It's our job to make sure banks are safe and sound. It's also our job to make sure that they can fend off any challenges. And right now, there are quite a few of them. Russia's unjustified invasion of Ukraine has pushed inflation up to levels we haven't seen in decades here in Europe. And this affects people in their everyday lives, businesses and, of course, also banks. We also don't know how long the war and its effects will last. Every year, we look at the challenges facing banks and determine what they need to do and how much capital they need to set aside to be able to cope during the year ahead. Today, we'll go through what we found in our latest review of this. You're listening to the ECB podcast, bringing you insights into the world of economics and central banking. My name is Katie Ranger. I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by chair of the supervisory board, Andrea Enria. Andrea, thank you so much for joining us again here on the podcast. Thank you very much, Katie. Glad to be here. Now, Russia's invasion of Ukraine happened almost one year ago. It was a shock on so many levels, a shock that war is back in Europe and, of course, a shock in terms of how it affects our economy as well. Banks have been able to withstand the impact quite well, but I'm sure there are quite a few unknowns that they still need to keep a very close eye on. What are the results of your latest assessment? How are banks faring in these quite uncertain times? 2022 was a good year for European banks, I think. They closed the year with a strong capital position, strong liquidity position. Asset quality, surprisingly to some extent, kept improving throughout the year, while we were fearing an immediate impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the macroeconomy and, therefore, on the ability of customers to pay back the banks. And the increase in interest rates that has accompanied, let's say, the raising inflation has also been a positive news for banks boosting their profitability to a large extent. So the situation has been improving, but our review of the banks concluded with basically stable scores and stable requirements in terms of capital. Why is that? Well, because we are still in a very uncertain environment and banks also do have some structural weaknesses in the way in which they manage risks in their internal controls and this is particularly important when you are in an uncertain environment. Okay, that all sounds fairly positive. You mentioned that capital requirements remained steady and the banks have, in general, shown a lot of resilience overall, but you already touched upon it. You are asking some banks for kind of stronger security nets in some areas, for example, their exposures to non-performing loans or what we call leveraged finance. This was the first time that you kind of looked at this idea of leveraged finance. Can you explain a bit what your findings were and maybe what this all means, why it's so important for banks? You're right, Katie. Since the pandemic, let's say, we started focusing a lot on our supervisory activities on specific areas of business in which particular risks may arise for banks. So for instance, we focus on exposures to sectors that were particularly hit by the pandemic, sectors that were exposed to the increase in prices for energy due to the energy shock following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So things like food services. Exactly. Or even manufacturing using a lot of energy like ceramic or metal, chemicals and the like. So to see what are the potential risks stemming from there. But we also focus very much, for instance, on sectors which are fragile in case of significant interest-rating crisis. For instance, non-bank financial institutions, which have taken leveraged bets on certain sectors of the financial markets. For instance, finance leveraged buyouts and taking huge amount of debt. Now, if the amount of debt is huge, of course, when interest rates increase, these counterparts become very fragile. Leveraged finance has been in our radar screen for a while, but this is the first year actually in which we charge some capital add-ons for banks exposed to these particularly leveraged counterparts. So this is where you ask them to set aside more capital to cover that risk that comes from this leveraged finance. Exactly. And basically, we ask banks to strengthen their own internal risk management, their own what we call risk appetite. So sending limits and being able to manage risk. And when we found weaknesses, we asked banks to improve to reduce exposure to risks. And when we were not satisfied, of course, we asked banks to raise the capital to protect themselves against possible losses. Let's do it on one point that we've mentioned a few times now, the economic situation. It's still very hard to say exactly what 2023 will bring on that front. What exactly does this uncertain situation mean for banks? What are their biggest challenges in all of this? If we look at the central forecast, what we expect as a trajectory of our economy in the Euro area, this is still rather positive for banks. There would be probably further normalization interest rates, which is on average good news for the banks. And there will likely be a slow down or a shallow and short recession. So which is not good news, but let's say it's still probably more than compensated by the positive effect of interest rates increases. But as you say correctly, Cathy, I mean, we do have a lot of uncertainty here. So to some extent, banks will have to navigate a rather narrow path between, let's say, the shilla of a possible recession, stronger than we currently expect, or the Caribbean, let's say, of an interest rate increase, which is sharper and faster than we currently expect. And in both cases, there would be, of course, also a potential negative repercussions on their balance sheets. And this is why we are putting a lot of focus on banks' ability to actively manage this, to have strong internal controls, to be able to react fast to challenges in both directions. And also, I must say that banks sometimes seem a bit optimistic on the likelihood that once again, if things go wrong, there will be the discovery of the public support coming. But we are in a very difficult situation, a different situation right now. Monetary policy support will not be forecoming because inflation is particularly high, and those co-fiscal support will not be as broad-based and blanket support as it was during the pandemic. So these raises concerns, and I must add also that there are longer-term structural challenges. I mean, the digital transformation of our economies, the climate change, so managing these risks in an appropriate way becomes more and more crucial. Okay, so it's all about not resting on their laurels and making sure that they've got their risk controls in place, that they know what's going on in their business and not expect, as you said, the public support to come in and save them this time around. Now another of the economic challenges that we've touched upon a few times now in the conversation is the very high inflation that we've been seeing here in Europe. And of course, we at the ECB have been raising our key interest rates to get it under control. Now, last year when we talked on the podcast, we spoke about how banks are faring, and one of your concerns was low profitability at the time. And you mentioned earlier that, of course, higher rates will help there. But is that the end of the story? Is there more at play here in terms of how banks are doing or how banks will do in terms of their profitability? Higher interest rates are generally positive for banks.  So they benefit when there is higher interest rate environments. And in general, when the interest rates are moving, let's say the interest rates on the liabilities that they pay to the depositors move slower than the interest rates that they charge to customers, also because some of the contracts are variable rates. So the effect is generally positive, but there is a but. Of course, the higher the interest rate, the more certain categories of customers might find it difficult to pay back the loans. So there's a risk involved? Yeah, there is a risk involved that some customers can be unable to, let's say, respect their contracts, and they could become non-performing. So the point is that the higher the interest rates go, the more there will be distributional effects across banks, banks which are, for instance, very much focused on consumer lending or on commercial estate, residential estate, which are very sensitive to interest rates also on the side of customers, might face deterioration in asset quality. So it's positive, but of course there could be winners and losers, and that's where we as supervisors should focus. Now, this is your last year as chair of the supervisory board. A lot has happened since you started in 2019. You've mentioned in interviews a couple of times that being a supervisor isn't always easy. Andrea, what are you most proud of from your time as chair, and what would you like to achieve in this last year before the end of your mandate? The single supervisory mechanism, so the ECB together with the national authorities is not an easy organization. I mean, it's a bit of a tanker. So we are a heavy organization, very rules-based as all the authorities, the agencies in the European Union. So what I'm very proud of is that we managed to be very agile in responding to the sequence of shocks that we experienced in the last three years, so the pandemic, then the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and we deployed a number of policies that were communicated very fast that gave banks more flexibility on the one hand to take all the challenges, but also asking them to be super safe, to focus their risk management, to keep more capital in the banks, in their balance sheets. So I think this worked very well, and if the banks were, let's say, supporting the economy throughout these difficult times, I think it's also, to some extent, a merit of our good policies there. In terms of what I hope to lead to my successor at the end of the year, I think we started a cultural change in the organization, moving to a more mature organization. As I said, Europe is generally a very rules-based environment, so we tend to rely on codified rules, which makes our type of activities sometimes a bit bureaucratic and heavy-handed, tick the box. Supervision, I think, needs to be more risk-focused. We need to leave more room for judgment of the supervisors, and to have internal mechanisms that review and check their assessment. So we try to move in this direction. If you do more judgment, it means that you need also to be more transparent towards the banks and the public in general about how you make your judgments. So moving to an organization that is more risk-focused, more transparent, and better able to adjust the risks that are in the economy, I think is something that I would hope to leave to my successor. Well, I'm sure you will. I think we often forget that the single supervisory mechanism was only brought in in 2014, so it's not even 10 years old yet. So the fact that it's achieved so much and it's already at that stage of, shall we say, maturing is very impressive. Now, before we wrap up, we have a question that we ask all our guests on the podcast, and that's for a hot tip, linked to the topic, broadly linked to the topic we're discussing today. Andrea, have you thought of something to inspire our listeners? Yeah, I don't know whether it will fit your request, but let's see. One thing that I would like to mention is something that John Minor Keynes mentioned is treaties of probability, not one of his most renowned books written in 1921, and this is the so-called dilemma of the umbrella. Keynes was discussing about probabilities, and basically he was mentioning the point that there are situations in which you cannot really rank the probabilities. It makes it difficult to forecast what will happen in the future, so this is what is essential to his concept of uncertainty that we discussed so much today. Basically he said you can find yourself in a situation in which the barometer is high, but there are black clouds out there, so you have two measurement systems, and actually you cannot rank them. You cannot combine them in a deterministic estimate, and this is very much the situation we are in right now. We cannot really use our models and say this is what is likely to happen tomorrow. There are so many uncertainties out there that we have to rely a lot on judgment, and of course also on prudence, which is the call that we as supervisors always make. Okay, dilemma of the umbrella by Keynes. Very, very interesting. Thank you so much, Andrea. Well, that brings us to the end of this episode. I want to thank Andrea Andrea, chair of our supervisory board for joining the conversation today. Thank you, Katie. Check out the show notes for additional material on this topic. You've been listening to the ECB podcast with Katie Ranger. If you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. Until next time, thanks for listening.


