Justin Wheeler · CEO, Funraise | Justin is here to support our nonprofit friends as they revise event plans and embark on a new digital adventure. If you're wondering how the #!$*&?#$ to salvage your fundraising events during COVID-19 lockdown, this Q&A has the answer.
If you're wondering how to get started with digital fundraisers, virtual events, peer-to-peer strategies, and social fundraising, listen to this episode's Q&A and consider how technology can be a natural next step.
Funraise firmly believes the future of charitable giving will spring from the way we uplift one another, which is why the nonprofit world's quick and collaborative response to the trying times we're dealing with is nothing short of inspiring.
If you need further assurance that You Can Do This, or if we haven't yet answered your question, email us at hello@funraise.org. There is a real person watching that inbox like a hawk, so you will receive a response.
Hello, I'm Justin Wheeler, and welcome to this episode of Nonstop Nonprofit. Today's episode is a little different. We took the podcast live to respond to how COVID-19 is impacting the nonprofit sector. We hosted a Q&A session with over 700 nonprofit organizations to answer questions around how to pivot towards a more digital-first fundraising strategy during these times of uncertainty. I hope this content helps you navigate through these challenging times. Let's dive right in.
Justin: So, yeah, it's awesome to see everyone participate. I think, you know, as as we look at how much our world has changed in the last few days, the inspiring thing that has happened is we've seen, humanity come together. I've been a part of so many conversations with nonprofit practitioners, fundraisers, leaders, sharing advice, sharing the way they're approaching this changing reality.
And nonprofits are historically so good at just supporting each other and getting through hard times, which is one of those times that we're in right now.
So a couple of things I want to share. And then we're going to just jump straight into the Q&A. One is I want to start off with a little bit of hope. So, you know, if we look at history, if we look at major events that have happened in our country and in society, the recession in 2008, other world disasters, a trend that we see is that household giving typically increases. Right. I expect that corporate giving, foundation giving and high net worth giving will slow down for a bit. But individual household giving, which makes up 74% of total charity in the United States, typically increases. So as you're thinking about what does this mean for my nonprofit? What does this mean for our fundraising strategies? One of things I want to encourage you, don't put your fundraising on hold. You have a segment of donors who are hungry to do something to get involved, regardless if it's related to COVID-19 or not. So fundraising teams don't shut down your fundraising operations. Figure out who are the donors we need to be speaking with, who are the donors we need to be communicating with. Talk to them and they'll be some donors that are just not ready for conversation yet. So I wanted to give that as an encouragement that, yes, we're in some hard times, but typically we see generosity of donors increase during times of disaster and so forth. So I wanted to start with that, we're going to transition into some questions now. Got lots of questions coming in. I'm just gonna take it from the top here and we'll go from there. One question that's hot, that I've answered 100 times in the last two days, we're going to start there and then when we're going to jump into the Q&A's and I see a lot of questions here.
So first question is, people are asking, ok, we have all these events have canceled them. We need to go virtual. And so livestreaming has become a huge topic on the Internet and across LinkedIn, across all social media, it's what platform do I use to Livestream or how do I livestream?
So there's a couple of different ways to answer that question. First, if your organization is looking to Livestream a keynote presentation, the leadership just wants to Livestream to their audience, you know, and you're going to be using your laptop or your phone to Livestream. Then it's really a matter of just connecting with the platform where your audience is. So if you have a YouTube channel and you've got thousands of subscribers, stream to YouTube, that makes the most sense. If you're talking to your audience. If you're looking to bring on content creators, broadcasters, influencers, individuals who will use their stream to promote your nonprofit organization and to fundraise on your behalf, the platform that I think is one of the best that has over 15 million daily users, has a great built-in audience is Twitch. And so we can get more into the specifics around that. But I just wanted to kick it off there because that's been a question we've been getting a ton. So first question from Jeremiah Lane. Do you think that it's insensitive to still make asks during a time of crisis, especially with the current status of the stock market? Jeremiah, a great question. I alluded to this in the beginning. Here's my take on it. And I'll give you, you know, from a donor perspective, someone who gives to charity. I think that if you're looking at high net worth donors, foundations and corporations whose portfolios have just taken a big hit, it's probably not the best time to ask them to contribute. If you're looking at your annual fund, individuals maybe who aren't as invested in the stock market. I think that it's perfectly appropriate to craft messages to those types of people. I think also this is where platforms or channels like peer-to-peer fundraising can be incredibly effective, where you ask your supporters on your behalf to raise funds for you. Your work may not be directly related to COVID-19 responses, but it's going to be impacted as a result of what's happening around the country. And so you still need to raise funds and you still need to support your mission. Your mission is so important. So you have to continue to fundraise, use technology, use digital platforms. Peer-to-peer fundraising is a great way. So that's my take on that.
