh, okay. I didn't know. Okay, today we're going to talk about alternative source of funding. And the first one we're going to have is a B&B social impact experience. You know, due to COVID-19, due to COVID-19, a lot of nonprofits have suffered losses and a lot of they are being leveraged on their resources. So they're looking for ways they can raise more funds for themselves and for the organization. So A&B has a platform that helps nonprofits raise funds by having activities. So they can organize different types of activities. And today we're going to talk about, excuse me, today we're going to talk about different ways nonprofits can raise awareness of their programs through A&B social impact experience, crowdsourcing, online giving, such as Tuesday, giving Tuesday and global giving, online auctions, such as eBay, and the orders of fee services where nonprofits can perform different services for low fees and also use pop-up fundraising ideas and strategies. The A&B, before we go into that, let's define, okay. So now before we'll dive into the presentation, we'll look at what is the meaning of alternative services for nonprofits. These are other ways nonprofits can use to get more funding to sustain their program services and the overall operations of the organizations. So now what is the A&B social impact experience? The A&B social impact experience is the ability for nonprofits to raise funds for their activities where they have to host different activities to help engage and keep their guests busy. These activities can be like hosting workshops, classes, and all other types of activity. The social impact involves nonprofits to create inspiring activities that connect travelers and locals to their courses. Types of activities, the type of activities may include fun classes, fun classes, workshop, local tours of cities or very popular place, plan activities such as sightseeing, shop tour, wineries, cultural activity like storytelling and dancing, and any activity that your staff can put together, it has to be fun, interesting, and inspiring. To sign up for the A&B social impact, you can actually do it through TechSoup. TechSoup has a platform, TechSoup partner with the A&B on their platform where nonprofits can go and partner with them. If you're already on TechSoup platform, that means you have been verified. So joining the A&B platform through TechSoup won't be an issue for you. The next one we're gonna look at is crowd sourcing, which I'm gonna talk about the GoFundMe. What is crowd sourcing? Is the ability to leverage the power of internet, social media, and other online platform to gather people for a purpose. This way of getting connected to people is faster, cheaper, and very efficient to get a lot of things done. There are different crowd sourcing platform which can be used and they include GoFundMe, Kickstarter, Indiegogo. For the purpose of this workshop, we will focus on fundraising from crowds through the GoFundMe platform. GoFundMe platform is used to reach from for people and courses they care about. It is very easy and simple to use and it has 0% platform fee for organizers. I used to sign up, you go to this website and sign up is very easy. You pick out a course you want people to donate to and share it through social media and other platforms through your website and people can actually make donations to us that course. Another one we're gonna talk about is online giving, which Giving Tuesday and Global Giving has a platform where people can go and raise funds for their courses and for the organizations. The Giving Tuesday is a global giving movement using power and the ability of people and organizations to donate for a course on a particular day. The Giving Tuesday is usually after Thanksgiving, it's usually after Thanksgiving and this year's Giving Tuesday will be coming up November 30th, 2021 and you have enough time to get your project ready and start broadcasting it for people to make a donation. Immediately after Thanksgiving. If you wanna sign up, you go to this website and sign up and join and start planning your activity for the Tuesday Giving. Another one is the Global Giving, is a nonprofit platform that connects nonprofit projects to donor all around the world. If you have a project you're really passionate about for your organization, your mission, you can plan the project and publish it on Global Giving and people will actually donate towards your course. Another one is the online auction, eBay, eBay for charity. Non-profits use the eBay platform to raise funds for the organization. Non-profits can have a charity shop on eBay or host their online auction. To participate, you go to eBay for charity and sign up and get approval. You can also take advantage of PayPal Giving Fund. The others, like I said, is the fee for service. Like the food pantry is the start making the, the turn their kitchen, kitchen into, they open up their kitchen so that people can come in and they serve them food and they reduce the food they're serving as for minimal fee towards their courses, towards their program. And non-profits can actually provide pop-up fundraising you can organize a pop-up fundraising and you'll raise funds for your organization. So good morning or afternoon, depending on where you're at. I would love to talk about the world technology and innovating virtual impact, the topic that has become central to community engagement efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Note throughout the presentation, there's gonna be a series of QR codes. There's one on the bottom right. Hopefully you all know how to use it. Pull up your smartphone camera, pick up the URL and it will access the number of different various resources and links. Here is a link to our success team. With that said, I do want to ultimately just talk about how I am not