So next we're going to hear from Dr. Mike Burl, one of our PGY-3 residents, who's going to be discussing a case that's likely non-physiologic. And then Dr. Becca Gincher is going to close our morning discussing a case of apnea neuropathy and end stage renal disease. All right. So this is a case from when I was on call a little over a year ago. So in December 2017, I was called by the children's ER. They said the words that are music to my ears. You don't need to see this patient, but can you help me schedule follow-up, please? And I said, well, okay, what's going on? They said a nine-year-old girl had come in, brought by her mother, complaining of some vision, some blurry vision, a little bit, maybe some double vision. And her mom was the one that actually said, you know, I think she just wants glasses. She's kind of been mentioning this for a little while, but it's kind of a teacher lesson I'm bringing her in. And the ER doctor didn't examination and didn't find anything abnormal, so agreed, but just wanted to get her in and see if she needed a pair of glasses. I said, okay, well, tell me a little bit more about what the patient is describing. And she said, well, she says she only sees two images when both eyes are open, but it's not always two images. Sometimes she looks at her face and she sees three eyes and two noses and one and a half mouths. And just the story wasn't fitting very well. I mean, I don't think it's very often that you get someone that young that can be that precise about what they're seeing. And so it just didn't sit very well. So I said, you know, I'm here, why don't I come and just check in with the patients and see what's going on? I got there and, well, before I actually even went in the room, mom even pulled me aside and said the same thing. She said, thanks for seeing us, but hopefully this doesn't waste your time. And said again, I think she just wants a pair of glasses. But there's a little bit more to her story about one week prior to coming in. So this was around Christmas Eve. Mom said that she or the patient had said she felt dizzy. She took a nap and then she even had an episode of nausea and vomiting. But mom just kind of thought it's from eating too much junk food from the holidays. She then started to say she was seeing two images of certain things. But again, mom kind of brushed it off a little bit. Talking to the patient, she said it doesn't last all day, but it would happen for some time period of every day for at least the last week before she came in. And then, like I mentioned before, is intermittent horizontal binocular double vision, but not always the exact same. At the time she said she wasn't having any vision problems, but she was before they got roomed in the emergency room. She had no other pertinent medical history. She wasn't taking any medications, no eye problems in her, and then just a few medical problems that had run in the family. Her initial exam, so she was 20, 20 in both eyes, she had full color vision with almost full color vision without any red desaturation. And her stereopsis was full. Her visual fields were full, her pupils were normal, her extracurricular motility was full, and on just alternate cover testing at bedside there was no tropiophoria elicited. She had a little bit of end gaze and stagmus, but the kicker was she had some subtle up-beat, nice stagmus, and primary gaze, and worsened on up gaze. Her ILPs were normal. And then just to kind of appease mom more than anything, I told her, well, I'll just throw on a pair of readers, and she miraculously says everything's better, maybe, so I threw on a pair of readers, and she said, no, things still seem a little blurry, but at this point I think the jig was up. The rest of her exam was completely normal. Of course, the lab exam was normal, and her dialy to fund this exam was normal. So, in summary, we had a nine-year-old, otherwise healthy girl, recent episode of nausea and vomiting, and had one week of this intermittent horizontal obinocular diplopia with normal visual acuity and stereo acuity, but she had up-beat, nice stagmus, and primary gaze, worsened on up gaze. So differential, so that kind of makes, you know, your hair stand on in a little bit when you find somebody that has up-beat, nice stagmus, so a broad differential for up-beat, nice stagmus would be so lesions in the brainstem, so whether it's infarction ischemia, neoplasm, or demyelinating disease, and then, of course, you have toxic and metabolic causes, seizures and cephalitis, meningitis, vasculitis. Chiari male formations are a common one, a more common one, and then cerebellar degeneration, and then there's also drug induced. She really didn't fit any of the bottom ones. She hadn't had any imaging, and we're on a few of those, but certainly there was concern for possible neoplasm. The pathophysiology of up-beat, nice stagmus is not fully understood. It's suggested that, because this is most often seen in lesions with the pontometallary or pontomesophallic regions, that it's an imbalance in the vertical vestibular-opular pathways. But again, the exact mechanism is unclear. Just a few examples of some of those lesions. This is not our patient. So it was kind of a bummer to kind of tell mom, like, you know, I came in, thought maybe just a pair of glasses would do it, but I actually think she needs an MRI, and mom was distraught at this point, just worried, you know, of course not upset that she brought her in, but just a little more worried. So we sent her for an MRI, and this is her MRI, which showed pontine tumor faction, most likely neoplasic and etiology, and strongly suggestive of what's called DIPG or diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma. So we'll talk a little bit more about this specific tumor. And she was admitted to the hospital. So this was the day after she's admitted to the hospital. She underwent biopsy of the tumor, which I thought was really interesting. I didn't even think that was something they would pursue, but she did have stereotactic biopsy, which talking to, you know, luckily a neurosurgery resident on the neurology, or Neuro ophthalmology service right now, so I was talking to Brandon, and he kind of walked me through this. So basically they do preoperative imaging, and then once they have the patient in the OR, they're able to kind of link that preoperative imaging with a probe that's able to pinpoint exactly where they want to take the biopsy. They then put the patient's head in a brace, and then they will clear the area where they want to go after identifying it with the preoperative imaging, the burrow hole, and then they're able to go in with the biopsy cannula, if you will, and take biopsies. They took six specimens total, which also seemed like a lot to me, but again, talking to Brandon, that's necessary if you're really wanting to do genetic testing, in addition to pathology and things, and that was the case. Her biopsy revealed the presence of this H3K27M mutation. So DIPG, a little bit about the epidemiology, in general, primary pediatric brain tumors are rare. There's about 2,000, a little more than 2,000 cases annually, but about 15 to 20% of these are DIPG, and unfortunately it has among the most a dire of prognoses. It's the leading cause of death from pediatric brain tumors, and the median age of presentation is seven, and there's no gender prolection. This is a tumor that arises from astrocytes in the pons. It very rarely metastasizes because it's just basically infiltrative of the pons itself, but it can to local sites along fiber tracks, and it's always considered highly malignant, no matter the pathology grade that you would normally assign, whether it's WHO classification, just because of the... I guess the characteristics of progression of this tumor is always considered high-grade. The classic presentation, it kind of has a classic triad, is cranial nerve palsies, especially cranial nerve six and seven, and then long-tracked signs or higher motor neuron signs such as hyperreflexia, clonus, hypertonia, and positive babinsky. I have to admit, I didn't check for babinsky or many higher-order signs in her, but in a follow-up neurosurgery note, there were none that were noted, and then ataxia would completely triad. The symptoms associated with that triad, of course, diplobia, facially symmetry, clumsiness, and ataxia, and then you can also develop signs and symptoms of elevated intracranial pressure, just if there is elevated intracranial pressure from just anatomic blockage of the outflow of CSF. Diagnosis has really historically been just by clinical signs and symptoms and time frames, so this, since it progresses so quickly, symptom duration is usually less than three months at the time of diagnosis, and of course you get imaging, these kind of characteristic findings in imaging. MRI is most common, but CT, you get isodense or hypodense enlargement of the pons, and then MRI, you'll get hypodense enlargement of the pons on T1 or diffuse bright signal on T2 or flare imaging. Variable contrast enhancement, but it's usually absent, and then you can have necrosis in later stages. The prognosis is nearly 100% fatal and without radiation, which is currently only approved, identified effective treatment, the median survival is four months. Post-radiation median survival is between eight and 11 months, so quite a horrible prognosis, and the survival rates are very abysmal. Less, or 30% of one year, 10% of two years, and less than 1% of five years. As I mentioned, the only currently proven treatment is radiation therapy. Many chemotherapeutic agents have been tried, but have not found to be significantly prolonged survival. The barriers to treatment are suggested as just the location itself. It's not amenable to surgical debulking or procedures, and then the blood-brain barriers thought to be preserved in the IPG, which is why the chemotherapeutic options are not helpful. And then there's also a poor understanding of just the underlying molecular and cellular biology just because we haven't ever taken biopsies before. This is such an aggressive tumor. And so I think that's something that's interesting now, and we hear a lot about that. In ophthalmology, too, we talk a lot about these retinal dystrophies that we're now targeting with personalized medicine. And I think that's the case here, too, and it's kind of neat to see. So again, why biopsies really a move towards this personalized medicine? So there's a journal just talking about this H3K27M mutation, and it's told that if it wasn't bad enough that the IPG is such a poor prognosis that the presence of this mutation actually confers a worse prognosis and patients tend to progress much more quickly. That's just a description of what the mutation is. It just... Well, you can read it up there. It leads to the amino acid substitution of lysine from thining, and this just leads to poor physiologic differentiation of the drive to glioma genesis. So last part of this I just want to talk, and on a more happy note, is that there are some novel treatments and diagnostic procedures that are coming up, so two that I want to just really talk about are there's a clinical trial ongoing with this treatment of onc 201, and then I thought there was an interesting method of drug delivery that's being studied right now. It's not in clinical trial stages that I could see, it's in the laboratory stages which is called Magnetic Resonance Guided Focused Ultrasound. So I'll talk about that first. This is just kind of a one slide summary of what that is. In this case, they're testing it on mice, and what they'll do is they'll inject into a tail vein micro bubbles. I think that's been kind of a hot topic for maybe 10 years I've seen in various fields. They inject micro bubbles, and then they're agent of choice, so in this study they're injecting nanoparticle conjugates with gold, and that's just so that they can see if the treatment is actually getting to where they want it. So they injected into the tail vein, they've previously done MRI imaging, and then they target the area where they like the treatment to arrive, and