So Nancy Erickson. So how to tailor online fundraising for older, less tech-savvy donor base.
OK. So this is a great question, right? I mean, you can't meet donors face to face right now. You can't host events. And so how do you get an older demographic or a donor base that's not used to giving online? How do you get them online to give? So I guarantee you that everyone in your donor file, regardless of their age, has opened up a text message. Everyone. Right. The world operates around text messages. And it does not discriminate against age. So I would use text-to-give to communicate with your donor base right now and provide a very easy experience for them to give online. If that is, you know, an appropriate thing to do at this moment. Again, segmenting out your donor types, the types of donors that you have, sending a text message, asking them for support or just in responding to what's going on checking in with your donors to see if they're OK and here are some ways that you can participate. Here are some ways that you can give as a result of these normal channels maybe being closed down for us right now. So putting together some sort of resources around that I think could go a long way.
All right. We have Alyssa, should we start canceling events for fall? What's the fair time window for cancelation?
I think that we should probably move away from saying and using cancelation, because what that tells a donor is that, hey, I need a refund or hey, I need, you know, my sponsorship checked, I need to be refunded. Instead of canceling your events I think postponing until there's more certainty around how long is social distancing going to be something that we have to take as seriously as we're taking today? So postponing it until further notice and then also replacing it with something virtual. Right. So something that I've talked with a lot of nonprofits about recently has been to take a look at, if you've had an event that was being ticketed and people already purchase tickets, ask them to fundraise on your behalf through a peer-to-peer fundraiser, ask them to be a matching donor with the funds that they would have used to buy a ticket or donate at the event. And then to integrate that with something like Facebook fundraising and to use the network effect to raise and try to make up for the loss at the event. As it relates to the fall, I would say it's probably too early to start canceling fall events or even making any mention of postponing fall events. Just take it week by week. That's what I would say, take it week by week. Communicate with your donors saying, hey, we're following the situation and every Friday, we're going to provide an announcement on anything that we have on our calendar that may or may not be canceled or postponed.
Okay, Ella. Question is, does Funraise have online auction capabilities?
Funraise does not have online auction capabilities for goods if you're trying to auction goods like you would for at an actual event so like a silent auction and so forth. So there's a couple of great tools out there. Winspire is a partner of ours that we love, that we have worked with and GivesSmart is another example. We'll post some more examples, live examples to online auctions here coming up.
Is livestreaming an option to consider, thoughts on Facebook Live or YouTube?
This is from Kierra Car. So, yes, so livestreaming is absolutely an option. I think regardless of the situation we're in, it's a great channel. In the last three years, livestreamers on Twitch have raised $250,000,000. So there is a lot of opportunity for Lifestream fundraising. So where do you stream to? Again, it goes back to who's the audience? If you are creating the content as the organization and your streaming to your audience. Where do you have the biggest following? Is it on Facebook? Is it on YouTube? Why not stream to both? There's definitely technology that allows you just to stream to any site that allows livestreaming. So there's that to consider.
Are there ethical implications for trying to raise money for an organization when people are concerned for their own livelihoods, businesses, and family?
That's a great question. So I'll speak, you know, from my perspective, as a donor and someone that supports many different nonprofit organizations. I really care about the causes that I support. And if all of a sudden, they stopped asking for money or if they went out of business because their donors stopped supporting them. Think of the impact that would have on society as a whole. So I think that it's not unethical to continue operating your business and it's going to be up to the donor to respond. And I would say to any fellow donors out there that are listening to give nonprofit organizations grace. This is an incredibly complex situation. There's no playbook in terms of how to actually handle it. And so I think as donors, we need to give you nonprofits a lot of grace as you figure this out. But I think it is your number one priority to ensure that your business can continue to deliver on its mission, whether it's this year, next year and beyond. So I don't see there to be any ethical problems with asking donors to still support. Some may not want to or just may not to be a position to. But don't stop inviting people to continue supporting their mission.