James. Personally, I am one of the other co-founders. So due to the Texas blackout, he lost his electricity literally two hours prior to this presentation. So I'm just here filling in. And then also unfortunately, majority of our team also does not have electricity too as well. So I pray and I hope that everyone is gonna stay warm and have electricity very soon. I'm very fortunate to be here with you all though because I do have a lot of topics to discuss hopefully within the short time that I have. Give Pulse is a platform that enables everyone to engage, organize and understand the impact of positive social change and address wicked challenges. And be it coordinating volunteer management efforts to crowdfunding to support in the COVID vaccination and symptom checking efforts. We're working with public health authorities to help ensure our partners can remain impactful during this time. But then also make sure that they're safe and enabling their community to be safe while serving the communities. In this presentation, I'll be sharing learnings from our community during the COVID-19 public health crisis. Our team has worked closely with partners spanning the public and private sectors to uncover new possibilities as the pandemic brought the need for change into stark relief. I will share the challenges we found that needed to be addressed, the innovations that we made to meet these needs and how these innovations really continue to be central to the ongoing elements of any community engagement initiative. By the end of this session, I hope you'll understand the basics of virtual engagement and recognize the role of virtual engagement technology in continued and sustainable community success. I'll start talking briefly about the elements of community engagement that were particularly impacted by COVID-19, making it super clear that change was not just possible, but necessary. While there were far more challenges than we have time to go in detail today, we'll most likely fall into a few buckets that I will reference right now. The first challenge we recognized through our conversations with partners was the need to develop new opportunities to address community gaps in the midst of the pandemic. Many, even most of these opportunities had to be virtual in nature and have a remote option. But this was a huge, huge leap, if not a pivot for many organizations. When we surveyed our partners a couple of hundred in this specific graph that you see here, last April, three quarters of respondents noted that they were struggling to transition opportunities to virtual and remote opportunities because all they're volunteering up to that point had been in-person. And because they didn't have any interest in taking risks, all in-person experiences were pretty much canceled. To support the community, we had to determine what constitutes effective, virtual and remote opportunities and also determine how technology can facilitate and amplify these opportunities to let alone existing ones not transferable to the virtual ecosystem. We had to make these changes to address the same needs as in-person direct service opportunities and possibly find new ways to address the new needs. In addition to finding new opportunities, many of our partners were wondering what role they could play in supporting community health externally and internally for themselves. This was particularly true for organizations with needs that had to be met at least partially in-person, such as medical or healthcare organizations. To meet this challenge, we would have to find ways that technology provide an infrastructure for everything from screening to testing to learn long-term vaccination and public health measures. Addressing many of these challenges involves incorporating technology. Physical distance makes technology a great way to facilitate interaction, engagement, and management, a way that also follows CDC and public health rules while also creating new opportunities. However, there remains a digital access gap for community members and organizations. In some cases, technology solutions may be overly difficult or complicated for some volunteers and clients that our partners serve. As you know, I pretty much struggled getting this presentation up and running because of some technical difficulties. The graph on the left shows partner responses when asked whether their volunteers had access to technology. Only a little over half of the responses indicated that they were confident that volunteers had access. On the right are responses when asked whether the clients that they serve had access to technology. Here, the number that answered yes dropped to just under 30%. One more. I'm just getting a request that you could bring the pace down. Yes. Sometimes, yes. Some people are just fast talkers, but that would be lovely if you could bring it down to teeny bit. Okay, yeah. Just as long as we have time. I'm game to... You have all the time you want. Go for it. You're comfortable. All right, good. In addition, using technology on a regular basis can lead to folks is getting completely zoomed out. Very similar to why TED talks usually are limited to 18 minutes. We all know that individuals that usually attend all Zoom meetings usually get zoomed out. So maintaining virtual engagement requires that you consider and address the challenges of engaging participants or of making sure that they're accountable for their work remotely. For more about how our partners address these challenges, you can access our webinar a few months ago on virtual engagement through the QR code on the top right. Now, based on these challenges and needs, our GitPulse community pushed us to set about intertwining technology to really make a difference. What we found was that the innovations that best met the needs of this crisis provide the technical