Family Theatre presents Gene Cagney and Barbara Hale. From Hollywood, the Mutual Network and Cooperation with Family Theatre presents the Cowards starring Gene Cagney. And now, here is your hostess, Barbara Hale. Thank you, Tony Lafranco. Family Theatre's only purpose is to bring to everyone's attention a practice that must become an important part of our lives if we're to win peace for ourselves, peace for our families, and peace for the world. Family Theatre urges you to pray. Pray together as a family. And now, to our transcribed drama, the Cowards starring Gene Cagney as Helen. Pre-perceiving hospital. What's that? All right, give me your address. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. Got it. Is that an air of freeway turnoff? Two blocks east to the Benton Way turnoff. All right, I got it. Now let me read it back to you. 25530 Stockton Street. Two blocks east to the Benton Way turnoff. Right? All right, we'll have an ambulance there in ten minutes. Bye. Pardon me. Yes, ma'am? I was told my husband was here that he was in an accident. Name? Albert Dana. I hope it's nothing serious. Right through that door, lady. He's not... No, no, no, he's not dead. Right, I think he's gonna be all right. Why don't you go and talk to the doc right through that door? Thank you. Thank you, officer. This one? That's right. No bother, knock. Just go right on in. Thank you. All right, just please. I'm Helen Dana. The officer outside said... Oh, yes, Mrs. Dana. Come right on in, won't you? Let me close this door. Won't you sit down? Doctor, all they told me on the phone was that Al had been in some kind of an accident. Yes, Mrs. Dana. It was I who called you. Sit down, Mrs. Dana. Thank you. I would have informed you of your husband's condition when I phoned you, except that we didn't know ourselves at the time. He arrived here in such a day's condition that we thought at first he might have suffered a concussion, even possibly a skull fracture, in addition to his other more obvious injuries. But there wasn't. Oh, no, no, no, no fracture, no Mrs. Dana, and no concussion either. But frankly, we're very much concerned about the fact that, well, his condition hasn't changed. You mean he's still dazed? That's right. And it's not only shock. It's almost like, well, a withdrawal from reality. It was an accident with the bus, wasn't it? Oh, quite an accident. Was anyone killed? Three people. Driver of the other vehicle and two people on your husband's bus. If it was Al's fault. Or for that matter, even if it wasn't. Wouldn't he blame himself for it? I mean, maybe we could just tell him that it wasn't his fault.  Yes, but Mrs. Dana, I doubt if he even knows about the other casualties yet. Oh. Doctor, you spoke of other injuries. Oh, yes. The palms of both hands and both knees were severely burned. And he has a few cuts and abrasions from the accident itself. Burnes? When I gathered, there was a fire following the wreck. I'm afraid I don't know all the particulars, but most of the passengers we treated here had some burns. May I see Al, Doctor? Oh, yes, certainly. But I want to warn you, I doubt if he'll know you. Right through this door here, Mrs. Dana. Don't you think he might have come out of it by this time? I mean, it's been almost an hour and a half since the accident, hasn't it? Mrs. Dana, I just don't know. This may be the kind of a thing that he'll just come out of. Or it may be that we'll have to do something to bring him out of it. You mean you think there might be something wrong with his mind? That's what I have to find out, Mrs. Dana. Oh, Doctor. Now, it's very unlikely that it would be anything that might be in any way permanent. Oh, just a moment. We'd better stop by here for a second. Oh, yes. Sergeant Miller. Yes, sir. Have you got a report on that 8th Street tunnel wreck yet? We'll have the TI report in a few minutes, Doctor. It's being transcribed now. Uh, how about that, uh, what's his name? Said he was in the second seat. Lester L. Haynes. Yes, sir. He's still being treated. Would you have somebody get his story, please? And, uh, I want particular emphasis on the activities of the bus driver, Albert Dana, before, during, and after the accident. I'll get it myself. I'm off the desk in ten minutes. Fine. Thank you, Sergeant. Now, as I was saying, Mrs. Dana, there's very little chance that your husband's condition would be anything but a temporary one. But sometimes, in cases like this, the, the right first aid can be a hundred times more valuable than any later healing treatment he might get. Doctor, you speak of my husband's condition as if it were a wound. It is a wound, Mrs. Dana. Only the name is different.  Is he, is he in here? Yes, ma'am. He may be all right now, but I don't think so. So once again, don't be surprised if he doesn't pay any attention to you. And try not to. I, I won't lose my head. I'll be all right. Fine. Well, honey, doctor. Yeah, Mrs. Dana, this is Miss Peterson, your husband's nurse. Mrs. Dana, all those bandages. Is he in much pain? Oh, I don't think so, Miss Dana. At least, none that he's conscious of. Any change? Yeah, none that I can see, doctor. I'm almost certain he hears me and he knows where he is, but nothing seems important to him. Mm-hmm. May I? Well, certainly. Al. Al, it's me, Helen. Al. Mr. Dana, your wife is here to see you. Al. Al, please. It's me, Helen. I'm afraid it's no use, Miss Dana. Please. He's just staring at the ceiling. Has he been like this since I left? Well, he's spoken a few times. Something about the Red Beach, at least that's what it sounded like. And once he said Omaha. Omaha? Mm-hmm. Does that mean anything to you, Mrs. Dana? Pardon me. Does the word Omaha have any special significance? I can't think of any. And he said one other thing.  What name? Huey. Just Huey. Mm-hmm. I didn't hear anything after that. Huey. Quiet. Huey, I'm not a coward, but I don't want to be dead, Huey. If I go out there, I'm dead. Like you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, Al. Al, come out of it, Al. Come out of it. I think we'd better go now, Mrs. Dana. Uh, Miss Peterson, I'm going to take it to the kitchen if anyone calls. Yes, Doctor. Mrs. Dana, would you like a cup of coffee? I don't know. I guess so, Doctor. It was so long ago. So long. Your husband was referring to something that happened a long time ago? At first it didn't make sense, that business about Red Beach and Omaha. But then when he mentioned Huey, Doctor, maybe we'd better have that coffee, and I'll tell you about it. All right. Hey, Doctor, just a second. Oh, yes, Sergeant. I got the report from traffic investigation. Thought you might want to look at it right away. You haven't talked to Hames yet? He's still getting treatment, Doctor. He was one of the last ones to come in. It'll be a few minutes yet. I'll talk to him. Yes, sir. Would you like to look at the TI report? Oh, yes, thank you. I would. It seems like the lady's husband was the hero of the affair. My husband? He and his fellow Hames pulled all the passengers out of the wreck. I take it you've already read this? Yes, sir. What happened, Sergeant? Well, ma'am, according to that report, your husband's bus was going through the 8th Street Tunnel when an oil tanker coming in the other direction jackknifed. Your husband hit it. There wasn't any choice, and he and this other man Hames pulled out all the people, all but the driver of the tanker and two of the bus passengers. And is that all? All except, well, things like skid mark measurements, things like that, Doctor. Oh, there was one other thing. When the ambulance crew picked him up at the scene of the accident, he was sitting in the street crying. Would you like some more coffee, Mrs. Naener? No, thanks. Now, what about Red Beach and Omaha and Huey? Huey was a buddy of ours during the war, Second World War. They were a medical corps team and the Omaha is Omaha Beach on the Normandy coast. I don't really understand about the Red Beach. It was something about different designations for different sections, you know, like red, green, blue. Something to do with logistics or tactics, I think I don't know much about things like that. Won't you go on, please? You know how you read about men who've been in war not wanting to talk about it. Al's not like that, or he loved to talk about it. He'd bring it up at the drop of a hat. But you know, when he told me about the landing at Omaha, well, it was a big thing to him. Now, just how do you mean?  Like he was confessing to some terrible crime. And I guess to him it was. Al and Huey went in with the first wave and Huey never got any further than just the beach. He got his less than three hours after the landing. See, Al told it, I could almost imagine I'd been there myself, hearing the sound of firing, breathing the salt air mixed with the smells of burning powder and sweat and death, feeling the fatigue that comes from trying to be ten places at the same time, feeling the hopelessness of trying to keep up with the casualties and the strain of having to keep those feelings to yourself. After a little more than two hours, Al and Huey had used up all their supplies and the two of them ran back to one of the empty landing barges for more. You get all right? Yeah, I think so. Better sit down for a minute and get my win. Yeah. Oh, man. I never knew I could get so tired, so quick. I think I'll take a look around. I guess if there's anything here, it'll be toward the back end. They call it the stern. Man, don't you know anything? Wait a minute, I'll help you. I think that's the supply lock over the left there. It's empty. Likely everything's empty. Hey, look. Another wave of boats coming in. Man, look at them.  You've got a point there. Boy, this boat sure is empty. Well, we might as well sit down and wait for that new wave to get in. Yeah, I suppose. You got a better idea? No. No, I just feel like we ought to be doing something. That's all. I know what you mean. Not much like the movies. No, not too much. I've got a box of K-Rations. This might be a good time to eat. No, no thanks. Might not get another chance.  