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hi everyone i'm holly mcfarland with east texas communities foundation i am the pr director here at the foundation and east texas giving day is my responsibility so i am going to hopefully get you guys caught up on understanding and how to participate in east texas giving day and the benefits of participating in east texas giving day so here we go east texas giving day is hosted by etc we were founded in 1989 and in those 30-plus years we've received about 170 million in contributions um we've granted over 108 million dollars in grants currently we are managing about 116 million in assets that's between about 388 charitable funds and of those 388 212 are permanently endowed which means that those funds will be around forever long after you and i are on this on this earth and um they will continue to help charities and nonprofits and the po and the people in our communities for um forever so it's pretty remarkable it's a very rewarding job that we have um we are a nonprofit corporation we are a 501c3 public charity just like you we serve both individuals and the nonprofit community and we cover 32 counties across east texas what we do at the foundation outside of running east texas giving day is we are a charitable fund administ administrator we have five different kind of fund types that we offer the public and to non-profits so the first is a donor advised funds donor advised funds are like a charitable checking account a donor comes with with an appreciated asset perhaps it's real estate or just you know bonds stocks something like that we convert that into charitable cash that goes into a fund and then the donor gets to make grant recommendations to non-profits that they would like to support we also at the foundation encourage our donor advised fund holders to make grants during east texas giving day we send them an invitation to participate with all of the non-profits that participate in the event and we kind of coach them along about how to support and all that and so donor advise funds are a key component to what we do here at the foundation nonprofit funds benefit a single charity they can we provide investment management we can help the nonprofit receive complex assets so like if someone wanted to give to you some real estate something like that we can help um facilitate those kind of gifts for your organization the nonprofit funds are something that we can definitely give you more information on if that is something you are interested in like a rainy day fund something like that just let me know and reach out and we will coordinate and get you the specifics on what that looks like scholarship funds are kind of self-explanatory i think just about all of us understand a scholarship fund so the way they work here at the foundation is so you have a student at your school and you want to create a scholarship that's great so you could go to the college or the university the junior college and you could set up a scholarship that is only going to benefit students going to that particular school or university when you create a scholarship here at the foundation that means that students from all over our service area can apply and that scholarship could go to um wherever the student is going to school for the most part some of them are specific but a lot of them are open and allow the student to pick the school of their choice to go to not singling down to just say like texas tech or a m or something like that so our scholarship funds have a lot of flexibility and it's a great way for families to memorialize a loved one or to focus on a specific field of study designated funds are like field of interest funds project funds uh sometimes they benefit a single charity or several so like say a donor wanted to give a percentage um like say you know 20 of their of their distribution to like five different charities so that would be a designated fund a field of interest would be um perhaps the donor wanted to focus on education or health or perhaps a geographical location the designated funds usually have a purpose or a specific task something that they are trying to accomplish and so those are specific type of funds unrestricted funds etc has a very small unrestricted fund and that is where the prize money comes from for east texas giving day some other communities foundations focus heavily on unrestricted funds etc not so much we kind of leave it up to the donor's discretion as to how they want to do their charitable giving but the unrestricted fund here at etc is specifically used at this point for prize money for east texas giving day we here at east texas communities foundation feel that philanthropy builds communities and changes lives etc supports philanthropy by offering simple ways for donors to achieve their charitable goals the way we go about doing that is we motivate and work with organizations to increase their philanthropy we communicate relevant messages about philanthropy so like back during giving tuesday we did a lot of heavy promotion about getting involved and supporting charities at the end of the year so we try to we try to promote throughout the year giving opportunities within the community and one of those is that we provide this online platform of east texas giving day.org so giving day it is a regional online giving campaign all of the activity for the event takes place at easttexasgivingday.org it allows anyone to become a philanthropist it builds community between non-profits donors board volunteers and media all of those different audiences work together on east texas giving day to build awareness and promote so there's a lot of a lot of pieces involved it builds awareness of needs within your communities or within the region and it grows on pat nonprofit capacity through education and complementary trainings that is one of the things that makes east texas giving day a success is all of the trainings and support materials that we provide to the nonprofit community so um for those of you who don't know the history east texas giving day was initiated in 2016. um over the course of the following years up to 2020 the event has grown substantially and doubled in size at times in 2020 we raised 2.2 million dollars um over 5700 you know give or take gifts so from our humble beginnings of a little less than a half million in 2016 we have we have definitely grown the event it was a 59 increase over the previous year which we thought was a stellar event then as well what was exciting in 2020 is the event happened um at the start of the pandemic and so it has shown the the public willingness to be supportive of our non-profit community when they know that times are tough um so it was just such a great showing of generosity across our whole region okay so what you can expect from east texas giving day it is an exciting and unifying community event everyone can participate and it can make everyone have a feel good for the day it is an opportunity to engage your base and to attract new donors so what we're going to help hopefully coach you on how to do is how to expand your circle of influence it is a way to convert existing donors to using online platforms so you may have been using a lot of mail outs and things like that in order to get contributions back in your door but a easier and cheaper conversion tool could be an online donation platform so this can help move some people into that that um that haven't traditionally participated in online giving however east texas giving day is not a quick fundraising fix it is not a magic bullet if you are in crises this may not be the best event for you um east texas giving day takes a lot of effort it is not just to pay and play you have to actually put some work into it so it is not a magic bullet it is not something that requires little or no marketing attention you have to invest some time and energy into the event for it to be successful and it is not a social media strategy of itself so what that means is do not create a social media page and only promote your organization for the month of april