Can I Sign Nevada Banking Presentation

Can i industry sign banking nevada presentation later

all right linda i got three o'clock eastern is it okay if i go ahead and kick us off here all right awesome well good afternoon everybody uh thanks for joining us for uh today's bloomerang webinar covid one year later what have we learned about fundraising i'm stephen i'm over here at boomerang and i'll be moderating today's discussion good to see you all hope you're all staying happy and healthy and productive if you're watching this as a recording i hope you're having a good day no matter when and where you are but we're gonna have some fun so thanks for being here uh just a couple of quick housekeeping items before we get going just want to let you all know that we are recording this presentation and we'll be sending out the slides and the recording a little bit later on today so if you have to leave early or maybe you get interrupted or just want to review the content maybe share it with a friend or a colleague don't worry we'll get all that good stuff in your hands today you won't miss a thing i promise and if this is uh if you haven't already uh please use that chat box right there on your webinar screen introduce yourself uh ask questions leave comments along the way we're gonna save time at the end for q a we'll try to get to as many questions as we can before four o'clock eastern but don't be shy we'd love to hear from you uh introduce yourself tell us where you're from tell us what the weather's like i always like to get the weather report you can also do that on twitter but uh main thing is we'd love to hear from you so don't be shy if this is your first bloomerang webinar uh welcome we do these webinars every thursday uh throughout the year we love doing them this is now our uh almost i think it's our ninth year of webinars we're getting close to a thousand sessions one of my favorite things we do at bloomerang but if you've never heard of bloomerang beyond that we're also a provider of donor management software that's what boomerang is it's a donor database so if you're interested in that or just curious check out our website there's all kinds of good resource resources on there we're pretty easy to find so um we'd love for you to do that if you're interested but don't do that right now because uh wow we got a living legend here one of my favorite people ever uh joining us from from beautiful las vegas nevada linda lysakowski linda how's it going are you doing okay good great it's good to see you i always love having linda on the webinar series because you're the reigning queen of the bloomerang webinars by the way this is your ninth session i was i was really wow yeah it just it wouldn't feel like a a season of webinars without without my buddy linda here if you don't know when to uh i feel silly trying to summarize linda's credentials but she's a legend she's an acfre which is kind of a big deal there's only like 100 people who have that designation uh has been doing this for over 30 years has written or contributed over 30 books i got a bunch of them on that bookshelf here but i don't have all 30. i don't know if i have room on my shelf for him linda uh super involved in uh the las vegas afp and and nonprofit community there and um geez i feel like i'm i'm into i'm introducing a rockstar a little bit linda so i don't want to take too much of time away from from your presentation so i'm gonna stop sharing and uh i'll let you bring up those slides hopefully get those working again now are you able to see my slide because it's showing on my screen but i think you may have to reshare since i was sharing previously yeah you may have to hit that share button again now i have to figure out how to get through my get rid of the slide because it's dominating okay oh was it full screening and covering it was that always messes things up now let's see how i lost i don't i seem to have lost things to share my screen hmm might be a kind of a green button on my screen yeah usually it is but i don't see any of my any of my zoom controls for something this is weird this has never happened before yeah those zoom zoom zoom one sketch every time that's i can share the document but well i don't know what happened to zoom i may have to close up this document all together i don't know hmm [Music] okay it's your screen there it is there we go okay now hopefully there we go hey if that's the worst thing that happens that wasn't too bad i think soon gremlins have been after me this weekend they knew we were doing our presentation very strange things there you guys we're telling jay before we started somehow zoom decided that i had to sign in from scratch and i lost all my virtual backgrounds so now i have the worst them all again anyway well there you go everyone it's good to be here again i didn't realize i had to had taught nine webinars for bloomerang so i guess that's won a season at least you've been doing it for nine years but this is a topic that i mean you were to talk about because first of all it's hard to believe that it's been a year since we've all been in going through this pandemic and i think that many of you have probably had lots of changes in your organization hopefully all you're all surviving i heard some interesting statistics on a webinar i was on a couple weeks ago that they fully expected one-third of non-profits to go out of business altogether which really is quite scary so hopefully you've been one of the ones who have been able to survive and maybe even thrive in this pandemic because some organizations are doing quite well so i thought we'd get started by talking a little bit about what we have learned what we're definitely living in a different world than we were a year ago whoever thought that we'd all be wearing masks and i'm convinced that in a couple of uh months everybody's going to need ear surgery because every time i wear a mask my ears get folded over at the top and i said you know we're all going to need ear surgery when this thing is over and we don't wear masks anymore and then we're gonna have to go back to buying makeup again my goodness i haven't wear lipstick for a long time except when i'm on a zoom meeting so there are some things i think that's different but it's good to see that people are getting out and about more right people are traveling a little bit more in fact i had my daughters visiting a couple weeks ago and then four of my granddaughters came out and visited this past weekend so i think people are starting to travel more if you're not traveling yet and you feel comfortable doing it i can tell you that the airfares are very very cheap we have some really cheap rates into las vegas from all over the country really but i think people are still scared people not everybody has been vaccinated i'm fortunate enough to have had my second vaccine that's one of the benefits of being old and gray-haired you get your vaccine early but i think there are still people who are leery about what's going on and certainly in some locations the economy is still