I couldn't keep it down. I saw you losing your breakfast. When you saw me, I was losing yesterday's breakfast. Huey, I've never been so scared in all my life. It's the same with me. You sure don't show it. Those barges are getting any closer. Are they? Three or four hundred yards out yet. No, you talk about being scared. Being scared doesn't matter if you don't show it. Yeah? Besides, there's different kinds of scared. Why'd they make you a medic? I don't know.  Well, with me it's because I don't believe in killing people. I was in divinity school before I joined up. I'm just different kind of scared than you are. If I was too afraid for my life, I wouldn't be practicing what I preached. You believe in God, don't you? Sure. But I don't want to die. Afraid for your wife or yourself? For my wife, I suppose. No, that's not true. I'm afraid for myself. I wouldn't worry about it. No man's a coward until his fear shows in his actions. Sounds like those boats are getting a little closer. Let's take a look. Looks like they're here. Yeah, I guess we better get ready to go. Hey, Huey, they're zeroed. The cruts have got them zeroed in. Lord help. Cut them dead center, the whole barge. We gotta get out there. Get out there. Come on, we gotta get out there. Huey, there's nobody alive in that barge. Is there a chance of a thousand? Well, maybe one in a thousand. All right then, let go of me. We got no supplies even if there was someone alive. We couldn't do anything. I gotta try. Now you let go of me. Aren't you afraid? All right, stay, but let go of me.   Now let's go. So Al stayed in the barge and watched Huey run right into the middle of a shellburst. And you know something, Doctor? I don't think Al has ever forgiven himself for not being there. For not getting killed with him. But he lived to help other people in other battles. I told him that. He patched up people all the way to Berlin. But, well, he never got over the, I guess you'd call it the shame of being afraid at Omaha Beach. Did he talk about it much? That first battle and Huey's death? Just once. Like he was confessing to a crime. I told you that. According to his own conscience, he did commit a crime. But it wasn't cowardice. What is it in a man that makes him judge himself so harshly, Doctor? What is it? Maybe he didn't really know there were no survivors in that barge. I don't know, Mrs. Dana. In your husband's case, something at the scene of the accident reminded him what happened at Omaha Beach. Let's go talk to this witness, Mr. Haymes. Maybe we can find out what it was. All I can do is tell you what happened, Doctor. But I think I can give you a pretty good picture. Sure didn't miss anything. You were usually riding Al's bus? Yep. I usually finish up just as he's pulling up to 8th and Loganbury. That's the way it was today. And I was mighty glad it was because it was raining pretty hard and I was tired. Man alive, I was tired. Man, am I glad to see you.  Oh, you better believe it. Coming through my slicker. Bitty the poor mailman on a day like this, huh? Yeah, you can say that again. Well, I shook some of the water off, and took the seat right behind Al. There's a sign that says no talking to the driver, but Al and I usually chatteled it on the way downtown anyway. That's what we were doing when we went into the 8th Street Tunnel. And then up ahead I see this oil truck. I guess we both saw it at the same time because Al started giving her the brakes. Oh, she sure was a big job. Tractor and trailer and coming at us kind of funny. The pavement in the tunnel was wet and it looked like the trailer was trying to pass the front part of the truck. Well, sir, in less time than it takes to tell about it, she filled up all the tunnel, except a little piece about four feet wide. Al hit the brakes and pung it for it. I got up off the floor, the inside of the bus was a shamble. In the back I saw some fellow push open the emergency door and jump out. Then when I looked around for Al, he wasn't there. And I saw that the windshield was gone. I looked out in front, and there he was picking himself up off the pavement. I tried to open the front door, but it was jammed up against the side of the tunnel. So I got out through the hole Al made in the windshield and ran over to see if he was hurt. And then I saw it. Al, the oil. The oil from the tanker, it's all over the street. Come on, Les, we gotta get those people out of there. That starts to burn, it'll be too late. Better than half the people who were already out. There was plenty inside who just couldn't make it. Some with broken bones, some knocked out, some just as scared they couldn't move. We got in all but two people off the bus when the oil went. There she goes. There are people still there. Come on, we gotta hurry. No, I don't think we can do it, Al. Wait a minute. Hey, wait, I said. This bus is another one. We'll never make it. We gotta try, we gotta try. Come on, we gotta get them off that barge. Barge? Al, wait. Oh, all right. I'm coming. Come on, up for the front. Let's stay close to the floor. Come on. Oh, good Lord, help us. This floor is hot. We got to a man who looked like he was more than half dead already. Between us, we dragged him down the aisle of the bus to the door. The time we got him there, I saw that his clothes were smoking where we dragged him on the floor. The rubber was melting off my slicker and Al's pant legs were charred. When I looked down at my own, they were the same. And we both got burned getting over the metal edge of the emergency door. But we got the man away from the bus. Then after we'd set him down, Al turned to go back. Al, you crazy fool, you'll never make it. You'll get killed. It doesn't matter. It's my job. Now let go of me.  If there's one chance in a thousand, I got to get them out. Al, you'll only get killed. That's no way to die. I got to try. Now let go. Al.  He stopped at the emergency door. A couple of times, he tried to go into that wall of flame. Then after the third try, he backed off from it. He backed off and he sat down on the pavement. I went over to him and I started patting the sparks in his clothes. He just looked up at me. I was afraid. You did your best, Al. That's all any man can do. I was afraid. I'm not a coward, Huey. But I don't want to be dead.  I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I tried to comfort him, but I don't know. I just couldn't seem to get through to him. He kept talking to somebody named Huey, and he kept saying over and over again, I'm sorry. And that's about all I can tell you, doctor. Mrs. Daener. Thank you, Miss Dames. Basically the same kind of thing. Same decision to make, but this time... Doctor? Oh, Peterson. I was hoping Miss Daener was still here. Has there been any change, nurse? Yes, there has. A few minutes ago, Sergeant Miller dropped a copy of the final accident report off with me, thinking Mr. Daener might take an interest in it. Then he did? I didn't think he was even listening until I got to the last paragraph. The last paragraph? It had the autopsier report on the two people left on the bus. Both of them died instantly at the time of the wreck. If he'd pulled them out, it would have been for nothing. Did he say anything? Yes, he kind of smiled and said, I was right. I was right all along. And then he went to sleep. Oh, doctor. Doctor, may I wait with him until he awakens? I think so, Mrs. Daener. Hey, what's all this about? Al's not burned much more than I am. He's going to be all right, Eddie. Yes, Mr. Hames, Al's going to be all right. Now that he's proved his point. You mean about being a coward? Oh, shoot. I could have told him he was no coward. But others tell him he's not nearly so important, Mr. Hames, is what he must tell himself. Al just found out that, well, there really is a time to be afraid. That discretion is an important part of valor. This is Barbara Hale again. I think no one will disagree that as far as worldly goods are concerned, there are, roughly speaking, two kinds of families. Those who have enough and those who haven't. There may be many degrees in each category, and the dividing line isn't always obvious, but roughly that's about the way it stacks up. The same is true regarding family happiness. We know that some families are unhappy, even though they have millions. While on the other hand, there are families who cling closer together in their poverty. Love lights the hearth even when there isn't a fire. The point of all this is that none of us is self-sufficient, and even the closest family isn't sufficient unto itself. If we have enough, we may lose it. We know how precarious health and fortune can be. If we haven't enough, we need the serenity and the peace that only prayer, daily family prayer, can give us. It won't necessarily guarantee health or immediate success, but it will bring its blessings. And if family peace is all but a stranger in our homes, it could be because our Heavenly Father is a stranger there too. This is why we are urged to pray. To pray together daily if possible as families. Family theater tells us each week this very simple but very mighty truth. The family that prays together stays together.  From Hollywood, Family Theater has brought you transcribed The Coward starring Jean Cagney. Barbara Hale was your hostess. Others in our cast were Barney Phillips, Harry Bartell, Alice Bacchus, Herb Alice, and Ralph Moody. The script was written and directed for Family Theater by Robert Hugo Sullivan with music composed and conducted by Harry Zimmerman. This series of Family Theater broadcasts is made possible by the thousands of you who feel the need for this type of program, by the mutual network which has responded to this need and by the hundreds of stars of state screen and radio who give so unselfishly of their time and talent to appear on our Family Theater stage.  This is Tony LaFranco expressing the wish at Family Theater that the blessing of God may be upon you and your home and inviting you to join us next week when Family Theater will present the first voyage of Columbus. Donna Atwood will be your hostess. Join us, won't you? Family Theater has broadcast throughout the world and originates in the Hollywood studios of the world's largest network. This is Mutual, the radio network for all America.