then they use high focus ultrasound to theoretically activate or excite the micro bubbles that then disrupts the blood brain barrier, so the endothelium part of the blood brain barrier allowing the treatment to seep through the area. So I think it's a pretty interesting and hopefully exciting and future opportunity to overcome some of these barriers and treatment of things like DIPG. The other thing I just want to talk about, spend a little bit of time on, is this clinical trial that's going on. There are about 45 clinical trials going on regarding DIPG, which I think is exciting. Most of which are interventional. Our patient has actually been enrolled in this trial for ONC 201. So ONC 201 is a small, selective, direct, competitive antagonist of the D2-like dopamine receptor. So the mechanism is still kind of under investigation, but it's thought that this activates what's called the intrinsic stress response, induces the over-expression of the death or apoptosis ligand, tumor necrosis factor related apoptosis inducing ligand or trail. And then this leads to a cytotoxic effect towards cancer cells in particular. So not clearly interested why it's so directed towards cancer cells, but it's been studied in several other cancers, such as pancreatic, colon breast and cervical, and has been found to be effective. So it's currently being studied in DIPG as well. So back to our patient, so she was diagnosed on the 29th of December in 17, that biopsy was done two days later where she was found to be positive, and then she began radiation. I mean, this is quite a fast moving process, and I think we can all see why, but almost just two weeks later she started radiation. That was done over a period of about six weeks, and then after that six weeks, about a month later she was enrolled in this trial. There's several sites, but she goes to the one in NYU. She does monthly visits for this Oncetool 1 administration, which interestingly is an oral medication. And then she gets interval MRIs here at Primary Children's about every two months. She actually follows with Dr. Jardine at this point and has most recently been seen earlier this year, and her visual symptoms resolved after radiation, and they haven't returned. And she also visits with the He-Mong team at Children's, and she's been relatively picker, symptom-free since receiving radiation. Just as comparison, so this is her most recent MRI. I'm going to pull up some pictures from previous, just for comparison. I think it's quite the change. So I think this was just a really interesting case for me. And I think, like I mentioned, we've had a lot of talks recently about personalized medicine, whether it be in the retinal dystrophies or at a recent FA conference, we talked about Bann's disease, which can be an equally devastating diagnosis. But I do think that it's exciting and important for us to realize that there are clinical trials going on. You know, in Bann's disease, a few of the patients we talked about are being enrolled in clinical trials. And then in our case, in this patient we just discussed, and otherwise very dismal prognosis has led to someone who's had remarkable response to treatment and is already beating the odds and hopefully will continue to do so. And that's it. Any questions? Yeah, Dr. Olson. So first a comment, congratulations. The easy thing to have done would be just to blow the patient along. Is your non-physiologic is a diagnosis of exclusion? Yeah, we just have to be so careful. When I first came here, the chief of neurology had taken the daughter of the head of orthopedic surgery and called her symptoms non-physiologic when it turned out that it was a very aneurysm that later ruptured. And it created incredible ill-will and bad feelings. And so there are plenty of patients in which we can't. We just need to be very, very cautious just blowing these things off because particularly a lot of these subtle things early on and it's hard for patients to describe so it may not sound consistent because they're having a hard time describing exactly what's going on. We come across this in plastics not infrequently and here's a little tip. Supposing you hadn't seen that I presume it was subtle, vertical, stagnant, and you know you don't do a general neurological exact to see gait and stuff normally. You know, a good thing you see me doing this to the emergency patients all the time is I say let me see them in clinic in two weeks or one to six weeks and that business of looking at your patient again two or three times, sometimes with a fresh eyes through a resident like you before I go in and then we sort of discuss this we'll often shed light and we've come across very subtle orbital tumors we've come across very subtle findings of skin cancer which the patient says well I'm sure he's there, you can't see it at first blush so that since you've had you not found anything the answer would have been yes, come and see us you've talked to Dr. Hoffman and Dr. Jardine's clinic and then viewing more than once. Thank you. Okay, just one other comment that I know you want to get going so I love hearing these stories you know we see what we want to see and this goes into the realm of kind of confirmation bias where we see the things we expect to see, there was a really cool study they did where they asked radiologists to find the lung tumor in a chest X-ray and they had inserted pictures of gorillas or other animals that 83% of the radiologists missed the fact that there were these animal images in the chest X-ray and it's so powerful, particularly when when we don't want to find the diplopia in the 5 o'clock patient at the end of the day, you know it's like we want to confirm the things that we're hoping for and particularly being on call, being first line this is vitally important that we keep an open mind, we don't rely on another type of bias which is this expert bias, you know Dr. Olson refers something to me if I don't do my due diligence to ensure that this is the actual diagnosis that's an error on me particularly as you're seeing patients from attendings, keep your mind open thank you just a little tip that it can be relatively easy to see nystagmus using the direct ophthalmoscope whereas without a good scope of ophthalm it might be hard with the naked eye it's hard to see subtle nystagmus with the direct the magnification there is very good very big thank you what is that again how do you turn that on


What's up guys and welcome to yet another episode of bars with stars right here on SPM bars. My name is Miss Kithingy and when you see me here you know I'm hanging out with a star. Today it's the one and only one zero zero. Hi girl. Hi. So nice to finally meet you. Nice to meet you. So it's a pleasure to finally see you. You do? That's really good to hear. You look beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Where did you get this? Did you make it? Yes. It's from my clothing line. Yes. How is that going on by the way? It's a day at a time. It's been a learning journey for me. So I'm just learning on the go as it goes. Yeah. I mean I know you guys are just about to go on stage guys. In case you're not aware, Ben, Psycho and one zero zero have their live podcast today. It's the first one ever. So I don't know how you're feeling.  I'm nervous. I hear the hall is packed. So I'm just like, oh, I just hope I don't fall on my way. Yeah. That's the only thing I'm scared of. If I make it to the top, I'll be fine. Yes. Yeah. I mean I think you will.  I think a lot of introspection, how we got here and so just practicing like a lot of gratitude because it's not every day that you can put out a podcast for two months only. And then you have people are willing to give you their hard earned money to come and see you live. So I think just that kind of feeling of gratitude. Yeah. How was that response? Because I feel like it was overwhelming where you guys expecting it. I know you guys didn't because even had to change the venue. Yeah. How was it? I was okay with 50 guys. I was like, you know, let's just play it safe. You know, we can find 50 people amongst our family members to come. Yeah. But to see how people have just come out in numbers to support us, it just feels really, you have like a sense of gratitude and you want to, and I hope they'll feel what they'll get the vibes that we want them to get. Yeah.  So the expectations are high as well. The stakes are high. I think it did. But also I think it's been encouraging to know or to keep telling myself and by extension Ben that people just want the same conversations that we have in our living room only now that they're there with us. So it's like we've invited all of them in our house and they're just sitting there. So I hope we'll have a part where we can interact with them as well where we'll be able to hear their thoughts because you just don't want to voice, voice, voice. You also want to hear what other people think. Yeah. Thanks. Now, Wajiro, I love the setup. I don't know who came up with that idea because I didn't. It was all me. It was all me. It was all me. It was all me. I fought for those sets. And special shout out to styling events that did the whole setup. So we are so excited. I hope people have utilized the sets. They're taking pictures. That's what we wanted. Yeah. And I hear upstairs it looks really, really good. Yeah. So we're excited for that. You guys are missing out. But it's not our idea. It was our idea. This way. You guys are going to put it up on YouTube. We are looking for, we are going to put it. We are not sure if it's going to be YouTube, but we are just working something out. Yeah. Yeah.  Yeah. Now, Wajiro, let's talk marriage. Okay. How long has it been now? Would I look bad if I can't remember the exam? It's been six, six months.  So November, December, January, February, March, six months. Yeah.  You can't, you're not even counting, you know. I'm over a yearly person. So I'll know November that's right now. Yeah. Yeah.  It was like on the altar and I was like, I'm missing my shot. So it was like they need to move and I'm not leaving until they move. Yeah. How was it like during that moment? I think it was more like you guys are not ruining my shot. And I know it sounds so vain, but like I had really wanted, the wedding was by a water body and it was very intentional for me to have it by a water body. So like nobody was going to miss that shot.  Nothing. My picture was going to be right. Yeah. I mean, I think for every woman, that would be very important for sure. I don't think it's lame. Honestly, it's not. I would do the same. It will be in all my shots. It has to be. It's your day.  I know you guys are dated for long, so I'm not sure if you guys had lived together. What is that one thing you had to compromise? I think it's going to sound very, very trivial, but it's not from a piece of mind. Ben really likes to listen to things like with 100, volumicure 100. I like it at 15, at 10. So I think a lot of our artists are in the car at home. So everything is always at 100. So I'm about to go for a year checkup. Yeah. So that's the one thing I had to. You had to compromise. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now, what is that one thing that Ben has really brought the biggest contribution in your life right now? I think it's perspective. Ben and I see life very differently. I approach life from a very, I'm trying not to. It's a work in progress. I approach life from a very anxious place. So you feel like everything just, Ben is more relaxed. So I think the gift of perspective, like things can also be chill and relaxed and easy. Yeah. And when did you know like now this one, this one is the one, me I'm ready. I don't know if it was the one, but I think it's a choice I made. I consciously made that. This is a guy that I want to spend the foreseeable future in my life with. So yeah. Did you have like aspects of like, you know, watch a tunic to happen. These are some of the things, you know, I feel I'm just okay with. I think there weren't more to, there weren't a lot to do with Ben, but more on an internal perspective. So you feel like you're comfortable, but you know, you're not comfortable with the way things are. We don't really need to shake the system too much with something like marriage. So I think it was a lot of internal nothing to do with him. Yeah. Okay. Now I'm sure this is something I can talk to you about. Not sure if I'm going to talk to Ben about it, but you know, let's talk about, you know, joy, Ben's sister. Now when she passed on, you know, you were there the entire time. And you know, you're the lady here, but you have to be there for him. I think it was a difficult moment, but sometimes you pick and choose. It was time to put myself aside and almost like just sort of like completely engulf him in empathy, compassion, and love and all those things. So I think I just literally just put myself, put myself aside. Yeah. Yeah.    