Is there a platform that allows virtual event with livestream and then donations too?
This is Medical International asking this question. So Funraise actually has a platform that allows you to integrate our fundraising capabilities. so peer-to-peer fundraising, donation forms directly into a Livestream through an integration with Streamlabs, which is something that you can create overlays, donation notifications and so forth. So that Livestream is interactive for the people watching it. So there's definitely tools that can help with that.
OK, this is from Rose. How do you keep sponsors engaged in your cause and stop them from withdrawing from postponed events?
Yeah, that's a good one, actually, Bobby D., who's a world-class auctioneer, I spoke with him a couple of days ago. I think he's on this call as well and he had a brilliant idea. And he said, why not ask the sponsor to basically fund whatever the new thing is that you need to take your events virtual. So if it's new software, if it's a new piece of technology, why not ask them to be the sponsor of that service or that good and give them the recognition that they were looking for at the event? So I think that finding creative ways like that to use the sponsorship to still be able to have access to it, keep the sponsorship engaged. Something that Jeremy from World Concern said yesterday, which I thought was brilliant, he said, you know don't think about the short term. Don't forget to think what the long term relationship with the sponsor as well. If this sponsor is gonna be a donor for the long term maybe it makes sense to give back the sponsorship if they don't feel comfortable or if they don't, you know, offer to allow you to keep it. Don't basically lose out on the potential long term relationship with a sponsor. So it's case by case. Clear transport communication with a sponsor, I think goes a long way.
Do you recommend doing something live at a specific time prerecorded and asynchronous or some combination?
That's a great question. This is from Rachel. So I think like the idea of Live is that it kind of helps recreate what the experience would have been if we were all together. So I think there's there's definitely appropriate times for that sense of a Livestream sort of event with your community. If you're looking for something that's less spontaneous and you want to be more polished, prerecording is a great option, too. So it really just kind of depends on what the event is, what the desired outcome is and, you know, make a decision from there.
You think rescheduling an event or postponing is better?
I think, again, it's going to be very case-by-case, depending on the event and the season. I would say, like, again, stay away from canceling at all because that denotes then the donor and supporter could do nothing. Instead, use the word postpone or say this is what the event is now going to look like. It's gonna be virtual. We're gonna host a zoom virtual meeting. We're going to do a Livestream on this day, whatever it might be to replace that event with something that still gives the opportunity to raise the funds that you need to raise as an organization.
This is from Heidi Boyd. Do you think direct mail will actually be more successful now because more people are craving personal connection at home
We are all clinging to screens and digital media for news updates, but perhaps a very personal direct note or letter with a tasteful ask will be more successful than a typical appeal was in recent history. That's a very interesting perspective. It's a great question. So I think direct mail is great, from my experience and I know, you know, many of you have different experiences with direct mail. I've seen direct mail to be the most effective as a post-appeal engagement strategy to thank donors and to keep you top of mind in a way that doesn't feel like spam in a way that's very personalized. I like this idea of a direct mail piece that's, you know, handwritten, that's customized and personalized for the donor and maybe for some of your largest donors where it doesn't make sense to make an appeal, maybe it's just a handwritten note saying, hey, look, I know this is a lonely time we just wanted to let you know we're thinking about you. I like that idea. I think that's good and I would experiment with that for sure.
How do you run a virtual wine tasting event?
Invite me to it, please, because I would love to be a part of that. So, you know, I've never hosted a virtual wine event so I can only give you an idea. I would, you know, use something like Zoom to basically set up a time where everyone's going to, you know, appear on video and has their wine glasses and maybe bottles are shipped out to their homes. And you have a wine tasting together over virtual. My company, we're gonna be doing a virtual happy hour next week. We're a company that most of us work in an office but have been remote since Monday. And so we still want to keep the culture up, so we're gonna do a Zoom virtual cocktail hour. So I think that can maybe be applicable for the wine tasting as well.
What is your advice on turning walk or run fundraisers into a virtual event?