This is Dennis McMahon and welcome to Positively Vermont. Today we are going to be exploring the wonderful world of Vermont's covered bridges, a local and New England icon, and a very interesting group of people called the Vermont Covered Bridge Society. And my guests today are Joe Nelson, who is a founding member of the Vermont Covered Bridge Society, author of the book, Spanning Time, Vermont's Covered Bridges, and Steve Miyamoto, the publicity coordinator for the Society. Welcome gentlemen. Thanks. First of all, tell us a little bit about each one of you. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became involved with Vermont's Covered Bridges. Well, how Vermont Covered Bridges got started. The story begins in Jeffersonville, where the Cambridge Junction Bridge was in deep trouble, being quite an old bridge, as a matter of fact. And a gentleman, Bill McCone, was interested in having that bridge rescued, called on Ed Barnard and myself because we're both authors of Covered Bridge books, to join his Historical Society as the Covered Bridge Committee, which we let him know that, well, we weren't terribly interested in being part of his Historical Society. We would be interested in having a statewide Covered Bridge Society. So that's where we got started, organizing from there. We founded it in the May of 2000, as a nonprofit 501c3 organization, dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Vermont's remaining Covered Bridges. Since our founding, we've commended ourselves to generating public awareness through our various means, like we have a quarterly newsletter, which we mail out to interested people like V-Trans and like the governor and members of the legislature. And we also have a VermontCoveredBridge.com website and connections with V-Trans Construction Division. Can I tell us a little about yourself, Steve? I am from New York originally, moved to Vermont in 1993. My employer gave me an opportunity to relocate at the time. So I've been here since 1993, got involved with the Covered Bridge Society, and pretty close to when it started, funny story is, my wife actually saw a little blurb in the newspaper about the Vermont Covered Bridge Society forming. She said, why don't you look into it? So I did. So I did that and have been involved on and off, took some time off for a while. But yeah, that was my involvement there. That's great. Well, tell us a little about what is a Covered Bridge? A lot of people might not know it. They might see it on a calendar or on a Christmas card. Tell us, what is a Covered Bridge? Basically, it's a wooden bridge, okay? Our forebears, of course, came across many of them, English and so on, were acquainted with the construction of the old buildings over there. And they brought that knowledge with them. And of course they came into a wilderness, Vermont, for instance, was a wilderness. No roads, you could get around on the rivers and so on. They would come through those woods, creating new pathways and so on, and they'd come to rivers and they'd have to ford them.  Well, one way to do that would be to an old tree stump and make a pestle out of it, a mortar and pestle out of it, and grind their corn or they could carry all of this unground corn on their backs through the fords, through these ancient roadways until finally they had enough people out there that they began using these rivers then to create mills where they could grind corn and people would come to them. Now you still had to cross those rivers, so they put logs across and people would walk across on a log bridge until they come to a river, you know, that would be too wide for that. So using the knowledge that they had brought with them, say from old England, they began to put timber bridges across and they used what they might call the royalty lot of trusses called the king post and the queen post. Now the king post bridge then you would send cords, logs across, you would board those logs so that you could say run a cart on them and then they would sag in the middle what you would do would we put up a pair of braces and from the center of those braces you would hang a post to support the middle of that bridge. That's a king post bridge and it worked from there. It was the local folks that built their own bridges because they had some knowledge. They were using the same methods that they were using to build their barns and their homes. If you wanted a longer bridge because the river is that much wider what you would do would be extend your king post truss and call it a queen post where you would put up a pair of braces separated by a horizontal beam and at each junction there would be a post to support the bridge the queen post. Things got a little bit more developed in the area. They needed longer and longer bridges and some of the local talent then not being engineers and so on would invent a new truss. Then they come up with the multiple king post truss and then later on of course we had a noted architect in Connecticut, Ithio Town however you pronounce Ithio I've never been able to discover which came up with the lattice truss and today most of the covered bridges in Vermont are lattice and they're called covered bridges because they discovered in the old days that with rain and snow and all of that would begin to rut those bridges so that you had to replace them maybe every few years when someone who built what they called the permanent bridge in Philadelphia came up with the idea of covering his bridge he said that well that would make that bridge last maybe even up to 50 years we have bridges in the state of Vermont now that are much older than 50 years because of those covers That's great, it seems so obvious but so simple but some guy had to think that up and then do it and it's created something which is a practical transportation item but also an art form in a way Oh yeah and why don't you tell us, just give us an idea you say how many bridges are there now still standing in Vermont Well there's about 102 but not all of them are terribly original because we've lost some and there's enough interest in the state government and the people of this state to maintain those bridges so if a bridge is burnt or a bridge is destroyed by a storm they're replaced in their replicas What's the newest one? The newest one would be the... there, heads gone Well I think Langley No, no, no, no my brain is right here That's your book by the way, tell us about that book Oh okay, surely Why don't you hold it up so that people can see it That's a book all about covered bridges and when did you write that? I wrote that, this was first published in 1997 and it's still going strong it's fairly popular like there's 15 tours if someone would take up one of these books there's tours laid out, 15 of them where there are maps available in the book then to take people from bridge to bridge without any trouble That covers the whole state covers the whole state Now there was a bridge that was... you're going to remember when I tell you about this we had storm Irene the Irene to tropical storms Just talking about that to somebody about an hour ago about Irene, yeah, tell us about this Okay, that storm took out the bridge where my mind seems to be blank for a moment Bartonsville, thank you You gotta be quicker The Bartonsville bridge then was carried away The reason why it was carried away wasn't a problem with the bridge itself but the river got behind the abutments and it washed it away and there was a lady there that had a video that was broadcast worldwide on the demise of that poor old bridge and people got behind it they got grants they held sales they did everything they could to gather enough money and the state, the federal government then stepped in and helped they decided then that they needed the bridge but they needed to carry more weight one of the problems with our covered bridges today of course is they were not built for 18-wheelers or modern traffic for that matter or even somebody's tour vehicle with the air conditioning on top so they made the bridge taller and they made it longer so that they could keep the abutments out of the river flow and they've got one terrific bridge you can't tell that it's not an original bridge unless you look underneath where they have something called glulam timbers which gives the bridge its carrying capacity so you've got a brand new bridge the Whatchamacallit bridge The Whatchamacallit I seem to remember Longley was built in 2018 or something that was completely replaced out in Montgomery Longley? oh yeah well ok that also is a I think that might be one of the more that is one of the things that one of the things that the covered bridges society tries to do the Longley bridge was carrying milk tank trucks and it was built back in the 1860s 18 ok and they needed to replace that bridge it had been worked on several times and the town you see V-Trans construction division is responsible for maintaining these bridges and they work with the department of the interior rules on maintaining historic structures and a bridge that has been on the historic site list ok has special privileges in its existence but overriding all of that is the town itself the town decided that they didn't want that bridge bypassed with another bridge they didn't want that old bridge replaced so that it could carry new traffic they wanted a new bridge and they got it now the Vermont covered bridge society sets up districts where we ask local talent to form a little group ok wherever there's a covered bridge in the village they're responsible for that bridge they're taxpayers they have a say on whether or not they want to spend the money on a new bridge somebody from outside are nibbers they're not going to be punished with the tax that they're accruing so they had their way they replaced a historic bridge and part of the agreement was that the construction materials for that old bridge would be saved to be put up someplace else that's really interesting it's not just the idea of historic preservation for the sake of history and architecture but it's also a cooperative effort to try to preserve, protect, and defend these bridges it's really interesting I was thinking about it in a way and it sounds like the Constitution preserve, protect, and defend and that's what you do it's an interesting historical artifice but you work to make sure that it functions and government gets involved and then people get involved I've been looking over your program as an organization and there's a number of things that you do so why don't we go into some of them right now what's this project you have called Bridge Watch what is that about? okay Bridge Watch we have John Weaver he's a retired engineer from V-Trans he's a member of the society and while he was working with V-Trans he still is, as a matter of fact they still use him that Scott Bridge thing that you might have been in the papers lately he was the designer for the reconstruction of that John is our Bridge Watch coordinator and he keeps track of what is going on with the V-Trans and what their plans are in the future for these various bridges keeps a surprise at that meanwhile each of us then are responsible when we revisit a bridge and we see that there's a problem with the bridge we have a form we fill out to send to John and John can notify the town and he can notify V-Trans beyond that we have Halloween okay and we ask the membership then wherever they live near a covered bridge to keep an eye on it so that's Bridge Watching yeah and it's a lot of just a lot of local people just happen to be in the area they just keep an eye on it that's amazing it really shows involvement almost like a local ownership of the bridge taking ownership of it well there are other things too that we'd like to do we started out this way is that you come to a bridge and it's full of wet gravel so a group of people will come there and they'll sweep it weeds are growing up around there's reeds and trash growing up around the bridge someone will come along and they'll cut it that's our sus we do that we did that until we were confronted with the problem of policing if we're in that bridge sweeping we have to be looked out for so we have to hire a policeman okay and the other thing is insurance we had to be insured and do that sort of thing we don't really have the income to be able to do that so we can look wistfully on and maybe pick up an empty paper cup or something let me ask you this we've just gone through a terrible winter and we're almost not over it so are there any particular problems that happened this winter last