I think it used to, but not anymore. I think now I'm at a place of relaxation, I've eased into it. It's also, it's, I wonder what time does, because when you've been doing something for a long time, you know how to navigate it, you're able to deal with emotions better. So yeah, it used to, but not anymore. Yeah. Well, okay. Now, YouTube, you guys are booming, like me, I don't know what you guys give people there, but I mean, studying up a YouTube channel right from the scratch, and now you guys have more than 20K subscribers. Yeah. How was, what do you guys think did, different? Do you have like, no strategies or? I don't think, I think it's a good thing, first of all, because I don't think YouTube is a difficult climb, especially if you don't have quick content that's very catchy or sticky. Yeah. It's very, it's a mountain to climb, but I think it's a good thing. Also, we have an incredible team behind us. So people who are dedicated to the joyride, it's not just us. I think I just like to call us like we are there. So we're just the people who show up, but there are people who do a lot of the hard work behind the scenes. And I think they've contributed a great deal. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's the people behind. Yeah. It's not just you guys waking up and, you know, getting a camera on. Like the small, like the people who need to shoot, edit and all those things. That was just like, yeah. So there's that team behind that. Yeah. That's good, guys. You guys are mesquite. If you have the monies to do this, get the people to do things for you and then you can do what's your best art. Yeah. Are we expecting, you know, more content on your own YouTube channel other than joyride? Yes. I'm working on that. I'm trying to foresee because even I have evolved as a person. So maybe I'm trying to see what that evolving means for my YouTube channel as well. Yeah. So I'm in the process of finding out. Yeah. Are we getting a snippet of, you know, what we expect today parallel on stage? And do you all just think as if people are to buy a link? They know. Let me tell you, I have no idea what to expect because the truth is we don't see the questions beforehand. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I'll be hearing the questions for the first time. I have no idea. I've tried to bribe everyone I can to get the twist. I get the twist. It's going to be, I'm nervous about that. Yeah.   Yeah. So go there and, you know, do the thing. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I thank Tana Wanjiro for talking to us. We wish you all the very best. And for those who are not going to watch this, we hope we are getting a link soon so that we can watch it. We hope so too. We are planning something around that. Yeah. Tana Wanjiro right here on SPM Buzz, Buzz with Stars. My name is Ms. Kithingi. Until next time, thank you for watching.


Hi everyone. So I'm just going to give everybody another minute to filter in, but while we're waiting, if you could just let me know whether or not you can hear me and see my screen. I'd really appreciate that if you can hear me speaking and see me flip through the first couple of slides. Just type a yes into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel so that when one o'clock rolls around, I'll know that you all can hear the presentation. All right, thank you. It looks like everybody can see in here. All right, guys. Thank you so much for attending today. Today we're going to talk about strategy for the Art Van Charity Challenge. And my name is Linda Gerhardt. I'm a senior community engagement manager here at Mighty Cause. I've been with Mighty Cause since 2016. And in that time, I have helped put on a lot of giving days. So I'm happy to share my expertise with you and hopefully give you some helpful pointers as you get ready for the Art Van Charity Challenge. And just to give you a little bit of context about who Mighty Cause is and why we're hosting this webinar, we're the new technology partner for the Art Van Charity Challenge. The challenge is hosted on the Mighty Cause platform this year. And we're also providing technical support to you as you gear up for the big day. So if you have any questions as you're setting up your profile and customizing your page, or if you need to know how to do something, or even if a donor has a question, our support team is here to help you. You can email us at support at mightycause.com. Mighty Cause is a fully functional nonprofit fundraising suite that nonprofit organizations use 365 days a year to raise money for their causes. We've been around since 2006. So we're actually one of the first platforms to do peer-to-peer fundraising and host giving days. And we've been doing this kind of thing for a very long time. So we're super excited to host the Art Van Charity Challenge and host all of you on our platform. Here is a look at today's agenda. We'll be reviewing some of the basics for those of you who may have missed our previous webinar or just need a little bit of a refresher. And then we're going to move into giving event strategy so that you can start building your campaign. And then we're also going to talk about the prizes that are available and share some prize strategy. We'll do a question and answer session at the end of the presentation just because we have a lot to go through today. So if you have a question while I'm talking, just type that into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel. And if I haven't answered it in the presentation, I'll make sure that we have time to get to that at the end. All right. So with that housekeeping out of the way, we'll dive right into Art Van Charity Challenge basics. Art Van Charity Challenge is in its 11th year in 2019. And it is a three-week event that runs from September 9th to September 27th. So it's coming up very soon. Registration is closed at this point. Yesterday was actually the very last day to register. So hopefully everybody on this webinar got their registration in before the deadline. The cool thing about this giving event is that there is a lot of prize money at stake, $250,000 to be exact. And we'll go into the prizes a little bit later on. This event specifically focuses on organizations that serve women, children, and provide human services. And that's why there's an application process for participating in this event.  This list is located on the welcome screen on your nonprofit profile right under your metrics. You will actually be dropped right into your welcome screen when you click to view your nonprofit profile. There are five basic items to complete. You need to add a background image to your page or just choose one from our gallery of stock background images. Upload your logo, which is really important because that represents your organization throughout the Art Van Charity Challenge site and on leaderboards. Add a story, also called a description, that tells visitors to your profile about what your nonprofit does. And then build a thank you page to thank donors. And then you can also set up EFT so you can get your disbursements through direct deposit. If you click the link in your to-do list, you can see on this slide there that some words are underlined. Those are actually hyperlinks. You'll actually be taken right to the spot on your profile where you can complete that task. So it's very easy to complete this list. And it is really important to complete this list because as you're planning your campaign, these things are key to actually getting people to donate. When people go to your profile page and they see that it's not filled out, they're hesitant to donate to you. So filling out these items will make sure that your page represents your brand, looks like it belongs to your organization. And before you do any sort of planning that gets you into the weeds of email and social media strategy, make sure that you complete these five items on your to-do list so that your page is ready to go and the easy wins are already out of the way. If you need any assistance completing any of these tasks, we're here to support you. Just email us at support at mightycause.com. And we also have a pretty extensive support library. So you can just visit that from our homepage. If you have some questions, want to watch a video walkthrough or anything along those lines. We also recommend taking some time to get to know your dashboard.  Your Mighty Cause Manager is the dashboard that appears on the left side of the screen when you're logged in and on your nonprofits profile. You'll automatically land on your welcome screen or home screen, which we talked about. And that's where you'll find your to-do list, as well as some metrics for your nonprofits. So it gives you a quick snapshot of what's been happening since the last time you logged in. And news and update that are related to this give me event. Under profile, you can edit your page in the page editor. You can adjust your page settings. And that's also where you can set your financial goal for Art Van Charity Challenge and enable a progress bar to appear on your page. You can also go to live view to see how your page will look to visitors without logging out of your account. And that's important because as an administrator for your profile, you're going to see a few things that visitors won't. So just make sure that when you log, when you go to the live page view, it looks how you want. And you aren't seeing anything there that you don't want to. You can also below that on your dashboard, I should say, is your donation section, which is your one stop shop for everything related to donation management and your checkout process for Art Van Charity Challenge. You're able to view and export a donations report. And just as a tip, the view on the page is actually a little bit limited because we don't have the space to display all of the information we collect about each donation. So if you're looking for something in particular, you'll want to export the CSV that has all of the information you could need about each donation. So make sure you export that if you're not seeing something that you need in the report that's displayed on the page. You can also view and manage your disbursements. So when you get your first deposit, you can check in to see what was included and balance your books. You also have your donor experience section, which we're going to talk about more in a few slides, as well as matching grants, which we're also going to go into in great detail later on. You can easily view and access any pages that are connected to your nonprofit from the campaign screen. So if you have a peer fundraiser going on, you'll be able to see and access that from your campaign screen. And you can manage your nonprofit settings from your settings page.  