OK. So yeah, that's a good one. So you've got a lot of spring 5ks happening. So how do you turn a 5K into a virtual event? So I've seen some people do this recently and it's been pretty interesting. So create a campaign out of it. All right. Have a campaign landing page. Have individuals, the walkers, continue to still have their registration, you know, peer-to-peer page and have them Livestream a walk around their neighborhood. If it's an area where it's safe, in their backyard, in their house, around the kitchen, wherever it might be, just be active, get out, Livestream it and throw it in a different way, more individualized way for now. That could be one way to accomplish that.
What technology do we need to execute a professional virtual gala?
So, you know, I think depending on what you want to do. So there's two things. If you have auction software, there's a lot of great products out there where you can, you know, host virtual auctions like an e-commerce store. If you're using Shopify as a nonprofit, that would be very easy to use to sell your virtual goods. I mean, one thing you have to obviously take into consideration with auctions today are the experiences, right? I mean, we don't know when people are gonna be able to travel more openly to that destination that they purchased and so there's that to consider. So to create a good virtual event I think what you need is, again, a solid page for it to build the community where the Livestream can actually be hosted. It's very easy to embed a Livestream, whether it's from YouTube or somewhere else. Typically click on, you know, the three little dots and gives you an embed code and you can embed that video. Which will then, you know, broadcast the Livestream in the gala web site, if you will. And instead of having a cocktail hour and dinner, create an online program where guests could still interact. Again, could be something on Zoom or other similar technology. And then create the actual Livestream of the keynote speakers, if there's other individuals that are going to be speaking. You can still perform that through a Livestream and then you could easily do fund-a-need paddle raise virtually with like an auctioneer or the individual that normally would run that for you and ask people to give and make the contribution online or pledge online through that technology. Funraise does all of that through our platform so you can check out that if you're interested.
All right. This is from Taylor along the line of the walk and run questions above. Once you've gone virtual, how do you keep participants engaged in fundraising for an event that doesn't exist?
Are we really focusing on storytelling and delivering the message of urgency that funds raised are still critical to our fundraising? Any tips outside of focusing on storytelling and a sense of urgency? So I think it essentially it's like how do we keep, if I were to summarize the question, is how do we keep people engaged? If the only touchpoint is going to be virtual for the next several months, there's you know, I think that the benefit you have is if you already are attracting, you know, digital donors, demographic of donors that is already kind of engaging with you online, is these are omnichannel donors. These are donors that are interacting across different channels. So whether it's texting, whether, you know, it's through LinkedIn, whether it's through your social media or email. There are basically omnichannel donors. And so I would sit down with the fundraising team, the marketing team, and talk about an engagement strategy that allows you to stay top of mind. So maybe over the next four weeks, we're gonna send out a couple of different text messages. It's going to be to check in with our supporters. It's going to be we're going to share a story of our work still happening and what we're accomplishing. And maybe, a third one is a soft appeal, something like that, and just continue to create that sort of engagement strategy across different channels.
What's the best way to get leverage peer-to-peer in this virtual time?
So I actually did a webinar this morning called social fundraising and I think this is one of the most impactful ways today to do peer-to-peer fundraising. And so you have your traditional peer-to-peer site, ask people to come and create fundraising pages and then it's integrated with Facebook. So it creates this mirrored campaign for the individual. So now they have a campaign on Facebook and have a campaign on the platform they're using for peer-to-peer fundraising and for family members or friends that maybe aren't going to see that on Facebook, texting them, emailing them, calling them, asking them to make a contribution on that page. It would then be reflected on your Facebook campaign and anyone who's donating through Facebook will also, you know, be mirrored to the campaign that you're running on the platform if it's integrated. And one of the things that we're seeing at Funraise is we're seeing that on average, a Facebook fundraiser is raising about $200 and adding four to six new donors. So it's definitely a great way to leverage peer-to-peer, to connect it socially and to give your supporters tools to basically reach their donors in the platforms where they're at. Livestreaming can be another example, if you have content creators and influencers, you can give them technology, in this case, is a donation button, to be able to stream and raise money for your organization.
How far should we be planning virtual events instead of live?