couple of months the normal problem then is that when a car comes through all that slush they're dragging it into the bridge now we talk about historic bridges the historic parts of a bridge is the truss itself that truss is heavy timber it needs to be preserved that's why it's coming the floors have evolved over the years the floors we have today aren't like the floors our great-grandfathers had the floors are replaced regularly when they need replacing the siding one of the problems with the siding is kids that like to swim kick the siding out expose the trusses the roofs deteriorate V-trans then took on a great job of replacing every roof of the covered bridges in the state with a new standing seam enameled steel roof before then we would have things like cedar shingle roofs which retain snow which brings us into that story in the old days during town meeting there were two projects let out when they were bid for one was the man who snows the bridge brings snow into the bridge so that the sleds can go through you can tell the season when these wagons then lose their sled skids and go back to wheels so you know spring is here there's another gentleman who bids on the job of clearing the roofs of the covered bridges that's gone by the bar now these new steel roofs these standing seam roofs shed snow so you don't have to send somebody up there at the risk of his life and limb to clear those roofs anymore but Johnson wasn't up on that they weren't snowing the bridges anymore because they didn't need to but they weren't clearing the roofs either they had a cedar shingle roof on that bridge and we took a heavy wet snow and unfortunately when that bridge was built there were no collar ties and no ties inside of the bridge other than the connections in the wood itself and what happened is that the snow pressed that roof down and the refters acted like levers kicked the trusses out the trusses dropped into the river the rest dropped down onto the floor I believe 2,000 so that's why we have steel roofs standing seam roofs well what we'd like to do because we're getting near the end is give you the opportunity to tell what you need from people and how people can get involved with this organization as a group how do they get involved what projects are you currently working on and what do you need from the public so give you that opportunity now well volunteers are always needed there's a number of different committees to get involved with membership is very easy we have just paper applications that people can fill out for membership levels of membership individuals, families life members and the cost is not that much but with that they also get a quarterly newsletter that goes with that but yeah like we were talking about with the bridge watch volunteers are needed wherever there's a bridge like Joe said they have the biggest voice they live in the town and they pay the taxes so you know those kind of representatives people that could plan events different things there's a number of things that could be done but because of lack of volunteers they're not active at the moment so publicity is always a good one legislative like we said let me ask you about this the legislative project is legislative watch what is that about? well the legislative watch is a group of us then approached the Montpelier the matter of fact it was the House of Representatives and where we were working with the the chairman of the transportation department where I don't think department is the word where we were trying to get more signage before bridges to keep the bridges from being damaged by oversized vehicles overweight vehicles going through them and we didn't have a whole lot of luck because of Vermont's laws on signage where we would have been obliged to buy the signs and then pay a fee to maintain them which was beyond our budgets so we kind of failed in that direction but there have been members who belong to towns that have the covered bridge that took an initiative like Phil Jordan do we have that picture? Phil Jordan all of his ad oh you're talking about this picture yeah that one do we have that? well anyway Phil Jordan then lives on the road where the Chiselville bridge is and he had noted that many times like an 18-wheeler would come up that road because he's been told by GPS that he could go through there so they get to that bridge and the driver stops and then at risk of life and limb and people other traffic backs that 18-wheeler gets out of that road and finds another way to go so what Phil did he got the town then to invest and I have the text there on a four warning sign that's placed out where the truck driver perhaps then can find himself another route before he commits to this trap yeah I can see that 8.2 feet that's not much that's great I mean this is really as we said before it's a lot more than just looking at paintings and pictures on postcards this is a very active thing and you could use all the help you can get both from town officials legislators and anybody who watches this program we're going to publish the website where you have a list of all the covered bridges and we also have your own website and we look forward to hearing from your projects in the future and I want to thank you for appearing on Positively Vermont this has been Joe Nelson a founding member of the Vermont Covered Bridge Society and Steve Miyamoto a publicity coordinator and an officer of the group and thank you both for appearing on Positively Vermont this is Dennis McMahon thank you for watching


Thank you. Hi everybody. Welcome to TechSoup's virtual Zoom event. I'm so excited because this is one of our partners. We've never, well I could say we, I have never done a webinar with, in the Zoom motion, okay, Zoom meeting with one of our partners. So I was so excited when Raleigh upset, let's do Zoom so they can see your faces engaged with you. So today, our webinar is about Shattering Fundraising Records with your next virtual event. In this webinar, you're going to learn how to build community with connection-based activities doing your virtual events to improve your fundraising events. If this is your first time here at TechSoup, we want to welcome you on behalf of our over 100 partners here at TechSoup that provide software and hardware and free webinars. I am Aretha Simons. I'm the webinar producer here. This is being recorded. So you'll get the recording along with the slides within 48 hours. Maybe tomorrow, who knows? So since I said we're on Zoom, I'm excited to let you know how you can engage today. Please, please try your best to remain on mute. This presentation will take about 30 minutes. So after that, you'll be able to ask questions and unmute yourself by using the raise your hand option.  But Rally Up has some team members here that are in the chat room. So they'll be answering your questions in the chat room. So feel free to ask your questions as we're doing the presentation. So I'm going to move all the way and introduce our speakers. Today, we have Leanne. She's the director of customer service education for Rally Up. And we have Michelle. She is the senior copywriter for Rally Up. I'm going to let them introduce themselves and let them take it over for now. I'm so excited that you're all here. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much, Aretha. Thank you for hosting us and having us today. We are very excited to be here. I am going to share our PPT with everybody and we are Rally Up. We are so excited to partner with TechSoup on this webinar today. As Aretha said, I am Michelle. I am the senior copywriter for Rally Up and I am joined by my incredible co-host Leanne. She is our director for customer education and she is just an ocean of knowledge when it comes to fundraisers and how to host your virtual event from conception to completion. So we are excited to get into shattering fundraising records with your next virtual event today. As Aretha did mention, we have amazing colleagues from Rally Up who are in the live chat. So if at any point today you have questions or comments or concerns, please chat away, comment and we will be there happy and eager to answer everything for you. But to get started, we wanted to take you through our agenda today. We have come up with a three step fundraising framework for hosting your virtual events and we have all just gone through the global pandemic of COVID which forced us into social distancing and moving in-person events online and we want to know how do you maximize your return on investment with these events? How do you hook your audience, get them engaged, get them attending, raise funds, maximize the amount of funds that you can raise, what really excites people and then what connects them to your cause? As Aretha said, there are such amazing causes out there and we want to get them out and get them heard. The most amazing thing about virtual events is what we are experiencing today. Global audiences who don't need to beat any traffic to get to your event, don't need to cancel any meetings, can sit comfortably on the couch with their glass of wine or cup of tea and enjoy it. So Leanne is really going to take us through those step one, two and three and then we're going to look at some amazing, successful events that have been held on the Rally-Up platform and try and show you some examples of working fundraisers that have found monumental success in their virtual event. So we are excited and we're excited to engage with you guys today. Hi Leanne, welcome. Hey Michelle. Hello. Thank you so much. Where are you joining us from Leanne? I am joining you from Tucson, Arizona. It is sunny in 80s today. Absolutely beautiful. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here. We are excited to pick your brain and learn so much today and God, it's an honor to have you. So thank you. It's great to be here. So what we really wanted to start with today was a poll. We want to hear from you guys. What are your biggest problems with virtual events? And this is really for anybody. You can see Aretha has put it up on our screen. Thank you Aretha. Whether you are looking to host a virtual event, whether you have hosted one in the past and you've run into different concerns that you thought, oh, that didn't really work or that was worrisome. Or if, again, you are looking to host one and you're concerned. Is it that you're concerned about the technology? You're not sure how to run the technology. You're worried that your audience will not know how to run the technology or the site will be difficult to navigate. Is it that you're concerned about engaging with your audience? How do you do that online? In person, you can see them, you can speak to them. There's that instant connection. How do you obtain that in a virtual world? Is it that you're worried about how to actually get donations? How do you raise funds? Is it the post-event commitment, the experience, or is it marketing? Are you worried about how do you market your virtual event? That seems like a daunting task. How do we go about doing that? So let's take this poll, click your little option. And here we have it come in and thank you, Aretha. Again, if you have anything extra to comment, add, or suggest, please feel free to do it in the live chat. You don't need to restrict yourself to this poll. But it looks like 27% are seen engaging with your audience. And that is really a huge, huge part of your virtual event and something we're really going to dive deep into with this webinar. Because when it's in person, you have John and Bill and every other audience member right in front of you. You can see them, you can engage with them, speak with them. So how do you do that in an online atmosphere? And as we know, the Worldwide Web is an amazing platform. And so we really just want to learn and Leanne is going to take a step into it today of how to navigate it to best suit you, your fundraiser, your cause, your audience and the style you're looking for and how to create that connection. So that will be a huge part of our webinar today. And before we get into our three step fundraising framework, I wanted to introduce who Raleigh up is. I am the senior puppy, right Leanne is our director of customer education and really Raleigh up is such an amazing company. You can see over here on the third bullet ranked number 323 on the 2021 in 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the world. And that is because it is an industry leading do it all fundraising platform. And it's really exceptional, a single online venue where you can run multiple activities within your virtual