So you'll want to make sure that it looks good and represents your nonprofit well. Just so you know, this link, the URL in the browser in your browser on your profile page is actually the link you're going to share with your supporters when you ask them to donate to your organization for the charity challenge. So to share your page, just copy and paste that URL and in your social sharing buttons, specifically in the Twitter section, we have a shortened URL that you can share if you wanted to use a shorter link. So as you're going through your to-do list, you'll want to customize your profile to match your brand. You can change your theme color to match your organization's brand colors, upload your logo, upload media to your gallery to add some visual interest to your page. And your story or description is really the center piece of your page. In your story, you can put your mission statement, you can add photos, you can embed a campaign video. Just as a note on videos, you do need to upload them first to YouTube or Vimeo. They both offer free basic accounts, but then you can embed it on your Mighty Cause page in your story. This spot is really where you can go in-depth about your work and make a strong appeal to donors, tell them why your organization needs their support, and spend a little time customizing this profile because the more work that you put into it, the better you will do during the charity challenge. You can have the best campaign strategy in the world, but when your profile page looks empty like you haven't shown it any love, people are less likely to donate. So you may actually lose out on some donations if you don't take the time to show your profile page a little bit of love. One of the really awesome things about Mighty Cause is that your nonprofit actually has quite a bit of control over the donation process, which is unique among fundraising platforms. From our donor experience tool, you can opt into collecting the information you want from donors like addresses and phone numbers. You can also set up custom suggested donation amounts and add descriptions in to help tie those amounts to items or services that your nonprofit provides to strengthen your appeal to donate. You're hitting donors with this information when they're deciding how much to give, so it's a really effective place to add in some additional messaging. The donor experience is also where you'll go to set up your thank you page, which uses the same text editor as your story on your profile, so you can add text, you can add links, you can embed a video or add an image, and you can also add a custom call to action button that tells donors where you'd like them to go next, which is pretty cool. So a good idea for that, for instance, would be asking them to sign up for your email list or directing them to your website or even just sending them back to your Mighty Cause profile. So there's a lot you can do in the donor experience tool to optimize your campaign and customize that checkout process for donors. And before we move on to the meat of this webinar and dive into campaign strategy, I just wanted to mention to you that you have access to a really great tool you can use as you get ready for the charity challenge, and that is the non-profit toolkit. The toolkit was created by Mighty Cause and the charity challenge team, and it has tips and tricks, FAQs, walkthroughs, timelines, and it also has templates that you can use to get together emails and social media posts, or if you just need some inspiration and aren't sure what to put in an email, these are really great to check. You'll also be able to find some recordings of past trainings if you missed them, and you can add logos and graphics to start tying your brand into the art band charity challenge brand. So definitely if you haven't already done so, check out the toolkit and refer back to it as you're planning your campaign, because it's a really helpful resource. All right, so now we're going to move into campaign strategy. So since the charity challenge is a multi-week event, the trick to making the most of the event for your non-profit is going to be sustaining your fundraising momentum, and one great way to do that and to make sure that your campaign is on track is to set mini goals for your non-profit to help generate buzz and build excitement. One of the great things about the charity challenge is that they have weekly prizes, and you can utilize those to help sustain your momentum and get people excited about helping you win extra money for your non-profit. We're going to go over those prizes in detail a little bit later on, but basically you'll want to think of your overall fundraising goal and what you'll need to raise each week to get there. Now, typically the first and the last week are your strongest, so you may want to scale down your week a little bit in the second week, because that's when there tends to be a little bit of a lull, but you can also use it to boost your other goals like social media engagement, and you can boost that week as well if you wanted to add a matching grant during the second week to power pass that lull and remain strong throughout the whole challenge. But mapping out your direction with mini goals is a great way to communicate your goals to your followers and also to set short-term attainable goals so that you can make sure that your followers stay engaged and you have something continually to say to them. You can give them updates on the progress toward those goals and let them know what those goals mean for your non-profit. Another thing you can do to get your campaign rolling is asking for seed donations. These are donations from people in your non-profits inner circle, and they essentially break the ice with donors because for some reason no one likes to be the first donor. They just help get the ball rolling and they're called seed donations because they make the number of your donations grow. People ask to ask for a seed donation would be your board of directors, your staff, especially people who are director or C-suite level leaders at your organization, volunteers, or anyone else at your non-profit who is highly engaged in your work. These don't have to be huge donations, they certainly can be, but they can be smaller donations, but just getting a little bit in the bank by tapping those people in your inner circle really does help move your campaign forward and get donations coming in. A great strategy for driving donations on a giving day, one that's proven on the Mighty Cause platform, is securing a matching grant. A matching grant is essentially a large donation that your non-profit non-profit leverages to bring in other smaller donations by offering it up as a match. For instance, if you had a partner or a major gift donor who was willing to give you a thousand dollars, instead of just putting that money in the bank and calling it a day, you could use it as a matching grant. So the terms of the grant are totally up to you in the grant tour, but let's say that there's an hourly prize available or something like that, or a daily prize, and you'd like to do whatever you can to drive donations so that you can win that prize. You can take that $1,000 donation and say to your followers, hey, between these hours, your donations will be matched up to a thousand dollars, which basically allows people to double their donation. People love a good deal and they love making their money go further. So a matching grant kind of operates like a donation BOGO sale. You can do a lot within the Mighty Cause tool for matching grants, like setting a cap on a donation match, say $2,200 so that someone doesn't come along and make a big donation and eat up your whole match. So it's a really cool and complex little tool that allows you to do a lot with your matching grant and on our platform we've definitely seen that matching grants, especially during a giving event, can be a really powerful, powerful way to drive donations. So since a matching grant is ultimately just a large donation, you'll basically want to follow the same process you would as you, what you do when you secure major gifts. You prospect, cultivate, and ask. People who you should consider prospects for a matching grant are board members, first and foremost. Sometimes an individual board member will be happy to provide a matching grant, but one thing you can also do is consider asking your board to work together to provide a match on behalf of the entire board. Another idea is if your board still has to pay its dues for this year, you could utilize their dues by turning them into a matching grant. Major gift donors who have given large donations to your nonprofit in the past are also really good prospects and providing a matching grant can be a really fun way to liven up their donations so that instead of just writing a check or making a cash donation, they're helping your nonprofit grow and driving other people to donate. And you can also give the donor some extra recognition and love when you're promoting the match. So major gift donors, especially those who like a little shout out here and there, are even better matching grant prospects. Corporate sponsors and partners are also good prospects because it's a fun, proactive way for them to get involved in a very public way and draw attention to their philanthropy and their supportive organizations in the community. At this stage of the game, you want to start making phone calls, sending emails, and starting to cultivate those prospects by letting them know what you're doing and seeing how warm they might be to the idea of getting involved by providing a matching grant. Definitely with the challenge starting so soon, existing people like board members and existing partners are a better bet than somebody that you're calling cold or haven't really worked with before. But then you can start to ask them. And if you have more than one match, if you're able to drum up more than one person who's interested in giving you a matching grant, you can actually enter multiple grants in so that over the course of the three weeks, you're using matching grants to drive donations the whole time you can even run matching grants simultaneously. So if you had a huge grant for the duration of the challenge, you can still run smaller matching grants while you have that one running. So again, it's a really cool little tool that you can do a lot with to provide matching grants and allow people to make their donations go further. So as I mentioned, the matching grants tool on Mighty Cause is a very versatile tool and you have a lot of options for how you structure your match. Not all matches have to be one to one matches where someone gives that amount, that exact same amount is matched. So if you donate $50, $50 is matched. You can also do two to one, three to one, or you can match a percentage of each donation, which is a really great way to make a smaller match go further. For instance, you could match it 50%. And that makes that amount of money go a little bit further. The great thing about this matching tool is that it does the math for you. If I had to do this math, I would be lost, but our tool does it all for you. And you just have to choose how you want to structure your match. You can also apply a match when a certain number of donations has been received. So for instance, if you were trying to drive individual donations, you could say that if you get 100 donations within the space of an hour, you'll get an additional $1,000 for your nonprofit or however much your matching grant is for to help you actually drive donation volume and traffic as opposed to aiming for a dollar amount. So to make the most of your grant funding, you can combine grant funds into a larger match as well. So for instance, if you have a group of like 10 Rockstar volunteers who each can give $100 for a match, you could take their $100 and turn that into a grand. Since a $100 match is not going to go particularly far, but $1,000 can go quite far. You can also post multiple grants at one time, as I mentioned, and you can also post them in sequence so you can set a bunch of grants to fire one after another. So I really don't want to make this tool sound too complicated because it's actually very easy to use. It's meant to be something that anybody can get into and use, but you just have a lot of flexibility in how you structure your match, which gives you a lot of room to talk about how you can do this with various grantors. Now, if you get overwhelmed by the possibilities, just setting it up as a one-to-one match is the simplest and easiest thing you can possibly do. At the end of the day, a