Our big gala is in late September and not sure our leaders understand we may not be in business as usual by then. Yeah, that's a tough call. You know, no one knows how long social distancing is going to be a part of our normal way of life. So I don't have a great answer for you on that one. What I would say is as a nonprofit, as a business, be thinking about what are definite ways that we can raise funds in 2020, if a worst-case scenario were to be we could not host any events this year. I would definitely plan for opportunities to raise outside of that.
Tips for staying connected to donors while everyone in the organization is working remotely.
So, I mean, it depends on the level of relationship you have for donors that you have their cell phone, text, phone calls to check in I think is great. Virtual coffee meetings with Zoom, you know, this is great. I mean, most of you are probably doing this even before we were self-quarantining ourselves, especially if you have donors that live outside of the city you're working in. So, you know, a Zoom virtual coffee is a great way to keep donors engaged. And I would say like trying to as much as possible get back to your normal cadence of creating and posting content across your web site and your digital channels will give your donors a sense of, OK, like, you know, the organization is still there, it's going. You know, I know we live in extraordinary times, but at least I'm getting this like this daily or weekly or monthly interaction with the nonprofits. I think that's something that's definitely important to do during this time.
How can we be transparent about the financial stress we're experiencing in this time while also staying positive and highlighting our resiliency?
That is a great, great question. Typically, I'm not a fan of like fundraising tactics and strategies that are, you know, promoting kind of like the shortcoming or the gap or the miss, because that message it sends to a donor is, well, if you couldn't hit the goals that you had set out to hit. How do I know that you won't be in business for 12 months, 18 months and so forth? We're obviously living in different times where this is impacting every business and so being transparent, if you haven't already and have gotten like hundreds of emails from nonprofits about their kind of response to COVID-19 and the impact it's having, make sure that you update your entire donor file on how COVID-19 is impacting your nonprofit financially, program wise and so forth. A great example is Liberty in North Korea so about a month and a half ago, they sent out an email to their donor base saying we have to halt rescues, this organization is helping North Korean refugees escape out of China into Southeast Asia, and basically, you know, China was on lockdown. And so they had to stop one of their largest programs indefinitely. And they were very transparent and they communicated that to their donors right away. And so transparency around your financial situation, around your programs, these are all things that should definitely be top of mind and something that you're updating your donors on.
If you switch to a virtual event, do you suggest changing the price?
Do you think those that have already registered will understand that change? So, you know, I mean, one thing is prior to COVID-19 happening and under the normal kind of normal pretenses, what would your cancelation policy be to begin with? So you have to take a look at that. Your donors may address that with you and you need to honor whatever your cancelation policy is. That being said, if you turn the event virtual, I don't think the expectation should be that it should be cheaper. A lot of times when people are purchasing tickets to go to an event, they're considering that to be a donation anyways. So I don't think it's changed the price. And instead, just think about what is the experience that we're offering? How can we provide value to the individual that's coming this virtual event so that they walk away saying, you know, that was well worth it. But again, everyone is different. Some people may have different expectations, you just have to kind of manage on a case by case basis.
Brian Reed, at my nonprofit, we have a lot of people who want to get involved in person as opposed to simply donating. Previously, we would use them as event volunteers. Now that this isn't an option, what do you feel would be the best way to keep volunteers engaged other than just directing them to online donations
So that's a good question. I mean, if your organization has a lot of volunteer opportunities, obviously, you know, for the time being, that's not a possibility you can offer. I think, you know, turning those sorts of people into fundraisers could be another good alternative. I know it's a long still, like the financial ask, but instead of them donating. Ask them to become a peer-to-peer fundraiser. Ask them to, you know, if livestreaming is a vertical you want to get into. Ask them to do some research on content creators on Twitch or Mixer that are aligned with your mission. So they can definitely do that research from home. They can find, you know, the top five content creators on Twitch that care about animal rights and then work from there to get them to, you know, outreach and connect. And before long, maybe you'll have the opportunity to be working with a content creator on Twitch. That's something that I think, you know, volunteers could be used for that could still help the organization and have some actual revenue results as well.
We've postponed our peer-to-peer event from April to May until June. How can your feature on Funraise?