in a great deal of danger i know i honestly feel sorry for the governors of every state especially states like mine where our state depends on tourism that's our biggest source of income and so the governors are trying to protect everybody and keep them safe and yet at the same time they're getting a lot of flack from businesses saying you know we need to open we can't stay closed and um some people i think are still worried about the economy and some people are still not back at work many people of course are working at home and finding that they really love working at home for me it didn't make a whole lot of difference because i've worked at home for 20 some years i guess since i live in nevada and so i'm accustomed to working at home but i think some of the things that non-profits need to think about is there is a lot that hasn't changed one is your mission still matters you're still doing good work in the community and you need to get the word out about the work that you're doing in the community some of you probably are being stretched even further like food banks and food pantries and uh organizations that are dealing with health care certainly non-profit health care institutions nursing homes uh hospitals those missions really matter probably more now than they ever did before and i think people still care what i have found is that people are just as generous if not more so in this environment because they understand that many organizations are really very vital to the community more now than they ever were before one of my clients was a free health clinic and they did a fantastically successful online fundraising event because people really understood how important their work is now it was always important but now it's even more and i think because of the publicity that we're getting people are more aware of these things and they are still being generous except for those of course who have been hurt by maybe being out of work and having their businesses shut down but they're still supporting organizations that they really care about i know i lost clients and this pandemic and certainly my financial picture has changed but i still give to the organizations who i really care about and i think most people are like that so even though we're living in a different world i really believe we're beginning to appreciate the non-profit sector and appreciate each other more than we ever did before so even though there's a lot of things that have probably changed in your organizations there are some things that still are the same and i think you really need to emphasize how much work you're doing in the community and that your organizations do matter that your missions are important that you're doing good work in the community and you need to communicate maybe you're communicating in different ways now but it's really important that you do excuse me that you do still communicate with your donors so how has code affected your nonprofit well if you're like others and we'd love to hear your your input in the chat room too and maybe steve can kind of monitor that and share some of it with this but most organizations have been their staff has been affected one of my clients for example had to cut more than two-thirds of their staff they had a staff of about 20 and they're down to four i think now so some organizations did have to reduce their staff others probably had to increase their staff because they're more in demand just because they're front line workers and they're providing direct services to people that are in need right now but your staff may also be affected by the fact that there are now many of them being forced to work at home and also possibly homeschooling their children i know my my daughter is um [Music] has uh worked full-time at home and has three children and she's home schooling while she's working full-time and she's a cpa so this is a busy season for her already but many staff members are feeling that pressure of being working at home maybe maybe having a husband and a wife working at home and having children homeschooling i know my son had to actually renovate his basement to make more office space at home because he's got two children being home schooled and has he and his wife both working at home right now so your staff has definitely been affected your board has probably been affected maybe they're accustomed to meeting in person and now they've been forced to meet online and things like that so sometimes boards maybe tend to feel less engaged because they're not there at your organization's office as much as they were in the past so they've probably been affected in some ways too and your clients have been affected depending on what kind of organization you work with you may have more demand for example as i mentioned an organization like a food pantry i know our local food pantry used to only be open a couple days a week and now they're open every day because they have so many more people coming for food so your clients have been affected in one way or another maybe if your clients pay for some services maybe they can't afford to pay for them now if they're not working uh or maybe their needs are greater maybe their caregivers for someone else and their family who maybe has had coveted and your volunteers are affected because a lot of times organizations are very dependent on volunteers to help run their programs to help with administrative tasks to help with fundraising and now their volunteers maybe don't have the time because they're also working at home and maybe homeschooling people so they've been affected and of course your donors may have been affected if the economy hit them especially they're going to be affected by this so i want to talk about some ways that you can start keeping these people engaged with your organization during this crisis and as we come out of it how you can keep them engaged and hopefully you've been doing some of these things all along but i think your board is one area that people really have found the way their boards function have changed greatly over the last year fortunately for many board members are now more comfortable with technology for board meetings and their committee work and i think this is one of the good things that probably has come out of covid for example i had one client who they their board always met in person of course and several of their board members were out of town and traveled a lot so they used to do conference calls well i don't know how many of you have sat around the table with that outer space gadget that looks that's what they always look like the phone line and somebody calls in and you're never quite sure if they're there and you participate in a conversation and they can't hear it all because it's in the middle of the table and i find conference calls are almost useless so now boards are starting to get accustomed to technology like using zoom to have meetings where everybody's on they can still see each other face to face and they can converse back and forth with board meetings and