matching grant is essentially a marketing tool. So in order to make the most of your matching grant, you'll need to promote it. So the first step is going to the matching grant tool on your Art Van Charity Challenge profile and adding it there. It's under your donor experience. There are some marketing tools that are actually built into the platform to promote your matching grants, such as putting a sticker on your donate button when the grant is active, which you can sort of see on the slide there. And you'll also have it listed at the bottom of your page, which you can see below the donate button. And you'll also see some changes in your checkout process to reflect the matching grant. But you'll want to add some information to your story, too, especially if it's a very big match, and promote it on your social media channels when it becomes active, send out an email, and so on, just to let your followers know about the match. Because if they don't know about it, they can't take advantage of it. Countdowns also add urgency. So counting down and sharing your progress can be a really great way to get people excited and urge them to actually stop what they're doing, stop scrolling, and make their donation now. So if you have a match, that's fantastic. But it's like a tree falls in a forest. Does anybody hear it? If you have a matching grant and you don't tell your followers, does it actually exist? The answer is really no. You need to promote it. So you can use the tool for that. And you also want to use your regular channels like social media and email to let your followers know that it's available as well. So moving on from matching grants, I wanted to talk a little bit about ambassadors. Ambassadors are people who are usually in your nonprofit's inner circle who can help boost your campaign. So that includes board members, volunteers, especially ones who are highly engaged, staff members, and so on. Utilizing ambassadors can help you break out of your list of existing supporters and engage new people, people that you wouldn't otherwise have access to. An ambassador can help you in a few different ways. The first and easiest thing that they can do is share a link to your profile with their social circle and ask them to donate basically as a signal boost for your campaign. If you have a board member, for instance, who's very well connected, this can be a really big boost. And the other thing that they can do, which we're going to talk about in the next few slides, is get involved in peer-to-peer fundraising. Peer-to-peer fundraising is a fundraising technique where you basically deputize your supporters to fundraise on your behalf. The Mighty Cause platform is actually built for peer-to-peer fundraising. That's what we started out doing and that's what we still do. And it's really easy on our platform. So this can be a really great way to shake up your campaign and acquire new donors. So if you wanted to try peer-to-peer fundraising, you would ask ambassadors to set up a fundraising page for your nonprofit on Mighty Cause for the charity challenge. This may sound like a really big ask because you're asking something that's a little bit different for them, but it's often just a really fun way to engage your biggest supporters and allow them to tell their own story about your nonprofit, how they came to work with you, and why your work is important to them. And this really doesn't distract or draw attention away from your campaign because they're operating alongside your campaign and they're reaching out to people they know personally for donations. In most cases, they're friends and colleagues and family. And these are not people that your nonprofit has access to solicit typically. So you're finding new people to engage. So for people like your board, volunteers, staff, program alumni, this can be a really great way for them to get involved without just being asked to give money. And it can make it a much more meaningful process and way to get involved for them. Definitely more meaningful than just making a donation in the standard way or sharing a link. So it can actually be part of your stewarding process in that way of building and sustaining a relationship with that supporter. We've also seen some nonprofits get some great peer-to-peer fundraising action by just inviting people on social media or sending them an email asking for help. For younger people who have a big social network and are really comfortable online, but maybe don't individually have as much cash to give, this can be an excellent way for them to help out and make a meaningful contribution in a way that feels more manageable for them. So I get asked a lot how to engage the millennial audience. And this is a really great way for them to get engaged. They're used to a crowdfunding atmosphere. That's something that is natural to them. So this can be a really great way to engage your younger supporters to help make things easier for them. We recommend sharing some images, some talking points, some facts and some logos with them, or even offering to help them set up their pages. Since at this point you should all be pretty comfortable on the platform or at least will be soon if you're not already. Nonprofits that utilize peer-to-peer fundraising tend to raise more money during giving events. And it's definitely worth talking about with your team how you can incorporate this into your campaign strategy. Definitely these don't take a lot of time to get going. So you do still have time to ask people to start a fundraiser for your nonprofit during the charity challenge. If you manage to generate a lot of interest in peer-to-peer fundraising or if you've done it before for the charity challenge in past years and you want to try something new, you can consider trying out team or event fundraising. Teams and events can be great for groups of people who want to fundraise together like your board or companies that have a relationship with your nonprofit. And just inspire some friendly competition to keep them motivated and get them engaged in raising money. The difference between teams and events is basically that an event allows individuals and groups of people to participate in fundraise together while a team fundraiser is a group of individuals working together toward a collective fundraising goal. So an event is teams of people and individuals working together and a team is just individuals working together. Now the cool thing about using our teams and event products for a giving event is that there are so many tools built in that make managing it much easier. For instance, you can set up a template fundraiser that people can use to get set up more quickly and allows you to pre-fill some of the sections of their page and you can email and communicate with team and event members through the platform to keep them motivated asking if they need any help and so on. So these are just essentially more complex peer-to-peer campaigns and they can be a really great option for you if you've got a lot of people who are ready to fundraise for you or if you've done peer-to-peer before in the past and you really want to shake things up. So your email list is going to be one of your most important tools for the charity challenge because emails are a direct line to your supporters. Unlike social media you don't have to worry about an algorithm getting in your way or preventing people from seeing what you send them because unless they're unsubscribed and it'll end up right in their inbox they'll see it and they'll probably have a notification set to them on their phone. So I just want to talk a little bit about email strategy because that's going to be really important for this giving event. In general you'll want to keep emails relatively short simple and skimmable. Most people read their email on their phone these days so they're not going to sit back and read a novel. They want to be able to skim it, understand what you're asking them or telling them and get to the point. People are much more likely to read emails that pertain directly to them so we highly recommend segmenting your email list by sorting donors into a few key groups. Donors who have given a lot on a regular basis, one-time donors, people who've utilized your services but have never donated, program alumni and so on. You don't need to craft entirely new emails for each of these groups but just tweak small things about these emails for each group to make it more personal and individualized to who these groups of people are and what kind of relationship they have with your nonprofit. For instance in an email to volunteers you definitely want to acknowledge how much they already do for your nonprofit and you obviously wouldn't want to send an email to a major gift donor who normally gives in four or five digits an email asking for a $25 donation because that just says to them I don't know who you are and I didn't look at who you were before I sent you this email. So identify your key segments and figure out how to tailor your message to them. When an email is tailored to who the recipient is and that relationship they have with your organization they are much more likely to read it and take action on it. How you segment depends on the program you're using but most services like constant contact and mail chimp use a tagging system to segment groups of people on your email list. One thing you'll need to pay close attention to is the timing of your emails especially when you're talking about winning prizes. So I would take the time to record to schedule as much as you can beforehand really sit down with the prizes and understand when you should be sending emails and have a template email ready for things that you may need to send out on the fly like reaching a milestone or something along those lines announcing that you've won a prize and so on. As I mentioned before most people read their email on their smartphones these days so definitely make sure that you choose a mobile friendly email template and test it out beforehand. Try it out on an iPhone, a droid and so on and just make sure that it looks right because if your email looks messed up people are going to be put off by that.  So try out different subject line formats you can try things like adding emojis see what works better so that when you're sending out these really critical emails you'll have an idea of what tends to work for your email list. A B testing if you're new to that term is basically splitting an email up 5050 and testing a variable so let's say you're testing a button color or subject line. Half your list gets email A with one subject line and half get email B that has another subject line you're testing and whichever email gets the most opens wins. For the button color or placement the email with the most clicks would win since obviously the object of a button is to click it and go to a link. You just want to be careful about testing too much and throwing too many variables in there because then it's really hard to say why something won the test or performed better because you have so many variables. Lastly your CTAs should be clear and action oriented so give now donate now help us today. A lot of nonprofits tend to default to more passive CTAs like thanks for donating or please contribute and those just aren't as effective you want to be really clear with what you want the person getting the email to do and add some urgency so that they're actually motivated to click. So now we're going to move on to social media strategy for a high stakes event where you have a lot going on. We really recommend staying in your comfort zone and going where your audience is and what I mean by that is that if you have never logged into TikTok before in your whole life you don't want to try TikTok out for the charity challenge that doesn't make sense that's not a great use of your time. Conversely if you have a thousand followers on your Facebook page but only have a handful on Instagram then you should probably spend much more time on Facebook than Instagram. Now that doesn't mean that you have to ignore those followers because those