We do use Funraise, to keep our registrants fundraising. So I'm not sure if I totally understand the question, but I think what's being asked is, what I will assume is. Can peer-to-peer funders still fundraise even if the event doesn't have a hard date yet? Because it's changing. Yeah. I mean if the event's going to eventually be turned virtual, I think, you know, and that's communicated that and that's transparent with the peer-to-peer fundraisers to say, hey, this and this event is going to look different than what we originally planned. So, you know, continue to fundraise. We want to hit this goal. We still need to raise the funds that we had, we're hoping to raise through this event - it's just going to be a little bit different and we don't know the exact time frame. I think most of your supporters will understand that.
Should I make my virtual gala public or invitation-only?
That's a good question. So you could still sell tickets to your virtual gala. So there's definitely ways to do that, still, so I would say, you know, what I've seen work really well when events were happening like real events were happening or non-virtual events were happening. Is there would be an element of Livestream of that event that would then be broadcasted to the general support base, maybe individuals who didn't have the capacity to buy a $300 ticket or, you know, make a sizeable contribution? That's a way to keep donors engaged. Your low dollar kind of donors engaged. So if the goal of the event is and has a certain dollar amount and it's going to be possible to hit that only with sponsorships and ticket sales, then make it exclusive to individuals who buy tickets and sponsor it and try to do the same sort of program, just make it virtual. If there's not a goal attached to it and it's possible to open it up, then I think it's a great opportunity for people to have the connection that so many of us are looking for during this time of working from home, not being around our colleagues and so forth. So it depends on what are the business goals for the event and are they achievable with exclusivity or not.
In place of our next five walks, this is William White, we are pivoting to an online rally, open to ideas for raising money. If you could, William would love to hear more about the rally that you are planning and I'll come back to that question. So if you're still on, I would love to get a bit more information on that.
OK. How do you suggest is the best way to thank past donors and ask them to consider supporting fall events, knowing many of these businesses are losing money, specifically the New York stock market and financial firms?
So I think now more than ever is a great opportunity to relaunch or to launch a new monthly donor program. So, you know, charity:water is a really great example. And what they've done with their monthly donor program. Last time I checked in with them, they were up to about $10,000,000 in annual revenue just from their monthly donor program, which they call subscribers. And all of us on this call are subscribed to something whether it's Netflix or some other service that we pay monthly for and that we get value from. As organizations, the work that you're doing, the people that you're helping or the causes that you're working on offers great value to a donor, charge for it. Ask them to give $25 a month, ask them to give $50 a month, whatever is appropriate. And there's no better demographic of donors to start asking that to than people they've given in the past. You'll see the highest conversion on those types of donors. So I would say look at your donors that have given in the past six to eight months, launch a monthly donor program, brand it and ask people to start supporting on a monthly basis. I think that's an effective way to really get through some potentially hard fundraising months ahead of us.
Advice on promoting a virtual fundraiser during this time of sensitivity, especially when you aren't a nonprofit on the frontlines of combating COVID-19.
Yeah. So I think it goes back to earlier what I said. I mean, you know, it's an absolute disaster what's going on right now. And it's sad. And, you know, lots of people are being impacted. All of us are being impacted in a way, especially people that are getting infected. So, yes, this is a very, you know, unfortunate thing that's happening. But so is North Korean refugees not being able to get out of China. So is that homeless person that your organization responsible for feeding. All of you have missions that aren't related and could cause the same fatal results if you don't step in and help. So I think that it's not insensitive to continue fundraising for your mission, even if it's not related to Coronavirus. I think it's your responsibility as a nonprofit leader and fundraiser to do all that you can do to continue your mission as a nonprofit. So again, I would not be offended, organizations that I support if they came back and reached out for more support. I think that is a very normal thing, regardless of the environment.
How are people adjusting to working from home? Any tips? I feel like I'm being asked to do even more without the resources I'm used to having.
Yeah, it's that's a great question. I think that you know, one of the things we intend to do here as a company was to do some like trial work from home days. But then, you know, this progressed so quickly that we bypassed the trials and just moved our entire team remote on Monday. So we didn't have any trial runs of it. And, you know, people were told to take the resources that they need home with them to be able to do their jobs and just stay productive. So I think, you know, as it relates to working from home, make sure you have a space that you know, where you can get some work done. I have four kids and they're out of school indefinitely. So, you know, one of the things I did on Monday to mentally prep for working from home is I watched that BBC clip where this man was being interviewed and his kid came in and he was like, so rude to the kid and then his wife. And he was on national television. I watched him like, if this happens to me, I'm just gonna be a kind human being. And, you know, everyone on the other end of these Zoom calls and so forth. Everyone just needs to show each other grace. We're all working in environments that aren't normal and that we aren't used to. So just show people grace.