committee work so i think this is something that many organizations will benefit from if you continue that technology in the future even when board members can get together instead of just having that conference call telephone in the middle of your board table why not have a zoom meeting where board members who can attend can still participate fully in the meeting and i think they get so much more out of it when they can see people face to face i steve and i were chatting before time and i think like most of us were on zoom i'm usually on about three or four times a day depending on what's going on sometimes it's more than that sometimes it may only be once or twice a day but we're also accustomed to being on zoom meetings and there are other tools that some people are using like google hangouts and things like that go to meeting but having your boards getting more comfortable with technology to me is one of the good things that has come out of covid and i would encourage you to keep your board members engaged in this way because they can accomplish so much more so some of you may have during this time set up either a board page on your website so they can access documents or maybe you're using a program like boardable or some other program that board members can access a page either on your website or through some other medium where they can access all the documents you don't have to be sending things out in the mail anymore i think that's one of the another positive thing that has come out of the new technology and i find that most boards are much more comfortable now with technology than they used to be i i don't think i know of any board members that can't even get onto a zoom meeting anymore just seems like it's part of our life now so i think these are some advantages that we can continue to carry forth and try to help keep your board members engaged as much as possible so if you don't already have something like a program like portable or a website page that's only accessible to board members this is something i think you could do in the future to keep your board members more engaged because a board that doesn't meet and doesn't really engage with the organization pretty quickly learn loses interest and they aren't really involved they don't understand your programs they may not understand the need for fundraising and things like that so try to keep your board as engaged as possible now and moving forward and i have some ideas for boards that i think have been really helpful for some organizations this has been a great time to really start restructuring their board getting them involved in the strategic planning process if you don't have a strategic plan i just recently surveyed some people and i was surprised during the webinar how few of them actually had a strategic plan and those it did said it was so outdated it really needed to be updated now so this is a perfect time to begin strategic planning and a lot of this can be done virtually too you don't have to meet in person if you're still uncomfortable about meeting in person [Music] you can do a lot of strategic planning through virtual tools i've even done some strategic planning retreats with boards over zoom and it works just as well as meeting in person so this also might be a time to think about getting your board engaged in fundraising you can teach them about your organization there's so many things that you can do on zoom maybe have some special board training sessions about your program about fundraising about all the things that are important to your organization so this is a great time to think about doing things like this if you don't have a good board in place maybe this is a time to restructure your board and think about okay do we have a large enough board do we need to add new board members i have one client for example who has a board of four so they're using this time to really increase their board size because four people is really not enough to accomplish a lot another one of my clients is they had a board of directors in place and but they weren't doing any fundraising and so that what they did was they used this time to start appointing some board committees to get a development committee in place and within a couple months their development committee has just progressed so amazingly i'm just truthfully shocked at what what they've been able to accomplish in the couple months since they've organized a development committee and again it's all done by zoom but they've done a fantastic job of using this time to reorganize their boards and make sure that they are getting everything they really need for their organization getting the right people on board and it's a great time to do things like that so i would suggest if you need to restructure your board if you need to begin a strategic planning process if you need to engage your board in fundraising or just give them some more awareness about your programs this must be a fantastic time to start a regular maybe a virtual training session for your board members and all this can be done virtually so you don't have to worry about endangering any of your board members uh by expecting them to come in person meetings if they're not comfortable doing that so this is something that i really suggest you work on very much over the next couple months another thing that i think is a thing to think about is how you can engage fundraising volunteers and you might think oh gosh you know we can't go out and do fundraising in person we can't involve our volunteers but there are so many things that volunteers can do for you and one of them is get them involved in some social media fundraising appeals i know for example lots of organizations are doing these things i mentioned the free health clinic that was a client of mine and they did an event that was just amazing now i know they made some personal contacts with people either by phone or by zoom or maybe actually in person to make major commitments before this event but they had a virtual tour of the organization they had several people their clinical director and several other people some of the people that they serve gave testimonials all through a zoom meeting and they had a host who kind of organized this and introduced each person and then they asked for contributions and they announced some very major one person donated i think twenty five thousand dollars in an hour's time they raised about four hundred thousand dollars just through this virtual appeal so it was really effective i'm sure it took a lot of work to coordinate it behind the scenes but it was a very effective way to involve some volunteers and doing things like this for you one of the things that volunteers can also help you with is research you know sometimes this is a part of fundraising that a lot of people don't like i'm i admit i'm one of them i hate doing research but if you have a volunteer and you have access to the foundation directory maybe a volunteer could do some of that research for you to help you find possible foundations that would support