infrastructure for ongoing improvement and impact to support more remote and virtual workforce and community. If you scan the QR code to the right over there, you can access a program readiness survey to determine if you're ready for full virtual remote experiences. The first element was really figuring out ways to innovate and prioritize virtual and remote opportunities. To facilitate these opportunities, we made sure that these small tweaks and changes throughout our platform can make a large impact, specifically by adding web conferencing integrations to volunteer opportunities post on GitPulse. We made it easy and efficiently for organizations to create experiences such as trainings, virtual mentoring with the synchronization with whatever preferred platform that they chose. Here specifically, let's just say, gonna use Zoom, for example, integrating with a platform like Zoom allowed for synchronization between the two systems to speak to one another, therefore decreasing the work for volunteer managers and staff. To make this even more seamless, we made sure that it was also tied to calendar systems like Google Calendar to help the volunteers who knew that they wanted to make a difference but wanted to also make sure that we improve the algorithms so that way they could seek out these experiences through relevant filters that allow them to access public, virtual and remote opportunities. In short, we developed the infrastructure for listing and finding remote opportunities super easy so that way it allows anybody to actually seek out these opportunities in the comfort of their own hopes. We knew that virtual and remote opportunities might also require different formats than the traditional opportunities. From our work with the community, we decided that the most important needs were to essentially create a structure to support project-based and pro bono events that could help meet organizational needs. An infrastructure for project-based events with milestones allow organizations to thoroughly organize and set transparent goals and expectations. By developing the structure of project-based events, urgent needs and requirements can be structured and defined to show progress and updates every step of the way for small, medium, complicated projects, be it developing a website or even doing some complicated research. And now instead of focusing simply on single shift or one day volunteer opportunities or even an ongoing shift, organizations can now create more flexible projects that define the requirements, milestones, and measure progress so that way there's clarity from both parties, the organization, the volunteers and donors. During these difficult times, we also knew that resources are limited, specifically calling the community to help rally critical resources and donations. Now, I can only imagine like during the pandemic, everyone was scrambling for toilet paper. I think in many instances, setting up donation drives were organizations where I could seek donations for good and resources. Community members could then also request these needs, making curbside pickup or delivery options for food banks and volunteers super seamless. We also encourage partners to use our peer-to-peer fundraising, recurring donations, payroll, gift matching capability so that way local businesses can also donate directly to them as alternatives to normal fundraising methods such as events and galas. These virtual options can support more consistent and long-term funding needs. To access crowdfunding resources such as our goal calculator and other information, please feel free to use the QR code on the page. Last year, we also compiled a number of different case studies and examples of virtual opportunities on our blog, accessible through the QR code here. It's also not lost in us that many organizations are still struggling to pivot. They're still struggling to figure out how to actually support virtual and remote opportunities. What we're here to say is that it's important to pivot and consider it being creative to accommodate the new normal being flexible and engaging for folks from anywhere. Now by focusing on experiences that can be done virtually via video conferencing or let's just say the normal drive-by, remote experiences or maybe something that is more detailed that is clearly set defined with expectations. As we mentioned in the previous slides, you can map all these experiences or create new ideas that we've beneficial to your organization and community. But it's also true that there's some experiences that can't be done remotely and that there's some that are still gonna have to require you to physically be in person. And in addition to CDC guidelines and what public health authorities recommend, we also wanted to dedicate time to allow centers and organizations to know that their health is our priority too as well. So working with health authorities, we ensure that our platform on the web and natively via download iOS and Android apps, you can allow volunteers, donors, clients and the community to report their symptoms on the go and from the palm of their hand. That way, centers, organizations and nonprofits are able to have health pulses of their community and to act fast when folks are sick and to decrease their risk when folks feel sick prior to volunteering. At the same time, we're very, very fortunate to collaborate with cities and municipalities and their health authorities to really schedule and coordinate via touchless experience through the QR code experience for medical and non-medical volunteers and professionals to simply focus on putting vaccine shots in people's arms. Doing this lays the foundation that I believe will benefit the nonprofit community when they too want to leverage the innovations we have built. We know that these steps are crucial to public health and