followers are important on Instagram but you want to go where your audience is and where you have the biggest likelihood of getting people to click through and donate to your campaign so stay in your lane and put your efforts into the platform where you're most likely going to get a return on your efforts. I definitely recommend scheduling any posts you can ahead of time just to save yourself some trouble during the challenge and leading up to it so get your key content scheduled with Facebook's publishing tools or create your studio go into Tweet Deck and schedule your tweets and save any live posting for stuff that needs to be done live like thanking a big donor updates on your progress leaderboard updates and announcements about winning prizes. So to that end you'll probably also want to assign a person to monitor your social media so that you can quickly respond to comments and tweets and really interact with your followers since that's important on social media and interaction can also help you in terms of algorithms since most platforms do show a priority to posts that have lots of engagement so the more engagement you get that means clicks comments and so on that means that more people are going to likely see your post in their feed. We do recommend budgeting a little bit of money if you're able to boost some of your key posts or promote some tweets and on social media $20 for an ad can actually go a really long way. You'll just want to make sure that your ad is targeted properly and if you aren't sure how to target an ad you can always default to targeting people who like your page or already follow you that's a really safe bet. In terms of the type of content that does well on social media it depends a little bit on the platform but in general photos and videos do really well. We definitely recommend staying away from YouTube videos on Facebook. You'll want to upload your video directly to the platform that's called native video because YouTube and Facebook are competitors so they don't like showing YouTube videos to people so download or upload things directly into the platform whenever possible and you may want to consider doing something a little bit out of the box like a Facebook live video or watch part party or you know for a campaign video to help generate some buzz while you're delivering that algorithm-friendly content and finally when you're planning your campaign you don't want to stop when the event stops you want to consider follow-up. When you're planning your content you'll also want a plan to thank your donors so things like making a video or taking a photo of your staff those can be really great effective ways to follow-up. Be sure to talk about the impact of the funds you raised and close the loop on your campaign so that means if you were fundraising for something specific like a new piece of equipment or improvements to your building or something along those lines you'll want to send progress emails if somebody is donating to a campaign to help you build a new location and they never hear about it again they never hear about you breaking ground on a new location they're not going to donate to you again so you need to close the loop and tie up any open ends from your campaign. You'll also want to make sure you've got an onboarding plan in place for new donors so that they come back and donate again if you collect addresses mailing them a welcome packet or a card can be a great way to get them onboarded and you can also create an automated email journey where they can get more information about what you do and why it's important to support your work and you just want to basically incorporate these people into your year-round stewarding plan um you definitely got end of year coming up very soon um so include these people in your end of year fundraising plans too if you're doing giving Tuesday there are people you'll want to hit again on giving Tuesday so just you know steward them don't just thank them once and then let them go follow up with them get them involved and ingratiate it in your nonprofit. All right so now we're going to move into talking about all the awesome prizes that the art van charity challenge has to offer and how you can aim to win them. So art van charity challenge is offering prize grants to the top 10 positions on the leader board which gives a lot of nonprofits a chance to win um the leader boards will be on the live event site so as soon as the charity challenge begins you'll see them on the event site and nonprofits are ranked here by the dollars they have raised so the people the organizations who raise the most amount of money are at the top and then it goes down from there. Now it's important to mention that only online donations made through the mighty cause platform count for leader board totals so this is a big reason why you want to push your donors to give online um you can certainly record a check that a donor gives you um it just won't be reflected in your leader board totals and the reason for that is that we want to be fair and we cannot verify offline donations that happen off of our platform so you know that creates an opportunity for somebody to offer you know put a big offline donation in that we can't verify so because we we want to be fair and make sure that you know everything's on the level we just only count online donations when we're talking about leader boards especially when there's prizes attached um the leader board will reflect your cumulative total from the time the challenge begins on September 9th so it's a running total of everything you've raised online and here um you're just engaging in some friendly competition to get those prizes so here's a breakdown of all the prizes that are available up at the top the number one position um you get a $100,000 prize grant which is huge and then $50,000 for a second place $25,000 for third place and so on um the top 10 spots get a prize so there's lots of opportunity to win the leader boards provide some of the biggest prizes available in the charity challenge and the key to winning them is getting your donors invested in helping you climb the leader board um so keep tabs on your position on the leader board and keep your donors and supporters updated on where you are and continually emphasize how much is at stake how much would $100,000 do for your charity what would that help you achieve um tie that back into your overall messaging about what you do and why you do it to really get people excited and invested about helping you win that prize money another trick is just concentrating on sustaining momentum keeping the fundraising going and starting and finishing strong um the more you bring in donations the more you engage donors on a regular basis the better you will do on the leader board so um really the the trick to leader board strategy is just to keep it going keep people invested and tie it back into your overall messaging about what your nonprofit does um art fan charity challenges challenge also has a huge variety of bonus prizes that you can compete to win as well um the kickoff challenge um it's a hundred thousand immune sorry it's a thousand dollars total um and there's two challenges worth two prizes worth $500 each they're split by large and small organizations um and basically it's $500 for the organization that raises the most amount of money in the first 24 hours of the campaign so again starting strong you'll have the opportunity to win an extra prize so when the donations open on September 9th go hard and aim to win this this bonus challenge um you also have a week one challenge um which is two prizes worth $1,000 each split up by large and small organizations um and that will um that will cover the week of September 9th to the 15th so that's again ranked by most dollars raised week two as well um you have the chance to win $1,000 for your organization split by large and small organizations so that smaller organizations are not up against nonprofits that have infinitely more resources than they do so it's a fair competition um and basically this um is a great time to reinforce that mini goal that you set for these weeks um how much did you want to raise you know encourage your supporters to help you get there so that you have a chance of winning this this bonus prize for your nonprofit um there's also a challenge for the third week um that's worth the same amount two prizes worth $1,000 each split by large and small nonprofits um there's a final day challenge um worth a thousand dollars um 500 uh $500 to two organizations one large one small and it's the most amount that is raised within the final 24 hours of the event so that's a really great way to get your organization across the finish line let them know where you are how much you need to raise um and really get them amped to help you cross that finish line and and finish strong um and then finally there's a um meet your match challenge which is kind of an off the it's not really a um it's a different kind of challenge so for every organization that has a match of $500 or more um you'll be entered in to win three prizes worth $1,000 each so um that's a really great incentive to get a matching grant so start making those calls sending those emails setting up those meetings because a matching grant of $500 can do a lot for your organization and then it also puts puts you in the running to win more money through this bonus challenge um the most unique donors prize in each category which is women children human services the organization that has the most unique donors during the full length of the campaign will win an additional thousand dollars so there's thousand dollars at stake here um and everybody in every category has a chance to win um and this is actually kind of interesting because if you're a nonprofit that maybe doesn't have don't as many donors that give in higher amounts but you have a lot of donors who give in smaller amounts this can be a really big chance for you to win some additional money for your nonprofit um it's also a really creative way to use a matching grant um you do have the ability to provide a matching grant for a number of donors that you get so each individual is counted rather than a monetary amount so that's something you can do through the matching grants tool to really target winning this prize um and then finally there's a social media contest which is worth $1,000 um the organization that gets the most retweets on a single tweet promoting the campaign wins a $1,000 prize so that works out for you because you have the chance to win um some additional money for your nonprofit and engage people on social media um these prizes are all listed on the art fan charity challenge site um just go to prizes and guidelines and you'll be able to see a list of all of these there so as you're planning go through this list and see which prizes you want to try to target and schedule your emails like at the beginning of each week since there's a new prize available that would be a great time to send an email and post on social media and get people excited about the week ahead and helping you win that next prize all right so that's everything I have for this presentation I know that was a lot um but if you have a question for me um just go ahead and type that into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel and I will go ahead and try to answer what we've already got okay can you clarify the difference between the donation page and a fundraiser should we create a fundraiser for this event or simply share our mighty cross page for people to donate to that's a really great question um you can do either so either is okay if you want to use your nonprofit profile page you can do that so that's just your general page for your nonprofit where you would put your mission statement you can put a fundraising goal and a progress bar on that page and use that for fundraising um a fundraiser when I'm talking about you know creating a fundraiser that is a separate page that is attached to your nonprofit so that would be you know a page that you set up separately so if you wanted to