your organization or a volunteer could sit and research business websites and look for the kind of businesses that might be interested in supporting your organization and most major businesses if they're a medium or large company they have a social involvement page on their website that shows the kind of things that they do support because most businesses want to brag about the fact that they are socially responsible and so they'll talk about the kind of people that they kind of organizations they support and what their causes that they really get involved in and how their employees get involved and how they as a business can support your organization so that's something that you can assign a volunteer to do if you are one of the organizations that had to cut back on staff maybe you don't have enough staff to do this research on your own so you can have some volunteers get involved in that and even researching individuals that's a little bit trickier because a lot of it is not public information that you're not going to be able to access as easily as you can foundations and businesses but you could still do an individual screening session virtually you can get a group of your board members or your development committee members or some leaders in your community together and talk about individuals who might be willing to support your organization how you can reach those who knows them how much are they capable of giving what are their particular interests all this could be done virtually by volunteers and then of course there are those virtual events that many people are having i personally am not a big fan of special events and i think that's one of the lessons that we learned in this last year is that organizations that were so dependent on special events have had to really rethink their whole fundraising but there are many other virtual appeals that volunteers can help you with this would be a great time to do a volunteer phone fund if you have a list of members or a list of existing donors we never suggest that you just pick up names out of the phone book and start making phone calls but go to your bloomerang list hopefully you're all bloomerang users and you have that data at your fingertips and call your existing donors and you know ask them to if they would be willing to support that this is something that you can do with volunteers at home you can have a virtual training session on zoom and then let everybody kind of keep your zoom meeting open but let everybody sign off and make their phone calls and come back if they have questions or comments and at the end of the night bring them back to make a final report so a virtual phone-a-thon i think is a great idea right now to raise money you can also ask volunteers to help you with email appeals and or direct mail appeals they can still get involved in things like that whether or not you're meeting in person or whether you're doing it virtually so engaging fundraising volunteers to me is one of my favorite topics because so many organizations use volunteers for a lot of things but when it comes to fundraising they think oh we can't get volunteers to do that and believe me i've seen a lot of volunteer campaigns that have been extremely effective both phonathons business appeals direct mail appeals social media appeals all these things can be done by your volunteers and it's a great way for them to stay engaged and right now there are a lot of people who are working at home and maybe they actually have more time because they don't have to commute they don't have to get up in the morning and get dressed up to go to work they can work in their pajamas if they want or as as those of us who use zoom a lot probably work in your pajama bottoms and a nice top lemony organizations are are doing that i think their employees are getting accustomed to working that way but some of them maybe are saving some time because they don't have that commute into the office and what i have found since i've been working at home for the last 20 years is i get a lot more done when i work at home than i did when i had an office because i have no interruptions except for occasionally the amazon driver ringing my doorbell but that's about it so there's a lot of things that volunteers can do to get involved and i would start thinking about ways you can involve them if you haven't over this past year think about it now now your donors i think you're really important obviously because they're the ones who are keeping your organizations alive in many cases so i think it's important that you let your donors know that you care about them maybe just calls your donors and say you know how is it going how are you doing are you okay are you isolated are you yeah feeling lonely is there sometimes you just want somebody to talk to especially if your donors are older people who are living alone and maybe they're not getting out and seeing people i have a neighbor who's he just turned 90 she's more like my age she's still in her 70s but because of his fragile medical condition they don't get out at all and sometimes they just need to know that somebody cares about them so maybe calling your donors not asking them for money but just letting them know that you still care about them and wonder how they're doing and if there's anything you can maybe do to help them but also you can let them know what you're doing you can fill them in on this is how we've been surviving over the last year and we've changed some things maybe we've added some new programs maybe we've had to eliminate some programs but let's know what you're doing and let them know that you still need their support because sometimes you know people that are not sure they don't hear from you so they're not quite sure whether you're still in existence even maybe and i think the more you can stay in touch with your donors and more importantly than even letting them know you need their support is letting them know if they did contribute to you in the past year how you use their money gee you know we've had to lay off some staff members but we're continuing our programs and your money is enabling us to do that or your net your money left us keep maintain our staff level so we can provide these services because because we've had an increased demand and if you let people know how you use their money they're much more likely to give to you again and they're much more likely to recommend you to other people i know that um some individuals and even some businesses in fact i believe a couple years ago bloomerang did this they gave a certain amount of money to a bunch of different charities to see how they would be thanked and people do this they test your organization to find out you know how long does it take them to send me a thank you letter and do they tell me in the thank you letter how they used my money and did they tell me that they really appreciated it that it really did make a difference so the more things like that you can do to support your donors the more they're going to feel like they're really tied to