Digital Fundraising Summit 3

As nonprofits emerge from the shock of the pandemic and financial crisis, there is an opportunity to reinvent philanthropy for a new era of activism. This is a moment to move away from transactional giving, churning through donors and asks, to a new model of making giving more relational, customizing, and engaging. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) well is the key ingredient to scaling this approach. 

Based on research supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (http://www.ai4giving.org), Allison Fine and Beth Kanter will outline the processes, products and promise for scaling AI for generosity during this session. We hope it is the beginning of a broader conversation in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors of what’s next for giving.  

• Understand the possible future scenarios for giving post-COVID and how to future proof your fundraising strategy
• Gain a basic understanding of how artificial intelligence can leverage giving and what fundraisers need to know to harness it
• An overview of the challenges and ways to overcome 
• Walk participants through a process for getting started with a strategic plan for using AI for fundraising.

Reaching your fans organically on social media is getting increasingly harder, especially if you don’t have a large marketing department or tons of time to spend creating posts.

But don’t despair! Even small nonprofits with tiny budgets can use social media ads to strategically target the right people with the right message at the right time. All you need is a plan.

Join Julia Campbelll, nonprofit digital strategist, and Susu Wong, Founder of Tomo360, a marketing agency that helps small businesses and nonprofits increase their online presence.

We will walk you through the basics of building an engaged community on social media, how to get started with Facebook and Instagram ads for nonprofits, including some of the benefits of running social ads, why they are important to a successful marketing or fundraising campaign, and how to get started.

The spring of 2020 has brought unique challenges to fundraisers at organizations large and small. During this tumultuous and unprecedented time, what can fundraisers do to maintain donor support in a world that seems upside down? 

Drawing on data from over 4,000 nonprofits and eight specific case studies, Steven Shattuck from Bloomerang will reveal five key elements of successful fundraising campaigns during COVID-19 and beyond.

Learning objectives:

• What types of outreach strategies have been effective
• Inspiration for email content and virtual event formats
• How fundraisers can stay positive during trying times

With lockdowns and social distancing in place for much of 2020, nonprofits and other membership organizations are turning more and more to virtual events in order to engage members and raise funds. 

However, given how new the field is, you might have a lot of unanswered questions. How can you run a great virtual event? How can virtual events generate revenue? How is running a virtual event different from running an in-person event?

To help you answer those questions, Wild Apricot ran a survey amongst over 1000  nonprofits to see what tactics they’ve used to attract new attendees, raise funds, and what kind of events they’re running — as well as which of those tactics have been most successful. Join Tatiana Morand, Content Manager at Wild Apricot, in this session to learn how you can apply those tactics to your next virtual event! 

Peer-to-peer fundraising activates your supporters to fundraise for you, typically raising 2x as much compared to other digital fundraising campaigns. But you can take your peer-to-peer event to new heights by creating an engaging plan to empower your participants to raise even more for your cause.

With peer-to-peer you have two choices to grow your campaign: you can recruit more participants OR you can get your current participants to raise more. By focusing more on empowering your participants, you create energy, excitement, and a genuine connection that helps them raise more—not just this year, but into the future—and takes your cause further than you ever thought possible.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to put together a system from recruitment email to the end of your campaign that inspires, empowers, and connects your participant to your cause.
• The importance of a Fundraising Guide and coaching emails to your participants’ success.
• Creation of a social media toolkit to take your event’s social profile to the next level.
• What follow up you need after the campaign to ensure sign-ups for your next peer-to-peer event.

The year is 2020, the times are…crazy, and the fundraising? It’s digital. 

Now you’re faced with adopting a new digital fundraising strategy, which we get it–can seem scary. Our nonprofit leaders are here to assure you, it isn’t. Going digital is easier than ever, and actually more profitable and sustainable.

Join us for our Nonprofit Leader Panel on 8/26 @ 2pm EST, as Melissa Benjamin, Development Director at Fiver, and Matt Gayer, Co-Executive Director at Catalogue for Philanthropy, discuss their approach to the nonprofit forecast adapting to digital fundraising. 

You’ll learn everything you need to stand up or accelerate your digital fundraising. We’ll be discussing:

• Examples of successful digital fundraising campaigns.
• Specific fundraising tactics and strategies for giving days and year-end campaigns.
• How to recruit and prepare peer-to-peer fundraisers to successfully fundraise for you.
• How to plan a successful digital fundraising campaign in 2020 and beyond.
• Live Q&A to help you get your most pressing fundraising questions answered
• + more

With all these insider insights, you’ll be equipped with new fundraising ideas, tips, and proven strategies to help you reach your fundraising goals in 2020 and beyond!

Learn how you can use the CauseVox digital fundraising platform to raise more with less effort. 

During this session, we’ll walk you through the CauseVox product so you can see for yourself how you can easily launch donation pages, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer-fundraising, virtual events, and more.

You’ll come away with a clear understanding of how your organization can get started raising more online, without clucky software holding you back.

In the best of times, #NonprofitLife can be stressful. Our missions are urgent. Our to-do lists are overflowing. And we care about our work so much that it’s hard for us to step away. Add a pandemic, and we’ve dialed the stress and urgency of our missions up to eleven.

Self-care is a cute wellness buzzword, but let’s talk about what it should mean in an industry where burn-out rates are high and self-sacrifice is a way of life. We can only give of ourselves to the degree that we take care of ourselves. Your mission gets nowhere if you’re exhausted.