Okay. We're gonna take a few more questions. And then again, this is being recorded and we'll send it out to everyone. And we're actually going to continue hosting live Q&A's for the indefinite future as long as people keep showing up and have questions. And we'll bring in some special guests as well to be a part of answering more questions. We received a lot of support from other vendors and industry experts and practitioners that want to basically give as much information out as possible to help nonprofits. We're gonna bring more, more people in as well to be a part of the conversation next time. So I'm gonna answer a couple more questions and then we're gonna wrap up.
Okay. Can you tell us about Funraise's live-giving abilities during a virtual event, ie. Text-to-pledge or ask moment.
Yeah. So there's a couple different ways to achieve, basically, you know, virtual giving in an event context. So I'll name a few, one is if you are livestreaming, you can use our integration with StreamLabs to create overlays for donation alerts and other data to be displayed onscreen. So if Bobby D. is running my auction and he's asking someone to fund the need for $50,000 and you know, someone clicks the donate button that's on the Livestream via Streamlabs, they make the contribution. You'll see Justin Wheeler donated $50,000 for this specific thing. So there's that component for more kind of advanced Livestream fundraising that could work really well. And if you weren't doing something like fund-the-need and you're just asking people to contribute. Yeah, we have other tools like text-to-give where you can you know, you can text your virtual attendees and ask them to make a contribution. You can also embed giving forms on any domain that would interact with an actual campaign site that shows live progress, leaderboards and so forth. So lots different tools that we have to help you with your virtual event fundraising.
How do you keep sponsors engaged? I thought I answered a question like that, but in case it was missed. So how do you keep sponsors engaged?
I mentioned Bobby D. came up with this idea of asking them to potentially sponsor new technology that you might need to fundraise in a digital landscape. So maybe that's a software, maybe that's some other piece of technology and they get the recognition for that. Just as a really practical example, it's like alright we're gonna take our event virtual. We're gonna run a peer-to-peer campaign, integrate it with social media. We're gonna have Sponsor A, sponsor the cost of that and that's going to get promoted throughout the campaign. It's going to have, you know, thousands of people that come and view the campaign, hundreds of donors, hundreds of fundraisers. So they're going to get the recognition for sponsoring that and allowing you to continue raising funds. That could be an example of how to keep sponsors engaged. What are the new costs that are associated with changing maybe some of your strategies and asking them to fund those strategies?
Alright. I think we are going to wrap it up for now. If there were any missed questions, we'll scan, we'll comb through all of the questions that have been entered in and make sure to try to answer those, whether written or in future Q&A's that we host - we will be emailing out this recording. And again, if there's anything that I've said or if there's anything that I can talk with you, that you want some one on one time, I am happy to talk to any nonprofit leader out there to help you through these challenging times. Just to provide my information, you can reach my cell phone, it's (562) 242-8160. Feel free to text or call! Text before you call so I know who you are. We'll get the best chance of me answering my phone or you could shoot an email to justin@funraise.org as well. If anyone on the call is interested in checking out the Funraise technology and how it can help you basically navigate new strategies or how to replace events with virtual events. We'd love to show you the product if you're interested. And so there'll be a link that we send out that you can schedule a time to check out the product if that's helpful for your strategy or if it's relevant to the ways that you need to pivot. So thank you, everyone, for joining. We had a great audience. I hope lots of the questions were answered and that it was helpful. But if there's any other follow up, please feel free to reach out to us anytime. Thank you so much. We are rooting for you here at Funraise. We believe that when a nonprofit tells us they're going to change the world, that they actually are going to change the world. So keep your heads up. We've got your back and excited to weather this storm shoulder by shoulder. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Nonstop Nonprofit. This podcast is brought to you by your friends at Funraise. Nonprofit fundraising software, built by nonprofit people. If you'd like to continue the conversation, find me on LinkedIn or text me at 562-242-8160. And don't forget to get your next episode the second it hits the internet. Go to nonstopnonprofitpodcast.com and sign up for email notifications today. See you next time!