your organization even if maybe they don't see you in person as much as they did before so i think sending some kind of a thank you letter i know one of the organizations that i support is a perfect example of this and i've been supporting this organization for probably 30 years or more and they sponsor well they invite their donors to sponsor a child in a foreign country in an underdeveloped country and i got involved in this about 30 years ago when a missionary came to my church and talked about the work they were doing in developing countries but the thing that really sold it for me was when we walked out of church in our vestibule there were pictures of the actual kids that that they were helping and we were told if we were interested to take a picture off the wall and say this is who i want to support and so i did that and i've supported several girls over the years i decided i wanted a girl in africa that was my two criteria so i picked out a girl in africa and when she aged out of the program i got another girl also from a different country in africa but every couple months i would get thank you letters from these girls they were written in their native language but always someone translated them into english for me and they told me what a difference might help my contribution that was a major gift by any means but it made a difference to them because they were able to buy books to go to school they were able to buy shoes so they could walk to school and small things like that and knowing that you make a difference in someone's life is really what's important so if you can tell your donors how you use their money and what a difference it made maybe even getting some testimonials from some of the people that you've helped they can remain anonymous if they choose to but you can do use a story and say your gift was able enabled so and so to do this that or the other thing so the more you can do to maintain relationships with your donors in the past year i think it was real important but it's going to be just as important if not more important going forward so in your donor communications i think it's important to first of all let donors know that you're grateful for their support especially during this trying time maybe some of your donors have lost their income or a portion of their income maybe there were two people in the family working and now only one is working so let them know that you really appreciate the fact that even though things have been tough for them they're still supporting your organization and again letting them know how their money was used and some other things that you can do to communicate with donors is maybe broadcast some of your current programs you can do them virtually on youtube or facebook live or zoom but try to give them a hands-on experience now that's not always possible in every organization because some of you deal with confidentiality issues and you may not be able to actually show your clients but i've had some uh like the free medical clinic that i mentioned they they ask people when they come in for services would you be willing to be videotaped and and talk about us and give a testimonial for what a difference we made in your life and some of the things are that you hear from actual clients who receive services are so powerful i remember seeing one video testimonial for this clinic that came from an rn she was a nurse and i mean nurses aren't the wealthiest people in the world but they make decent money but she suddenly found herself without a job which meant she was without health insurance and if she didn't have this clinic she wouldn't have been able to get health care so it kind of showed the story that you know hey this can happen to anybody you know if you're out of a job you suddenly don't have health insurance and you might need a health clinic someday yourself so that was kind of something that gives you a virtual hands-on experience with what your organization is all about and then having a strong case for support that talks about community needs not your needs as an organization every non-profit needs money i don't know if a single one that doesn't need money if you're one of those i'd love to hear your story but everybody needs money but what are the community needs that you're addressing this is what people tend to support hey either give money because you're saving lives or you're changing lives and maybe some of you are doing both but that's what is going to get people really excited so again if you don't have a strong case for support this might be the time that you might want to build your case for support so that you have it going forward and you can really spend that time now to develop good donor communications and then you can either start or continue to run some social media appeals if you haven't done this already one of the things that i would suggest is maybe going to your board members and your staff members and your volunteers and maybe even your clients and say maybe you would like to do a birthday appeal i know i do this every year my birthday is in november and every year i pick out a different charity because at my age i don't need stuff i don't want my friend sending me stuff i just don't want any more clutter in my house so i always do a birthday appeal where i asked my facebook friends if they would contribute to a charity and i've read over the years thousands of dollars this way and it's something that really doesn't cost your organization any money at all to do [Music] is just the communicating with your donors with your board members with your staff members with your volunteers and of course hopefully you all have a good website donation system set up and um make sure that donate now button is on every page of your website not just on the home page because when people start to look for something on your website they're going to see that donate now button pop up everything they look at so that's something that you can be doing if you aren't already and using social media to create awareness social media fundraising i don't think is all that effective because it's kind of hard to measure how much you're really getting from some of these social media appeals but use them to create awareness do regular postings about your organization and what you're up to what you're doing how you're surviving the pandemic how things have changed what maybe new programs that you've added whatever you need to do but continue to do that if you've started it during the pandemic keep it up maybe your message is going to change but keep up that good work because it is going to be important and then continue your research as i said the foundation directory is a great tool if you don't have access to it yourself it is quite expensive and if you're a small organization maybe you don't have access to it but you might be able to go to your local library or even local university and ask if you can access their foundation directory so continue to do that do some research on businesses you can go to their website and search their