We’re packing this short session with information. You will learn:

• What the stress cycle looks like and how to interrupt it.
• Quick and easy methods of stress management that you can do at your desk during the day, and not feel guilty for taking the time to care for yourself.
• How to identify what self-care looks like for your unique personality.
• How to stick to your self-care rituals (even if you have a busy job, kids, and more).
• The five self-care factors that must be non-negotiable.

Staying on top of all the things you need to do to build an effective marketing and communications engine is time-consuming. You have to Tweet, post to Facebook and Instagram, send out the email newsletter, update the website, and put together all of the pieces that make up each of those things. With only so many hours in a day, how can you do it all? Shortcuts!

I don’t mean cutting corners. I mean building an intentional system that helps you save time through process automation, small tweaks to your workflow, and software solutions designed to make your life easier. 

In this hyper-tactical session, you’ll learn:

• Tips to streamline your social media management that help keep your feeds full without you being there all the time;
• How to create automated workflows to save you time with small, repetitive tasks with your social media, email marketing, and more; and
• Everyday tasks to cull with just a little upfront time investment or the addition of some free or inexpensive tools.

Do you want more people to sign-up for your monthly newsletter? Create their own peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns? Switch to recurring donations? 

For current supporters, the likelihood that they sign-up for future communications, enlist as volunteers, or make donations is impacted by their experience of your website. For new audiences, the website is likely their first introduction to your organization, and determines whether visitors identify with you, trust you, and feel compelled to take action. How visitors interact with your website is impacted by many elements, such as:

• How easy it is to find the information they seek
• How quickly they can complete their desired tasks
• How the design and interactions make them feel
• What additional content they discover

Elevation has designed over 600 nonprofit websites over more than a decade. In this session, we’ll go over best practices for creating websites that guide users to accomplish all of their, and your, goals.  

Feeling burned out wondering how to get your donors to donate AGAIN? Thinking how to do something different and engage more of your community members?

These are questions that run through the mind of many fundraisers and often times are questions that never receive answers. The reason is because every donor is different and we typically don’t have enough time to figure out who our donors are or how to reach and engage them in the most effective ways. 

Well that changes TODAY!

This interactive session will go over the 5 essential keys for fundraising campaign success (1.Timeliness 2.Creativity 3.Specificity 4. Mobilization 5. Follow Up) and will leave you with a blueprint for making your next campaign a hit.

Be ready! This isn’t a typical lecture style session there will be polls, Q&A, and audience participation! Get ready to CRUSH your next campaign!

While going live is relatively easy, during this session we’ll discuss some best practices that will help your organization effectively share your stories and create new fundraising opportunities through live streaming that extend well beyond the current pandemic.

While going live is relatively easy, during this session we’ll discuss some best practices that will help your organization effectively share your stories and create new fundraising opportunities through live streaming that extend well beyond the current pandemic.

Many nonprofit organizations have a commitment statement to diversity, equity, and inclusion, a set of values, or a list of priorities that guide strategic decisions and planning. Regardless of where an organization may be with developing any of these statements, the need today is for every organization to act with a commitment to equity throughout their work. 

What does that look like? How can a staff person advance their work towards equity in an organization where that is not a focus today? What can fundraising staff and others do to create accountability and growth in equity for themselves, their teams, and their organization? This panel discussion will address these questions and talk about the actions participants can start taking today. 

In this session, you will:

• Hear from nonprofit practitioners how they have faced internal challenges about equity
• Learn where they have made changes and investments that make a difference in their work
• Identify opportunities where you can take action 

No graphic design expert on your team? No room in your organization’s budget to hire a professional designer? No problem! Anyone can master the basics for free/low cost using a simple online tool: Canva. This session will explore how to use Canva for your basic design needs, examples of good vs. bad designs, plus some bonus tips and tricks to make your designs pop.

Most fundraisers still look to direct mail and other “traditional” channels for acquiring new donors. But the combination of rising direct mail costs and the inability to use traditional events in the midst of a global pandemic means we need to find a new path forward.

But how on earth do you acquire valuable donors online?

More importantly, how do you make sure you’re not spinning your wheels and wasting your budget while figuring out what actually works to acquire online donors?

The good news is that there is a repeatable online donor acquisition model that we’ve been testing, proving, and optimizing for the past 5 years – and in this session, you’ll learn exactly how to apply this methodology to your fundraising program. 

In this fast-paced and down-to-earth session, you’ll discover the 4-step model to acquire online donors and learn practical ideas and tactics to make it work for your organization.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Attendees will know how to acquire new donors online by reviewing a proven, 4-step acquisition methodology.
2. Attendees will be equipped to grow their email file by learning what makes for an effective free content offer.
3. Attendees will know how to create a high-converting page for their free content offers by reviewing a/b tests and case-studies.
4. Attendees will know how to convert new subscribers into new donors immediately by learning how to implement an “instant donation page”.

Your relationships with your donors are everything. How you communicate with your donors has the power to strengthen those relationships. That’s where donor segmentation comes into play. By helping you categorize your donors, donor segmentation allows you to send relevant communication and target the right donors at the right time.

Whether you’re sending an update about a canceled event or issuing a fundraising appeal, this webinar will help you communicate in a way that increases your open rates, reinforces your relationships, and boosts donor engagement with your organization.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• How to determine what data you should be tracking about your donors. 
• How to start segmenting the donors you already have. 
• How to integrate technology to make segmentation easier.
• How to utilize segmentation to create more personalized messaging.