events in an easy to navigate site. And it is peer to peer crowdfunding options for anything that you really want to do from an a fun to a raffle to a live stream rally up does it all. So we will invite you at the end of this for an exciting consultation session with us. So stay tuned for that. But let's get into it Leanne and I'm excited to hear step one how do we hook them how do we engage people and get them so excited to attend our virtual events. Yes, we are definitely going to be talking about that. It's exciting for me to see where everyone's from gosh we have everybody from all over the world to Ireland, start out to UK people that's really great. Um, so hook them you're having an virtual event and I think it's very interesting that some of you pointed out the burnout and the screen fatigue. It's a really good point. You know, how do we just make it a little different to make them want to come. And so that's what our first section is about the hook them. And we've kind of thought about this as we all have a favorite song that maybe is on replay on our playlist or if we're driving we hear it doesn't matter what the person next to us is saying we just turn it up because we love this song right it resonates with us somehow. Maybe it's a specific lyric that is you know touches us for something we're going through in our life right now could be the melody the song and instrumental, but there is a hook that makes us want to stop and listen. And we want to kind of apply that same thing to our event. We want to get people hooked to be able to come to our event and then have that hook resonate to so that they become a lifetime fan of your cause. So we're going to talk about four points that and we'll get into the sub points of those, but we want to provide them with the reason to come fundraise before your virtual event. We're going to talk about marketing your event and then making an emotional connection. I'm going to toss out a lot of ideas like general ideas and follow us up with some specific examples, but just know that these are ideas to help you begin to get creative and maybe you know their new ideas for you. You don't have to do all of these, but we wanted to give you just you know broaden the horizons a little bit to help with your fundraising efforts. So first to bring in the widest audience, it's helpful to appeal to all age groups. You know, maybe think about if you have an older demographic of donors, try to appeal to the younger audience or vice versa, just to you know gain more attention to your cause. So you can do that with special entertainment. Maybe it's with like different people. It could be a celebrity of large scale or a well-known local person who will participate on your virtual event to begin to draw people to want to come. For music lovers out there, maybe you have a band or a singer who performs on your event. For the younger audience, you can include an activity that's trending on social media and we'll get into a little bit more on that later, but that's a little appeal to your younger crowd. For those people who love games, you know, play a game on there, have a trivia contest or play a Pictionary, you can begin to have contests for your audience. Maybe they post a funny photo of their pet and people will vote on that in the chat. Just some kind of engaging activity that's different that gets them to want to come to your event. You can also add incentives to those. Maybe you have special prizes that are only available during your event time or different experiences like those contests or you know, the performance that's only available on your event to get them to draw and to come. Another great way is to encourage watch parties for your virtual event. Then your supporters can be inviting people over to their house and it's creating little mini events and connections, senses of connection within your larger virtual event. And as they're inviting all their friends and family, it's, you know, gaining more attention to your cause and maybe even creating some new donors for your cause. Fundraise before your virtual event. Again, here's some just different ideas. Maybe with your event registration where people are coming to, you know, buy the registration ticket for your event, add a raffle and an auction or a sale on your event registration page. Then not only are they buying a ticket to your event, but they can begin participating by buying entries into the raffle, begin bidding on auction items and then driving those prices up, which again translates for more funds raised for your organization. And it's nice that you have it all there on one page. If you offer raffles or drawings, do some early bird drawings that lead up to your event. You could even do give prizes away that are related to your event. Maybe some of the prizes are you have like a five star dinner delivered to the winner's house the night of your event. Just different ideas to keep people coming back to your page, purchasing entries and again donations to your cause. Adding peer to peer to your event registration is a great way to get the word out because you will invite your supporters to participate in the promotion of your event. There's lots of things you can do to create even community and excitement within that. If you have your promoters or someone signed up to participate and promote your fundraiser, they can get their own link and their own fundraising page that they can customize, tell why they're excited about this cause and this event. Maybe if they're hosting a watch party, they can put that information there. Post that on their social media, then they're reaching out to their circles of influence, which is more than your circle of influence with just your donor base. Again, getting more attention to your cause. You could even offer prizes to maybe the person who raises the most funds by promoting your event. You could include them in your virtual event as a guest host or maybe if they're to appeal to the shy types, you know, you give them some type of gift card for their efforts in promoting and raising funds for your organization. Always to create a virtual community and excitement and buzz for your cause. For marketing your event, this is also very important. One of the main things you want to make sure you do is to brand your event. Have a professional looking landing page with your organization's logo, being able to even change the link to include, you know, the subdomain of your organization. A lot of people can be skeptical online about making a donation someplace cause they don't know if it's real or not. So with that added branding, you give legitimacy to your page and confidence to people to go ahead and make that donation. Utilize social media. I know we have organizations of all sizes here. So within your organization's ability, create the strongest marketing strategy that you can. Use as many social networks as you can with posts. If you can buy ads on those, do some interactive games, creating a hashtag, a Facebook page, all the different ways social media is used to get the word out. And one thing that is can be often overlooked. Make sure you post the link to your event in your social media bio. So people always have a way to get there and then go to be able to register, look at all the activities you have going on and make donations to your cause. If you want to appeal to a younger audience or you have a younger audience, use TikTok and Instagram reels and follow the trends that are on social media there that are always changing. And if you are not up on those trends, it's not a problem. You can create your own focus group by just interviewing some teenagers or 20-somethings, you know, they will for sure be up on the latest trends. You can pick their brain, get ideas from them. And it's a nice way to then be get them to come involved, become involved with your cause, right? They're probably totally flattered that you have asked them their opinion. You can share about your cause and you can even be creating lifetime fans right there from helping them help you with your marketing. And you can also encourage your supporters to be posting, reposting the link to your fundraiser on their social media, again reaching out to those other circles. Teaser videos are a great way to keep the buzz going all the way up until your event. Maybe you can show behind the scenes type of videos. Just any little thing to keep people interested and reminded, hey, our virtual event is coming up. If you have a raffle or a drawing within one of the activities, you could offer a sharing rewards. So if somebody has already purchased entries, you can incentivize them to share that raffle or drawing on their social media by offering them extra entries into the drawing for sharing it. And then if somebody purchases from that link, you can even offer them extra entries because they have brought in a donation. The entries are free to you, but it does incentivize people to be sharing, promoting and getting the word out about your cause. And then one of the most important is making an emotional connection. This is the hook and hook them. Sometimes our cause can feel a little abstract to people by just reading the mission statement. So they can agree that, yeah, it's a great cause, but when we put a face to those statistics, that's what really gives them the hook to stay involved with your organization. So sharing stories of the impact, what people's donations are going to, how lives are affected, that will resonate with people emotionally and keep them coming back. So testimonials, whether it's through video or articles, share those stories on social media. At your virtual event, if this is applicable for your organization, invite someone whose life has been changed by your organization to come and give their testimony. Those always get me. But continue to realize that donors want to be part of something. And providing them with that emotional return on investment is a great way to keep them hooked and fans from your cause. Yes, amazing. And thank you, Leanne. That's definitely something that we can all relate to and why you're actually giving. And here we have this biennial study that shows 54% of people said that they give to the cause because they believe in the mission of the organization. So really make sure that your mission is clear and it is out there. And that is what Leanne was really talking about with marketing and how you make sure that people really understand what your cause is raising funds for. 44% said that they believe that their gift can make a difference. And that really is what Leanne was touching on with share testimonies. Get the people who are receiving your recipients of the donations involved in your event. Help that create this giving back to the community over there that we see 27% really respond to. 39% said that it's experiencing personal satisfaction, enjoyment or fulfillment at the event. So really what Leanne said about incentives. What are people going to win at your event? 39% is quite a large percent of people who get excited to attend your event because maybe they're going to win this amazing raffle prize or this once in a lifetime experience. So how is it that you can book people with a personal incentive? And here we see 36% really respond to supporting the same causes annually. And this talks to community.  And the last point there was 23% are adhering to religious beliefs. And that's really just touching on know your audience, know your target market. Is it an audience that is responding to a religious belief? Is it for animals? Is it for the environment? And then you really want to brand your event according to that. So now that we've heard Leanne talk about marketing and social media, we know that we live in a world of social media, a very over saturated online world. But we want to hear from you guys in the chat. What do you think are the best social media platforms for promoting and marketing your virtual event? If you were to host a virtual event within the next month or two, what is the platform you're going to go to? Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? Is it Twitter? LinkedIn? So chats in our... Oh, Aritha, thank you. This is the poll that we just want to hear from everybody in the chat. What is it that you think? Instagram, Facebook? I'm seeing Instagram seems to be the most popular and amazing. Yes, everybody is saying Instagram or Facebook depends on your audience. Yes, Karen really just hit the nail on the head there because it really is about knowing who you are marketing your event for. Here we have, and I'm going to share this with you guys as the chat is coming in. RallyUp created a survey and it was their first ever practices for giving Tuesday fundraising survey and really what the survey aimed to do was try and help individuals and organizations who are raising funds gain insight into what is working, what's not working, and it was a large survey based around promotion and your actual events and what was the most effective online fundraising tools and activities. So the survey is included individual and small group fundraisers, non-profit organizations, enterprise GSR programs, anybody looking to host a virtual fundraising event. And as we can see here, the promotion, the most effective online fundraising tool was in according to the survey Facebook at 87%. So that's a whopper of a number and that is really what we're seeing in the chats. Facebook is a great tool to utilize because it really is the one social media platform that appeals to a large demographic of people, whether it is your youth, whether it is your senior group, you are able to host lives, you are able to create community chat groups on Facebook, you are able to throw out Facebook ads. So again, it is one of the platforms that really appeal to a large demographic. So make sense as to why it's 87% there. We have email marketing at 76%. And this is something Leanne and I will get further into within the webinar and how to send out your emails, what is effective with email marketing and so forth. And touching on that point for today, don't feel like you have to jot all of this information down. We will be sending out this as a clean package to all of you and all the resources that we covered today, you will have access to. And then you can see social media, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. TikTok at a small percentage there, 5%. But that's because it's a new platform. It's very young platform. But as Leanne said, know your audience. And if you are appealing to that younger audience, perhaps TikTok is the way to go. And then the most effective online fundraising activities for your actual event was 54% seen raffles. So there we go.  We have options there at 33% and then crowdfunding and live streaming tight at 20%. And this really takes us into our second step that Leanne is going to headline us through. But which activity works best for your virtual event? And activities are really how you're going to engage your audience and get them excited and create that sense of interaction and community. So is it that you're going to run a raffle? Or are you going to find a platform that allows you to do a multitude of different fundraising activities? So that really takes us into our second step, step two of race funds. Yeah. And I did see some conversation in the chat about raffles not being allowed in some states, which is true. Our team can help you with that. There is an alternative if you'd like to run a drawing in the form of sweepstakes, which is a little different. But that's something our team can help you through. And we have a lot of organizations in California who can't run raffles who do choose to run a charity drawing through the form of a sweepstakes. So just to let you know that. So let's get into race funds. We want to talk about four points here, making it easy for people to donate, make it fun for them to donate. We want to talk about interaction and connection, and then a little tidbit on going hybrid. So for making it easy for people to donate, one of the main things you want to do is make sure you have a clear call to action button. People can't miss it. It'll be easy for them to be able to participate monetarily by making a donation on your fundraiser. We think about using a text to give. Everybody's on their phones, right? We've talked a little bit about screen fatigue. Using text to give, where you can promote your fundraiser with a keyword, people text that to a number, and receive the link to your fundraiser right on their phone. Then they can, at their convenience, go and participate in your fundraiser through the different activities that you have. Also, keep your event on one branded online venue. When people piece together different platforms to try to accomplish all they want, it can be easy for donors to get lost because they get taken away from the page, especially maybe an older demographic, how do you get back. So have one venue where you can do everything, brand your organization, run all your different activities to keep it simple for people on one page. And then, of course, we want to make it fun for people to donate. Just like screen fatigue, people are a little fatigued at the donation page with a donate button. Let's get creative in the ways we can involve our donors. Again, knowing your audience is key. Appeal to all different types of people and likes and dislikes. So you want to give different ways for people to participate. We talked a little before. Some people love games. Whenever I go on a trip, my husband always wants to play the memory game and I'm like, no, I just don't want to think. So some people like games, some people don't. Playing trivia games or Pictionary or some other type of game on your event is a great way to engage those type of people. You can hold a flash auction, have pop up an item for people to bid on, give it a timeframe, say 10 minutes. And then people just bid, bid, bid. And at the end of those 10 minutes, the highest bidder is the winner. Really helps to drive up donations pretty quickly. Some people love the paddle raises like you do at an in-person event. You can do that online by changing the amount on your donate button to the different levels. And of course, during paddle raises, as people are donating at the different levels, is where you can tell more stories about your event or about your organization and people affected by your cause, how much what their donations will be going to, you know, giving that information and education about your organization. Another idea is contests. Again, a general idea that you can get very creative on. But here's just some different ideas. Maybe leading up to your event, you have people buy an entry to a caption and meme contest. And they receive an image and then their entry is the caption for that meme. Your team can go through maybe choose the top 10 and then at your virtual event, you'll have those listed and you can talk about them and maybe even have the audience vote on them for the winner. You could do the same kind of things with photos. Maybe you know a lot of people or donors into photography, but people could take pictures and you vote on those. And maybe you're going to use that in some of your next marketing materials. Or maybe you have videos where just like something random and silly, people can buy an entry to submit a video for the best whistling of a certain song or the best chicken or rooster imitation. I would come to an event to watch those videos. I think they would just be a lot of fun. And again, showing the top 10 and then in your event, people can just vote on those. So all just different ways to get creative and you know, knowing your audience and what will work well. And then interaction and connection, which is important because on a virtual event, you know, you have people from all over the place. How do you connect them? The live chat is a great way to do that. Through the live chat, people can post in their comments like you guys are doing here. Like I feel like I'm getting to know you guys and I'm loving reading these comments. You can answer donor questions, read off people's comments or call out donations as they're made. Just different ways to bring everybody together, including polls kind of like we did. You can ask the audience questions so they can get to know one another. They can just be about their likes, dislikes, getting the audience opinions on things. Polls are a great way to do that. And then our last point of go hybrid. With all of these online tools, there's really no reason why for your next in-person event, you can't add that hybrid audience in the virtual audience. So I just kind of wanted to like expand your thinking on that a little bit. Like Michelle said, you are not limited to just people who can physically come to your event.  And so again, driving up donations, the more people that come are more likely to donate.  And that's incredible. And touching on interaction and connection with a virtual event, simple things can really make a large difference when trying to connect with your audience. Bring people to the video foreground when they're asking something. Engage with people by name. Really make them feel zine, heard and create that sense of personal connection that you would otherwise have pretty easily in your in-person events. And little things, lighting, sound, framework. Make sure everything is clear. Everything is easy to navigate. Find a platform that people are not going to struggle to navigate or have to learn how to navigate. Find an easy platform that does all these amazing things that Leanne just touched on. So really the finer details. And that takes us into our third and final step. Leanne, I'm excited. How do we keep people coming back to your cause post that one hour event window? Yes, keep them, keeping the hook there to keep them and become lifetime fans for your cause. We're going to go over three points about giving them value in those post event emails. Keeping them engaged and in the loop. And then keep them going with different activities. So how do we give them value in the post event emails? We want to thank them, but don't spam them. We want to convey to them, you know, the value of their participation in their donation. But make sure your emails have a main purpose. Keep it simple and impactful. Which, for me, no long emails because we call those TLDRs too long, didn't read. Make sure that you have that main purpose and you just put that out there. And more bite-sized pieces are easier for people to just read quickly and then move along. There was a study, a 2016 US trust study that talked about how one out of five wealthy donors stopped giving to at least one organization the prior year, so 2015. And the top cited reason was that people received two frequent solicitations. I know that I give to some causes who I just really love, but I've had to unsubscribe to their emails because I get like two or three a day and I can't keep up. So make sure that you have a purpose with that. And even in those emails, invite them to join your social media pages. And you can incentivize them to do that by saying, you know, you're posting images or videos from the event to get them onto that page. And then remember on those pages too is where you want to be sharing those testimonials and even after your event be sharing those testimonials. Share the impact. Another idea for that is maybe you have direct letters from recipients that you can send out to your donors. Those people that have lives have been changed by your cause. Have them write a letter that you can send out to donors. In this, the research that we did, two thirds of survey participants, so 67%, report that videos of success stories are the most effective way to show donors their contribution is having an impact. Reports also show that the money, showing how the money was spent in reports came in second. And blog posts of success stories was the third top reason. You want to keep them engaged in the loop. And again, doing that through social media like we kind of just have talked about ongoing just images and videos of stories. Because really in your social media feed, who does not want to see something positive these days? I'm always I love when I get those and sometimes I sit at lunch watch them and I'll cry, but just that people are doing good in the world is such always a good reminder and an encouragement. And then keep them active or keep the momentum going with different activities. If you've just done a big fundraiser, you know, plan something smaller, like maybe it's just holding a raffle or an online auction. These are great ways that you don't have to just do one fundraiser a year, but smaller ways where people can continue to make donations for your organization. And when you do those smaller ones, make it for like a niche cause. It's maybe funding a specific need or a different segment of your cause. So maybe you're building a building, you know, you could do all the funds from this raffle are going towards this building or paying someone's medical expenses. Great. Again, someone's going to identify