websites to find out and you'd be surprised how many businesses talk about their social responsibility to give to their community but you can also do brainstorming sessions either in person or virtually where you maybe get your board members together one month and say what businesses do you do business with you know who are some people that you might be able to talk to your accountant your attorney your doctor your car dealer your insurance company and when you do that brainstorming you come up sometimes with a huge list of companies that maybe you never thought of before and this can be done online if you're not meeting in person you can easily do a brainstorming session online i actually have a brainstorming form that if anyone is interested in you can email me and i'll be happy to send it to you because just asking board members to give you 15 names they never give you 15 names they they you might you're lucky if one board member gives you five names or three names but giving them some ideas to start with this form gives them a whole list of people that they might have contact with who could be interested in supporting your organization and then do some things like researching individuals both electronically through programs like windfall or donor search but also doing that brainstorming for individuals can be very helpful too and again all this can be done virtually as well as in person so continue to keep doing that research because it's an important part of your fundraising toolbox now what special events i mentioned one thing that i think that a lot of organizations learned during this last year is that they were addicted to special events and please get rid of it if you're one of those that are addicted to special events and it's important to evaluate your special events so that you're not doing events year after year just because you've always done them are you really making money on this event what are the hard costs involved in putting on this event what are the soft costs of putting that on the event how much staff time how much volunteer time do you have donor fatigue from donors who are sick of coming to special events and i can guarantee you that i live very close to las vegas which is an event town and people are so tired of going to special events and i think one of the good things that came out of covet is maybe some organizations realize that they were way too dependent on special events so if you're one of them try to get rid of that event addiction and start looking at other things and if you have some virtual events that are working like some of the ones that i've mentioned keep doing those do them now and continue but after covet if you do go back to doing in-person special events don't try to do 12 events a year or 10 events a year i once had a client who had a one person development office and they were doing 14 special events a year and i used to tease their development director because he was a former marine and i said nobody else would have the stamina to be doing 14 special events a year but it restricted them from going out and doing major gift fundraising and there are other things because all he did was manage these events all the time so choose maybe one mission related event for post coven 19 when you're ready to start meeting again in person pick one event but make sure it's something that's related to your mission you know i i always sort of pick on golf tournaments and i love golf i used to play quite a bit with my husband when we were both in good health but golf tournaments you're getting exposed to 72 people in a day so what are 72 people going to do for you choose an event that somehow connects to your mission now if you're the first tea or some uh golf scholarship organization then maybe you are making an event that's related to your mission but if not try to pick something that really helps build relationships with major donors and helps them understand the mission of your organization so with events i think that's one really great lesson that a lot of people learned during covet is don't have 10 events a year it's just not worth it and you're going to burn yourself out trying to do it and this year most of them got canceled one of the worst fundraising appeals i got during kovud was from an organization that said we had to cancel our event and now we're going to have to close our doors if we can't raise forty thousand dollars in the next two days and i thought well maybe you shouldn't have been so dependent on special events in the first place so i of course didn't support that organization i doubt many other people did um virtual appeals think about direct mail it still works i know a lot of people i i personally get so much direct mail and i don't respond to it very well but some people do my friend that i mentioned that just turned 90 gives literally hundreds of thousands of dollars a year through direct mail so it does still work email is another form you can use start building your email list if you haven't already done that try to get emails for everybody on your list so you can contact them through email because it's a lot less expensive than direct mail and in many cases people will respond easier i know if i get an email and there's a link to click on and make a donation it's much easier for me than sitting down writing out a check writing out an envelope finding a stamp finding a return label to put on i would rather just click on something and make a donation that way um phonathon i mentioned this is a perfect time to do it but i always tell people be like santa and check your list twice at least look at your mailing list and you should be able to pull it very easily from blue meringue and find out are these people still in the same address are they still married are they both still living you know what what are the what does your list look like so if you're the right list that will make all the difference in the world and doing a phonethun and then have your case for support and build talking points and you can train your volunteers virtually as i said and then they go off on their own make the phone calls and come back and report to you so these are some things that you can continue doing and you might find that even once you are meeting people in person that these things still are working better and and it's much easier for you to do some virtual appeals so how are we going to operate um post well i think one thing is that we our human resources are going to change we might have fewer staff members we might have more staff members our volunteers are maybe doing different things than they did in the past maybe your client services have changed maybe your fundraising has changed maybe you have become less reliant on special events your communications with your donors hopefully have gotten better and you've done more to communicate with your donors during this time because you know how important it is and your board has probably changed too during this time maybe it's grown maybe it's shrunk maybe it's become more active so think