create one specifically for the art van charity challenge you could do that that also that umbrella of fundraiser I'm making air quotes with my hands includes peer-to-peer pages as well so it's really up to you and what works best for you if you have like a really specific thing you're fundraising for sometimes the fundraiser fundraiser pages are just set up a little bit better for that kind of messaging because your profile is something you can use year-round either works it really just comes down to what you feel most comfortable with and what has the tools you want to use the most so there's really no wrong or right way the easiest simplest thing you can do is to use your profile page to collect donations if you wanted to get more specific and have you know a specific fundraising page just for the art van charity challenge you can you can set up a fundraiser for your nonprofit all of the money goes to the same place it just looks a little bit different has slightly different tools there so that's really the big difference between them the fundraiser page is your year-round evergreen page that you can use outside of the art van charity challenge and a fundraiser it has a time limit so after a page after a certain time that page is no longer being used as your main page so that's really the big difference is one has a time limit and one does not and it there's a there's slightly different storytelling tools there the fundraiser page is a little bit more simple in terms of its appearance you also have a pie chart you can use there so if you had a goal of you know five thousand dollars you could break down how you want to use that five thousand dollars at your nonprofit so that's really the main difference but just do whatever feels best for your nonprofit there's no right or wrong way to do it and if you want to keep it simple just use your nonprofit profile all right do you imagine grants need to be made online as well that's a really great question so you don't have to collect them online if you have a grant or and they're more comfortable cutting you a check for their matching grant then you can do that there it's not a requirement that they process it online the only caveat to that is that since we're only able to include online donations in leaderboard totals the amount of that matching grant will not help you in the leaderboards if it's made offline so certainly I would encourage you to talk to your grantor and explain why it's beneficial to your nonprofit to make that donation online once the grant is fulfilled but it's not a requirement you don't have to do it that way it's down to what is best for you and your grantor but if you can get them to make it online that is a huge help to you because that's a big donation that you can see reflected in the leaderboard and it also helps you in prizes so that's really the big difference it's definitely good if you can do that but it's not required if they want to write a check they can absolutely write a check all right if we get a matching grant that is sent directly to us can we count it in the match challenge or the challenge total so yeah that's kind of an extension of the previous question it'll be counted in your overall amount raised on your nonprofits profile but it won't be in the leaderboard so that's the difference you really want to try to encourage them to make it online if at all possible but it's not required the benefit is obviously that you get to see that amount in your leaderboard total it helps you in prizes otherwise you're just using it to drive donations which is also helpful so talk to your grantor encourage them to make it online but if they just aren't comfortable with that we understand so you can just enter it in and collect the money via check or however they choose to provide it for you where do you adjust the type of match to 25 donations this week unlocks a $1,000 match type one so that's a really specific question we do have a support article that goes in deep about matching grants there's a few different options there sometimes you can't get quite as specific as you want there's a cumulative match total I think is what it's called tool which is basically you can say when we get to this number of donors then the match is fulfilled and you can set an end date for that there's no specific setting for that particular kind of match I don't think but you can also contact our support team and they can teach you how you can sort of make that that kind of match circumstance work with our tool because you can do it but it's a little bit easier if you have somebody who's showing you on the tool but you can certainly make that work but basically you can do it by percentage you can do it one to one two to one three to one and you can also say when we get this number of individual donors that's each individual number of people who are donating to your nonprofit the match is fulfilled rather than looking at a monetary amount so definitely get into that tool and play around with it if you start a matching grant before the event it's totally okay to just close that manually if you want to test it out but you can also contact support at ladycos.com if you have a super specific question about something you want to do with a match that you can't quite figure out there's usually a way we can make it work but sometimes it just takes a little bit of talking through where will we see the leaderboard so we can update our donors as to our position yeah so you'll actually see that on September 9th when the site goes into live mode right now it's in the pre-event site mode so you're seeing information about the charity challenge there when September 9th rolls around and it switches over to live you'll see the leaderboards there and you can actually search them so if you don't see yourself in like the top 10 if you're a little bit further down just search for your nonprofit's name there's a little search icon a little magnifying glass that you can use to search for yourself and find out where you are so if you don't see yourself there immediately don't panic you might just be a little bit past the cutoff point and have to expand it but use that search tool to find yourself but starting September 9th you'll be able to see that on the live event site all right let's see how many nonprofits are in the challenge so I'm not sure offhand there's quite a few so you know there was an application process so there is some you know requirements that everybody has to meet so I'm not sure at this point these somebody else at the Mighty Cause is managing the site itself but yeah you'll be able to see that when the site goes live let's see social media contest is only on Twitter yeah I think that this particular contest is on Twitter just because it's easier for them to track who you know who's getting the most retweets Facebook can make that a little bit trickier to track whereas you can just set up a dashboard in Twitter and see you know who's using that hashtag and how many retweets they're getting so I think that's why that decision was made it's a great time to maybe start using Twitter you know get on your Facebook page and say hey if you use Twitter we could use your help here you know here's our account and get them to follow you there as well so that they can help you win that prize but yeah they had to choose one or the other I think because you know everybody has their favorite social media platform but this one just made the most sense for that prize but get your Facebook followers you know to follow you on Twitter as well build a following there there's still plenty of time so just get them over to Twitter and tell them that you know if they help retweet you that you can help you they can help you win a prize what are the fees many donors ask us that is in the FAQs so I'd have to check I'm not sure offhand I can it's but it's in the FAQs and donors do have an opportunity to cover fees for you so check the FAQs they're not high I think I'd have to check offhand to see what the fees are but that information is in the FAQs well Artvan and or Mighty Cosby promoting and driving traffic to the overall challenge so Artvan I think is doing the bulk of the work there just because it is a localized event so it's targeting some specific locations whereas Mighty Cos is sort of a nationwide company so we're not able to do as much targeting but yeah you know we'll be helping as much as we can to drive traffic to the page but really when it comes to driving traffic on a giving event it's your donors and your support supporters and people who follow your work that are going to be most interested we don't email donors aside from transactional emails on Mighty Cos because you know those donors are yours so they're your non-profits donors and we don't contact them or solicit donations from them for any purpose so we did do a little bit of work to get organizations signed up for the charity challenge but we unfortunately we just don't email donors as a policy because our belief is that those donors belong to you and so we don't want to email them to ask them to donate to other organizations or giving events so that's our policy but there will be some work on our end and on Artvan's end to get traffic to the actual site but when it comes to donations just know that your followers are going to be the greatest driver of success for you so make a plan to reach out to your donors as much as you can all right so the leaderboard will include everything the main fundraiser page specific fundraiser pages team totals and so on yes so as long as the page is connected to your nonprofit and your nonprofit profile is connected to your EIN so when somebody builds a fundraiser page or they build a team page or whatever they choose to build as long as that's connected to your nonprofit it is included in those leaderboard totals so you don't have to worry about that if you don't see something sometimes people can create a page without connecting it properly you can email support and let us know and we'll link it up but you know it's pretty hard to do that but yeah everything that is happening on the platform during the challenge will show up in the leaderboard obviously just online will count toward the leaderboard but everything will be automatically linked up so if your nonprofit is participating everything connected to your nonprofit on the mighty cause platform will be counted in the leaderboards our donor covered fees the tax deductible for the donor since mighty cause is a nonprofit yes it's fully tax deductible for them so yeah there's nothing that they can't deduct from their their taxes if they choose to they'll get a receipt from us that gives them all the information that they need to deduct it from their taxes and that includes the full amount so there's nothing there's no tricky um legal jargon about you can only deduct this amount of your donation if they cover fees for you the whole thing is tax deductible for them so that's a really great reminder when you're contacting them remind them they can cover fees for you so that your nonprofit sees more of their donation and also let them know the full amount if they cover fees is also tax deductible so that's something that they can get back when they file their taxes all right so I think that is it for questions I'm sorry there were a few I didn't know the answers to but you can always check the FAQ on the art van charity challenge website to find the answers to those everything is laid out as transparently as we possibly could so if you have any questions that I wasn't quite able to answer definitely check out the FAQs and and peruse that information there and I think that's it but if you have any questions anything specific to your nonprofit or using our platform that you want to ask just contact us at support we have a really great support staff support at mightycause.com we're happy to hop on the phone with you so just let us know if you're having any issues or any questions and we will help you out thank you guys so much for all of your time today and happy fundraising good luck during the art van charity challenge