with, oh, the story of this person needing medical expenses paid for and more likely to donate. This niche cause, these are great hooks to keep people coming back and making donations. Another idea is create something at your organization where it's volunteer for a day. Maybe someone you can have it where they can work directly with people who are affected by your organization. Maybe it's administrative work. You could do all different aspects of your organization because remember you're appealing to different likes and dislikes. But who doesn't like to come and feel like they've helped someone do something. So if you have needs, invite your donors to come and participate as a volunteer for a day. And then you never know how that might translate to, you know, volunteering on a regular basis. Amazingly. And then I see Phoebe is asking, I'm sorry if I pronounced the name wrong, how do you reach donors that are not online? So that wouldn't be through email. That's really through packages, through little gift bags, doesn't need to be anything elaborate, but anything to a handwritten letter, something personal, something that's really going to, as Leanne was saying, appeal to that specific audience. A bit more challenging when they're not online because you can't just send out that easy link or text to give, but there are definite ways around that. Leanne, I don't know if you had anything other to suggest. I guess that's why good old fashioned mail still works. Amazing. So really keep your audience engaged. Remember that your event doesn't end when your one hour window does. It really continues on. And that's when you want to create your sense of community. Pop that Facebook group together, allow people to interact and engage, reach out to organizations and foundations who you think are interested in your cause. Have them, share your link, share your fundraiser, send out a live recording of the event for people who weren't able to attend and let it go viral, we hope. Thank you so much, Leanne. Leanne is going to take us through some successful events that have been held on rally up virtual events that used a multitude of different activities and what they were and why they were so successful. Leanne? Yeah, we have some great ones here. The first one is this kite board for cancer. This is put on by Project Kauru. I think that's how I pronounce it. They help young adult cancer survivors in the healing process kind of getting back engaged in life with using the outdoors and community. And they hold this kite board for cancer. You can see all the different aspects in the thaw and sale, auction, raffle, events, tickets, and live streaming. So kite boarders came, it was held in Oregon on a lake, and they did theathon where they did so many laps, I believe, within a certain timeframe and people could pledge per lap that they kite boarded. They had sale items with swag, t-shirts for their event, hats, all kinds of water bottles and such. They held the online auction, raffle, purchased tickets to come to the event, even just as a viewer. And then they had a live stream portion where they live streamed from the event so an audience could see what was going on. And I believe they raised $153,000. So I apologize that $23,000 there is not correct. But yeah, they raised $153,000. So just a nice event and a way to use the virtual aspect to that. This next one is my favorite and the company favorite. While the pandemic first started back in 2020, there were two teenage girls that you can see here who wanted to do something to help their community. So they put on a cartwheelathon. They promoted theirathon. The idea was people could pledge per cartwheel done in 10 minutes. And they live streamed these two girls cartwheeling and cartwheeling and cartwheeling for 10 minutes. And they raised over $13,000 for their local food bank. So I was very curious to see how many cartwheels can you do in 10 minutes between the two of them. They did 350 cartwheels. That's really crazy. There were some large donations and I thought, yeah, people really put up for them. So it was really cool. It was a great inspiration too. Like if two teenage girls can do this, we can all do something. The Hawaii Parkinson's Association, they had an interesting one. They had a virtual exercise day. So they're a virtual event. They had all different kinds of exercise teachers and they had some surprise teachers show up for the event. It was a crowdfunding and you can see they added the peer to peer for the promotional aspect. And then they had the live streaming, which was the exercise day. They offered to the participants in the peer to peer who raised over $25. They received a surprise gift. So that encouraged people to be promoting and sharing the link to the fundraiser. And they raised over $50,000 for the Parkinson's Association. And then the last one is the see her empower her. As you can see, they did a crowdfunding, peer to peer and live streaming. They actually did watch parties where people just kind of opened their house, invited people over to do a watch party around their virtual event. And they raised $70,000 that helped those impacted by domestic violence in the Boston area. Amazing. Wow. $70,000 raised. So just shows you, you can cut the costs of your in-person event. No need for the venue. Take it online and you can raise, you can shadow those fundraising records. Thank you so much, Leanne. I love those examples. And as I promised in the beginning, our gift to everybody attending this webinar, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope that it was insightful and helpful and answered all of your questions that you had. We would love to offer you a free fundraising strategy session with Rally Up. We have amazing consultants to do this all day every day. And we'll take you through the whole process from step one, step two, step three. And we would also love for you to check out what we have to offer at Rally Up. Here is the little link. Again, we will be sending all of this information that we shared with you today. So anything that you need, don't hesitate to let us know. And thank you so much, Arisa, for having us and Leanne, for hosting with me. Thank you guys. Yeah, it's fun to get to meet everyone. Yes. Excellent. Can you stop showing us here? We want to see everybody's face so that we can see if there's some questions that people want to ask live. And thank you, Alison, for joining us in the background. Alison's here. Great. That was amazing. I learned something. I was like taking notes first. I'll start writing on a little bit. I'm running out of room. I got so many notes. So I want to know if anybody had any questions, feel free to use the raise your hand option where the little smiley faces at the bottom of your screen. And then we will ask you to unmute yourself. And you can ask your question live. I mean, when do you get our partners here live that you could ask questions? This is rare. Okay, Terilyn, if I pronounce your name right. Thank you. Yes, yes. Thank you. You pronounced it correctly. It's Terilyn. I'm the president of Titus Single Parent Mentoring and our science, technology, engineering, arts and math program here in Southern California, Los Angeles County. Our nonprofit is not as big. It's seemed to have strength a little as far as our members, strength a little bit because of COVID because they were just burnt out with a lot of the online. But we provide STEM scholarships to inner city underserved youth. And so I'm wondering how it does, you know, as far as who you serve, do we have to have a certain operation budget in order to receive your service or is it, you know, we're very, right now, we're very thin on our bottom line. Yep. Nope. Rally Up was created specifically for nonprofit organizations of any size. We've done everything from your large corporate responsibility to small local pet shelters, even a rat shelter, no joke. Everybody's got their cause. So yes, you know, there's no requirements. We just want to help you raise funds for your cause. Awesome. I'll definitely reach out. We have a big event coming up on May 1st and I'm going to need your help right away. Love to help. Thank you. That was a great question. Hi, John. You can unmute yourself. Thank you. My name is John Romano. I'm with the Disaster Central Executive Director. And the question relates to the digital marketing aspects, you know, oftentimes these events require a real digital marketing component. And so what I was wondering if Rally Up has shines in there in any way, you know, because we're currently running a Google AdWords, you know, campaign, you know, we're doing, we've got all the social media properties. And so, but digital marketing is a pretty good nut to crack there. And I was just wondering how Rally Up plays into that. Yes, our marketing team would be happy to sit down with you and look at what you're doing and, you know, help make suggestions to that. So we can definitely help with that. Okay. Should I just leave my email in the Q&A or how do we reach you, basically? Yes, you can do that. And one of our customer success team can reach out to you to set something up. Okay. All right. Thank you. And John, you're also welcome. Sorry, John, you're also welcome to go to the rallyup.com site and in creating an experience, one of our experts will be happy to walk you through all of your questions, including marketing and how to market for the digital world, as you're saying. Yeah, can somebody from Rally Up put that link in the chat room several times so people can click on that link for their free assessment or consult. If you click on that link, it'll open up another window. It will not remove you from Zoom. So feel free to go ahead and click on that link. Hi, Andrew, you can go ahead and unmute yourself. Hey, good afternoon. I'm the Executive Director at Project Oceanology. We are a 50-year-old STEM science-based... Now I can hear you. So I just arrived here as the Executive Director a month and a half ago. And our online marketing and use of the online world for donations is almost non-existent. A matter of fact, our donation base is almost non-existent. So I'm curious what Rally Up would say for a suggestion to someone in my position who's looking to expand this and also to harness this 50-year anniversary, literally the moment I walk in the door. So I'm trying to plan an event for this fall and really am interested in your ideas about hybrid marketing. Yeah, I mean, we can, again, like if you want to sit down and we can talk with you more specifically, because I'm sure there's specifics that are different for each organization. But yeah, it's like starting from the ground up, really. It sounds like you're kind of rebuilding for the online world, huh? Building for the online world. So it's just not something the organization has really harnessed in the past. Yeah, so I'm really interested in getting some expertise and will definitely be willing to take advantage of the consult. But is this for them telling you here something that's common? You know, folks just haven't really been in this world in the past and are trying to jump in?   And then, yeah, our team is here to help you to continue to grow and see what we can do, yeah. Yeah, well, we look forward to working with you and thank you so much for hosting this today. It's great. Yay, good. Thanks. Thank you. Hi, Vianna. Go ahead and unmute yourself, please. Hi. Thank you so much again for taking my question. I'm so excited to hear all this great information. We're actually preparing to launch our inaugural outreach and fundraising awards appreciation party. Like everyone was saying, I want to make it fun. We are a local nonprofit here in Chicago, Illinois, been working in a community-based one, building those relationships. So now, as we prepare to go to market, as Vianna said and all the other callers, well, participants trying to see how we can navigate this online space and in-person space to just introduce our organization, our initiative that we already been getting started just to scale and grow. And wanted to, because I've been out here doing a lot of self-developing in the market space, and it's so many things you can do. And just wanted to see if RIA, I'm sorry, RallyUp is a one, I'm just looking for a one, all in one platform to be able to engage in our community, build capacity, our membership and just continue to advance. So that's my question. Great question. Yeah. So can you explain to me what you're looking for in the all-in-one platform a little bit more just so I make sure I understand your question? Yeah. So we're looking again to start with launch our outreach and fundraising campaign to build that capacity, engage our community and wanted to have the online auctions and all the things which you already talked about, but bring it together in one platform. So it won't be all over the place. And our founder's day is March 25th. Not sure if that's enough time to even get acclimated and up and going with RallyUp to ensure our event success. So that's pretty much our goal. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that was what you were referring to. Yes. And exactly what we call ourselves an all-in-one platform where you can run all these different activity types. We have seven different activity types on one campaign. You can mix and match as you like. We have integrations. So you can integrate all the donor information to your CRMs. It's fully brandable for your organization. You can even remove RallyUp entirely. So it just looks exactly like your organization's web page. So yes. That's good to know. I look so far to being able to get a consultation. Yeah. And getting, setting up, you know, your fundraiser does not take long. So you will be able to meet your deadline that you have. Yay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Steven, I see you. You can go ahead and unmute yourself. And then next will be Lily. Thank you. Hi. So in terms of this, I live in Los Angeles. And in the private school and the public school arena, most of the nonprofit work that is done is the once a year big push is these big online, big in-person events. And obviously COVID has killed that.  Do you have that capability or no? You can, you can do like an in-person auction and turn it into an online auction by like creating QR codes at like in your, all around all of your prizes. And then people can come and scan the QR code be taken right to your online auction and then bid everything. Turning everything into online auction is really helpful for you guys because it saves a lot of work. You don't have to collect bid sheets at the end. Tax receipts are already automatically sent. The money is automatically charged. It really saves your organization a lot of time. So I would encourage pushing even your in-person auction to an online auction. Well, we do now where they have one of those signups where you have, you get an app or whatever on your phone and they text you to say, hey, you've been outbid and stuff like that. Do you tie in with the company that does that or do you do it separately? We do it through our platform. Yep. We give email or and they can opt in for text notifications if they're outbid so people can just stay engaged with their item and be, you know, pushing up the price. Cool. Michelle, call me on that. Thank you so much. Thanks, Steven. You got it. I got a job. Lily, go ahead and unmute yourself, please. Thank you. Hi. Yeah. Okay. So my organization, we host like a trivia event every year or rather we have. And to be honest, it has not raised a ton of money in the past. My director mainly does it as a chance to engage the community. And so I'm wondering if there's ever been something like a either hybrid event or just all virtual event that you guys have done that is a trivia event. Wondering if you guys have seen something like that or how did it go? How are you guys able to help support that? There's probably some like hybrid trivia events that have happened. They have seen it where people they've done drawings for the winners to participate in the trivia. So it makes it a little bit more exclusive. And then at the trivia event, that's sort of the virtual event. So that's another little bit of an idea that you could use. But I think you could draw in your, if you have an in-person event with your live stream, draw your crowds together and just get creative in the ways that people answer. Okay. Yeah. I was, I guess I was kind of curious whether or not we'd be able, like if it, if it does look hybrid, could a group be online virtually kind of in what you guys mentioned, like a watch party where they're all together. They're just not with us for whatever COVID purposes. They might feel like they need to do that or just to expand the opportunities for that. Could they, could we theoretically still host the event and have them, you know, through you guys somehow submit answers or something like that? Do you guys support? I think so. And our team can get together and talk more specifics with you and give, create different ideas to help you accomplish what you want. So please make, you know, make sure you reach out to us because our team can collaborate with you for different ideas. Okay. Great. Thank you. Yep. Great. Hey, put that link in there again. That is a great opportunity to have a free consultation. I mean, free, right? It's for me, it's just free, right? Hello. Listen, Leanne, Michelle, and Jeannie, who else? Nicole and everybody from RallyM. I want to thank you for taking the time to be here today. This was a lot of information. And you're the first one we did with the Zoom. We saw all these spaces. What's that engaging? Yay. Yay. So I hope other partners will, will follow. It's great to see your faces. Listen, as you're taking care of the world. This is everybody. I want to thank everybody. Please make sure you take care of yourself. All right. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Bye, y'all.


The Hero's Journey, a baseball odyssey. A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered, and a decisive victory is won. The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons to his fellow man. Joseph Campbell, the hero with a thousand faces. A batter shall leave home and embark upon an adventure. Along the way, hostile opponents will attempt to kill him. The path of his journey includes three bases and a return to home. Each base has its own guardian. Each base has its unique trials and lessons. He may encounter momentary safety on a base, but he cannot rest for long. His journey continues until he is called out or left stranded as his team is retired. If he is successful, he will return home scoring a run. To step to the plate, home plate ruled by the sign of cancer. The batter steps up to the plate. He rises from the safety and security of the dugout. The dugout, also ruled by the sign of cancer.  The batter attempts to sever himself from the regenerative pull of the mother. He must also resist the stagnancy and comfort of remaining at home. The batter stands at home plate, a symbol of hearth, safety and comfort. With every ounce of his courage, he attempts to leave it. To do so, he must confront the hostile presence of the pitcher. The pitcher stands on a mound. The pitcher is taller and more authoritative than the batter. The pitcher is akin to a parent or teacher who puts down an adolescent, criticizing him and challenging his competence to act on his tone, act on his own. Each pitch thrown at the batter is an attack on his adulthood. It is the challenge of youth to find confidence, to gain a sense of self-illusion and to leave home. In parallel, it is the batter's mission to respond to the slings and taunts of the pitcher in a manner that will enable him to commence his journey. If he strikes out, grounds out, flies out or cannot otherwise reach home, his response to the parent or teacher is inadequate. The batter returns to the dugout. He is unable to begin his journey and must stay home. But if he answers the pitcher's challenges with a hit, he successfully leaves home and the adventure has begun. First base, governed by the sign of Pisces and the planet Neptune. First base is a place of oceans, the unconscious realms, those places we reach in sleep, dreams, and mystic states. Those rooms hidden in our psyche would share the amniotic fluid of creation. On first base, the hero becomes submerged. The journey begins by water. Water is the necessary element in the story of Jonah. Jonah is called to Nineveh, but does not wish to travel there. Instead, he flees from his mission and boards a ship to Tarshish. While Jonah is asleep in the bottom of the ship, a violent storm threatens its safety. The ship's crew draws lots to detect who has brought the plague upon them. When they discover it is Jonah, the crew tosses him into the sea. Soon a large whale comes and swallows him. Jonah spends three days and nights inside the belly of the whale. Only then does Jonah face the necessity of his mission. Finally, he heeds that he is called to Nineveh. Then the whale spits Jonah onto dry land. First base is a place of solitude. First base is an isolation tank of water where one listens to oneself. On first base, one hears the call of one's personal mission. The challenge is to hear one's unique call and to answer it. Second base, governed by the sign of Libra and the planet Venus. The hero approaching second base will encounter its goddess. He falls in love with her. If he succeeds at courting her, he is safe at second. The lessons of second base are to love and to join with the world. Second base is a wonderful place, but the hero will have to return to the road. If he can take his bride with him, leaving second base will be easy. But she may not understand the thrill and necessity of his journey. If she is unwilling or unable to leave her native land, the hero will experience a difficult conflict. If his bride is not willing to travel, she will not want him to leave. Leaving second base can mean more difficult than arriving there. Ulysses ships wrecks on Calypso's island. Calypso nourishes him, restores his health, and becomes his lover. But when Ulysses is ready to leave her island and continue the Odyssey, she does not let him go. Only with the intervention of the gods is Calypso persuaded to allow Ulysses's freedom. The hero cannot bring his bride with him as he continues the journey, but he brings the lessons he learned from her to love and to join with the world. Third base, ruled by the sign of Scorpio and the planet Pluto. The majority of batters are out long before they reach third base and its challenges. The hero resting on third base is 90 feet from home. The distance between third and home is the most treacherous crossing in the journey. The hero on third base must confront death. Death has been a hazard all along the journey, but now its challenge is intensified. The lessons of third base include the mysteries of life and death and the power of will. Third base is Hades. On third base, the hero descends to the underworld. The Mayan twins of the Popol Vu endure several ordeals in the underworld. Their trials include matches of the sacred ballgame against the lords of the underworld. The hero daringly crosses the river sticks and eludes the three-headed dog that guards the entrance. In Hades, the hero finds what he needs and attempts to escape. But the greatest difficulty is leaving. Aeneas visited the underworld where he spoke to his dead father who gave him the prophecy of the founding of Rome. Aeneas' guide, the Sibyl, knew the way back from the underworld. Throughout these difficult ordeals, the hero must maintain his determination and will to survive. Exhausted and depleted, yet refusing to surrender, determined to persevere, the hero taps resources dormant or unknown. Like the marathon runner who hits the wall and continues on, the hero locates reserves of strength and will. To make it the final 90 feet is an act of extraordinary power. The hero on third base breaks for the plate on a shallow fly or he performs the most daring act in baseball. The steel of home. Coming home, the hero crosses the plate and scores a run. Safe at home, the hero's journey is complete. His mission accomplished. He is greeted and welcome with cheers and applause. To home from which he took such pains to leave, he now triumphantly returns. The hero returns. He brings a life-restoring gift to his family and his city. His gains become the gains of the community. Jason and the Argonauts return to Greece with the Golden Fleece. Moses returns from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. Tripitaka returns home to China with the Buddhist scriptures of India. Olympic athletes return home with medals. The homecoming of the hero fills the community with the new life, enhancing energy. Life is renewed. Faith is restored. The renewal comes not only from the knowledge and the gifts that the hero bestows, but from the very act of his return. A hero is triumphed in a fantastic adventure. The greatness of his deed is shared by all. His story will be told and retold, a story that affirms the triumph of the spirit. Thank you.