about how you can operate post coven 19. one thing is i i think everybody is convinced that we're going to have a much greater reliance on technology than we ever had before and technology can be our friend i know sometimes i have a feeling it's not my friend but in most cases i don't know how i would function without it and i think you probably can say the same thing there's also i think much more of a need to diversify your fundraising streams because of the fluctuating economy maybe you've always depended for example living close to las vegas a lot of non-profits here depended so much on the casino industry to support them well the casino industry first of all they were closed totally for about three months and then when they were reopened they had to spend a lot of money putting a plexiglas screens and temperature machines to take your temperature when you walk in and the capacity is limited so you've got to become more diverse in your funding stream so that you're not dependent on one grant or one company or one major donor to supply all your money there's going to be more opportunities for volunteers so take advantage of that and i think there's going to be more of an emphasis on strong communications and definitely more sensitivity to your client needs to really be able to deal with them and if you can't deal with them to make sure you have someone that you can refer them to and more flexibility for staff my son doesn't work in on property he actually works for the government but um he had a had always worked two days a week in the office and three days a week at home and then he got a new boss who said oh i don't believe in this working at home business you're all going to work in the office well a couple months after the new boss came covered followed and guess what they're all working at home five days a week now so i think he's realizing that he was wrong you know that you can get work done at home so definitely i think the more flexibility your staff members have they're better off they're going to be so i know that many of you are spending more time at home now than you ever did before and one of the things that i think is going to be important is how you use that your flexibility at time at home so this is a perfect time to train your staff board and volunteers take advantage of all the online learning that's out there there's so much out there some of it free some of it very expensive and maybe even you know encourage your staff to volunteer maybe not for your organization but i know many people in my community that are sewers i'm not a sower but i have a friend who made hundreds of masks calling shut-ins if they're retired nurses maybe giving vaccines your employees are going to feel better if they're doing something to help the situation so that's something that you can do is encourage your staff members to volunteer so that they don't get just so rammy being at home all day long that they go crazy and try to make sure that your staff are taking care of their health encourage them to get out of the house safely and eat properly get some exercise i know many of my friends say one of the greatest things about covet is they now have time to get outside and exercise and for a while the gyms were closed so everybody went out doors and did their exercising but these are some things that i think are always going to benefit us but they're becoming more we're becoming more aware of them during covet so one of the things i want to just briefly mention before we open it up to questions is when it comes to online learning some of you may know that i do a lot of online courses i have 14 courses actually and they're all approved for cfre credits if that's important to you but right now during covet 19 i've reduced the price some of them were anywhere from 199 dollars to 799 dollars but right now they're all 99 each so i would encourage you to visit my website and look at those if your staff does need some training in some specific areas and also you can sign up on my website for my newsletter which means you'll be invited to my free monthly online sessions i do a about a 30-minute webinar every month that's free of charge it's called learn with linda so with that um i want to open it up for questions but i think one thing that i think is important to remember is that even if the economy is uncertain i do believe it's important for us to face future with certainty and with some trust and i hope that your organization is going to be one of the ones who comes out of this thing stronger some of you may be a little bit weaker and hopefully none of you are going to be non-existent but if you just want to talk sometime if you have questions about you know what you might be able to do differently feel free to email me and i always answer all my emails if you have some questions i know we don't have a whole lot of time for q a but if you have questions that don't get answered today feel free to contact me by email and i will be sure to answer all your questions so steve i talked really fast but i think we still have some time for q a right oh yeah we could probably do two or three but thanks linda that was that was really awesome to hear from i was just nodding along my actually my neck kind of hurts because you were just saying things that not only did we see in our customer data right but also that i've just been hearing anecdotally i love what you said the volunteer thing i just feel bad you know these volunteers who have been coming on site you know may just be sitting around waiting for you to ask them to do something i love the phone-a-thon idea yeah um yeah letter writing there's all kinds of things they can do fundraising peer-to-peer yeah that may be worth the price of mission alone for this webinar so thank you linda i can't wait for session number 10. it'll be great okay here's a couple questions my buddy holly here was wondering if you think this is a good time to look at your strategic plan right it's kind of an uncertain time but also maybe an opportunity what do you think there i i'm kind of a toss-up yeah i i think it's an excellent time to look at your strategic plan because um certainly plans or guidelines are kind of like budgets and they don't always go according to plan if you have an existing plan it probably went a lot of it maybe went out the window in the last year but it's a good time to think about if it did go out the window why you know maybe we were too dependent on certain programs and we've had to change our programs and we weren't prepared to make that shift as as readily or in the fundraising arena maybe we were too dependent on special events and in-person things and we have to now think differently so i think this is an excellent time to look at your strategic plan i love it let's do it that that sounds like a super fun exercise i'm kind of a dork for me that doesn't sound fun to any other people i know i love it uh there's a couple of the good ones here um the phone-a-thon idea with the with perhaps volunteers or anyone else you you mentioned you know