that any engagement opportunities will work better and a safer community. For those hoping to put together your own symptom screening survey for staff, volunteers, donors and clients or even learn more about the touchless management experience, feel free to reach out to us via the QR code. As we continue to collaborate with our partners, we saw these changes and structures facilitate long-term impact on our community and on the community engagement in general. The changes that we make now are in fact investments in sustainable change. Whether or not we are in times of crisis, these activities and innovations we've briefly touched on are here to stay and can only help your organization survive and thrive. Because of this, when we ask our partners whether they believe that their organization will continue to offer virtual and remote opportunities after the imminent threat of COVID is gone, only 12% indicated that they would return to only the opportunities of pre-COVID. While the others said that they would try to offer all or some of their opportunities. Now is the time to embrace technology, to support your day-to-day but also the depth of changing desires of the remote workforce. If you want to scan the QR code here, you can take a survey, volunteering reality, looking past COVID to share ongoing challenges and successes of engagement during COVID-19, as well as how we can best continue innovating to support our communities. I'll leave this slide up, but pretty much the most important is, you should develop virtual and remote opportunities because it's here to stay. It is inevitable that doing things remotely is here to stay and investing in the necessary technical infrastructure for your success is a community success. To survive and thrive, you must pivot and embrace these shifts with technology. It's true, technology can't solve all problems. Sometimes it causes problems as you can tell. But in this situation, we believe it can streamline and facilitate relationships that really empower you and your community to address the challenges you all face.


Meanwhile, as indicated by Hon. Emma Hippolit, many micro, small and medium enterprises, MSMEs in St. Lucia have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has forced business owners to build greater resilience in their business practices by adopting more creative and innovative ICT tools and it devices to facilitate their business processes. Glenn Simon reports. The Ministry of Commerce, manufacturing, business development, cooperatives and consumer affairs is all get up for the observance of business month from November 1 to 30 of 2021, under the theme, propelling business development through technology. Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce, Sophia Henry, noted that despite the devastating impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on all aspects of business activity, opportunities for building resilience while improving the productivity of businesses must be highlighted. Many of our businesses have suffered reduced sales, losses, even closure and they have been forced to adopt more creative and innovative ICT tools and we believe that advanced technology is our business's fighting chance during the COVID era and to ensure sustainability The activities for business month commences on November 1 with an address by the Commerce Minister Honourable Emma Hippolit which will be aired on NTN and posted on social media. The Ministry has also planned several capacity building workshops targeting existing and new entrepreneurs. The first is from the 3rd to the 5th of November, that's our lean canvas business model, it's a business planning workshop and during that workshop the participants will be given a template and we will assist them to complete a business plan in a format that can be submitted to a financial institution or any other stakeholder. During the week of November 8th to the 14th, that's Global Entrepreneurship Week. Now Global Entrepreneurship Week will be spearheaded by the St. Lucia Chamber of Commerce and Industry, however on the 10th of November there will be a business resource symposium and the Ministry of Commerce will be making a presentation during that symposium whereby we will be informing the general public of all the resources that are available to businesses through the ministry. She added that a business start-up essentials workshop is slated for November 17th while the Ministry will host a workshop entitled Design Thinking to Develop a Business from November 18th to the 30th. This workshop is geared at creative young persons with business ideas to think out of the box. And so it's a 9 day workshop but 9 half days so again we appeal to our young people to take advantage to contact us and to register for these workshops. The Commerce PS emphasized that a deliberate focus is being placed on the youth economy by the Ministry of Commerce. The Ministry of Commerce will be there to support because we want to ensure that our young people do not just see themselves as employees but as entrepreneurs because they are intelligent, they are creative and they just need that opportunity for them to start up a business and they will get that assistance at the Ministry of Commerce. So yes, the youth economy will be spearheaded by the Ministry of Finance but the Ministry of Commerce will be working collaboratively with the Ministry of Finance to provide that support to the youth so that they can start up their businesses. The St Lucia Taiwan Partnership Trade Show will be held on November 26th and 27th utilizing both a virtual and physical presence at the Grosally Human Resource Center. The full calendar of activities for Business Month can be accessed by visiting Seidu St Lucia's Facebook page. For the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, Glenn Simon reporting.