they they talk about your case for support can you unpack that a little bit because i think some folks maybe are hearing that case for support word and thinking oh that's a case statement is that different than case for support how deep should they go how would you prepare those people to talk about the organization that's a great question and um i actually happen to have a whole course on building your case for support that talks about what kind of there's a subtle nuance in the difference in terminology the case for support is kind of your overall organizational case of every reason why anybody should give to you but then from that you often develop separate case statements if you're having a capital campaign you'll have a case statement focusing on why you need a new building or renovate your building if you're trying to raise money through bequests your case statement might focus more on the future of your organization and building up a reserve which right now i think a lot of people are struggling with because the reason they're not in business any longer is they didn't have any reserve funds so building an endowment might be something that's important to you and you might want to develop a separate case statement for that if your case is for your annual giving it's usually more focused on your programs and that's probably what you're going to be using your phoneathon for so focus on what programs you offer and what different same reiki in the community and how people can be a part of that supporting but if you're interested in learning more about the case for support my course is called tell your story right build a compelling case for support so i think that's a real important tool in every non-profit's toolbox i thought you had a resource for that it's maybe one yeah i have resources for every pretty much everything if yeah if you want to take a trip to the the southwest london's got you covered there too not just fundraising maybe a good way to end it is you know we've been talking about the organization but this has been a hard year on on us personally and i'm a big believer in self-care any any stress-relieving tips is it as simple as setting boundaries going for a walk what do you think linda for many of my friends it's going out and walking i have a little pr i had a stroke and i have a little problem hiking and walking but one of the things that has helped me tremendously is i've i was doing yoga before coven but i actually benefited by finding an even better yoga instructor who does it online and it's it's called gentle yoga um it's mostly breathing and meditation and we do it's all sitting and laying down basically it's mostly um we don't do a lot of strenuous yoga but that has helped me focus my uh my energies a lot that's cool amazing when i'm done with yoga i feel more energetic even though i've been relaxing and meditating i feel more energized to go and of course for me writing because i've written so many books if you have any inkling that you'd like to be a writer you might want to think about this as a time to start i'm finishing up a book right now that i'm hoping to get out in the next couple weeks and then always there's always several books in my uh file that i'm working on but if you like to write this might be a good time even if you just want to don't want to write a book but just start journaling about your experiences um and another thing that believe it or not relaxes me is um i play words with friends on my phone all the time every night before i go to bed and every morning when i wake up i catch up on words with friends but my kids are scattered throughout the country and during when coveted started we began um zooming and we play games like pictionary online with my family and usu there for a while we were on every day now it's now that people are getting out a little bit more we've sort of tapered down to a couple times a week but just you know a phone call to a friend that's that you haven't seen for a while um i also i'm doing a lot of volunteer work for my church and that helps me kind of channel my thoughts into a different direction sometimes i'm not always thinking about work most of the time i'm thinking about work but but i those are things that i find helpful yoga you heard it here first essential oils too which help oh my wife does that too yeah she swears by it i i unfortunately lost my sense of smell during when i had my stroke but i still used the diffuser and use the oils because i i think even though it's not getting into my olfactory system the way it normally should it's probably still helpful so i do that well folks i do yoga also we actually do it through boomerang we have a we have a virtual instructor every wednesday morning if i can do yoga and linda can do yoga that there's no excuse and i i'll i'll vouch for it also i was i was skeptical but uh i've learned to love it too so dang this was fun we're a little over time but but linda this was this was awesome to have you thank you for always be willing being willing to to come on my my weird webinar series i really appreciate it wow i appreciate you and i appreciate all bloomerang is doing for the community and i hope all of you do i mean i don't know of anybody else that does weekly webinars community so i think that's a a great thing that bloomerang is doing for the community we love it well thank you it's uh it's a it's a it's good for me i mean i feel like i've gotten my cfre like 100 times over right now i i feel i feel bad that i've been able to listen to all these so but this is great and thanks to all of you for for hanging out i know it's probably a busy time of year it's always a good time of year right but i always say that but i appreciate seeing a full room but we're going to get the the slides recording all the good stuff to you so just be on the lookout for an email from me a little bit later on today um and hopefully we'll see you next week we got a great webinar coming up uh same time same place i'm gonna just flash that on my screen here real quick linda um my buddy sean hale is going to be joining us uh same time same place next thursday 3 p.m talk about how to create a strong back office so he's kind of a guru on accounting hr all that non-fun stuff you know that we got to do that's that's kind of necessary maybe it's fun for some of you that's cool too but um be there if you're an ed small shop eds this is the one for you he's gonna give you a good um kind of rubric on how to wrangle all those things so you can get back to fundraising and you know helping your beneficiaries so be there if you're free if not we're going to record it there's lots of other sessions on our webinar schedule so just check it out because we're here every thursday and i'll be talking to somebody so you can you can tune in to hear a great conversation so thanks for listening to this one hopefully we'll see you next week but have a good rest of your thursday have a good weekend stay safe stay healthy please we need you out there and hopefully we'll talk to you again soon bye now bye