you really need to be on social media year round promoting your cause and raising awareness and getting those followers so hopefully we can get you up to par on some new skills related to that through east texas giving day but um that's just a little bit about what the event does okay some things you need to know we do charge a registration fee for all nonprofit participants we use the registration fees to buy advertising across the 32 county service area um a lot of it is overlap a lot of the main media outlets here in east texas are here in tyler and they service longview lufkin uh nacogdoches all the other communities in between but we also buy ads in um the texarkana area we buy ads out of shreveport so they overlap into longview we do lots of cross marketing and heavy heavy social media buys so that all comes out of the registration fees that the nonprofits pay nonprofits are encouraged to promote their involvement in east texas giving day on social media through newsletters all of the multimedia channels that you have we encourage you to promote your involvement while east texas communities foundation does the global umbrella marketing of the event but you need to promote why why giving to you is important and we encourage you to take advantage of these free trainings the trainings that we offer um aren't limited to what you can do for your east texas giving day the trainings that we offer can translate to other events and other marketing attempts that you do within your organization throughout the year okay so participating in east texas giving day is an opportunity for you to engage your donors your volunteers your staff and your board if you've if you are like most nonprofits trying to figure out how to get more engagement how to bring more people in and get them invested in your mission east texas giving day is a potential for that it combines the power of storytelling with technology to promote your mission so we hopefully along the way will teach you guys how to get your message out in a concise manner so that you can raise awareness about what you're doing and the impact that your organization is having in your community it celebrates donors and non-profits in in our entire region as we come together so that's kind of one of the fun side effects of east texas giving day is even though you're here in tyler you get to hear about what's going on in texarkana or in longview or whatever it and you could be in any of these other communities and vice versa find out about a non-profit in say lufkin so it's a um it's an exciting opportunity for us to see that even though we are in different regions we still are experiencing the same things and it's a low cost point to attract new donors so the hundred dollar investment to register to participate in east texas giving day is um relatively small versus if you were doing a large mail out campaign um that hundred dollars can return you a significant amount of contributors um if you if you follow the regiment so to speak and another thing is because it's a timed event it creates a sense of urgency for donors to give now east texas giving day happens on a singular day april 27th from 6 a.m to midnight so during that time frame those 18 hours through the promotion it creates a sense of urgency where the community feels like this is the day they have to give in order to be a part of this movement all right so some pros to participating is that we provide trainings these webinars will teach you the skills that you need to have a successful event you will gain exposure the community will become aware of things that are going on and what it is that you do you will also increase your support the community will learn about what your mission does and hopefully financially support your work you can also engage the platform allows donors volunteers board and staff to all participate and celebrate the work that you do but with every good there's a bad so here you go it has a cost east texas giving day has a registration fee of 100 or 125 depending on if you register late that investment um could also have there's other costs related to giving day that your organization may incur which could be if you do a mailing or if you host an event if you purchase social media buys those kind of things so there is a financial commitment to the event it does take time your staff will need to invest effort to create an event to have a successful giving day there is a funding delay so while all the gifts come through the site on april 27th it takes our staff some time to process and work with any disputes that might come along post event and get those checks and ach distributions back out to you guys and we allow ourselves six to eight weeks for that so it's not an immediate turnaround to get the money back out of the system we do work very hard to get the money out quickly i promise you we want it back to you guys as soon as possible there just are some restrictions that we have to make sure that there are no donor complaints but you know no donor credit card issues and those kind of things before we can make those checks distributions go back out to you guys and frankly there's no guarantees there are no guarantees on east texas giving day that someone will find your charity and support you um this is you know that's not what we want and it's not how we expect it to work last year in 2020 every participating nonprofit received some form of uh contribution but i have no guarantee that will happen every year all right so mark your calendar east texas giving day is tuesday april 27th from 6 a.m to midnight donors have some search tools where they can narrow down what they're looking for they can find you by name city zip there are advanced tools such as sorting you by their county by your category or if you have matching funds this year we added critical needs messaging so in 2020 with covet when it first introduced itself to the communities we uh entered we we added this field the search field of critical needs where last year was called covet 19 i think immediate needs where the nonprofit could enter in exactly what was going on with their organization in relationship to covet well this year we've just converted that box into just basic uh generalized critical needs so if you're a food bank and your freezer goes out then this is where you would want to put that information so that the donors can figure out in you know instantly what is going on and how their gift could impact your agency right now we added this year volunteer opportunities i'll talk a little bit more about that a little bit we added peer fundraising so that's whenever someone could do a campaign to benefit your organization we've increased our cyber security this year and we've opened early giving a little earlier than normal and it will start on april 5th which means that the public can start supporting your agencies with contributions as early as april 5th we know that the public well people in general want instant gratification so they will hear all of the talking and all the buzz about east texas giving day and they'll want to start giving early and the way that we have have decided to implement that is to open up the site a little early so that donations can start coming in okay so in order to participate in east texas giving day you must be a 501c3 in good standing you must be located in or primarily serve one of the 32 counties in east texas etc service area there's a registration fee that must be placed you can pay that by credit card or e-check at the time of registration if you register prior to march 1st registration is a hundred dollars if you drag your feet you have until march 31st but you have to pay a penalty and that's 125 dollars so early registration is what i would encourage you to do so you could be a good steward of the funds that you already have at your organization but i understand that sometimes you just can't make up your mind and that's okay but there is a slight increase in the fee if you register before march 1st you have the 100 registration fee and your organization will be placed in a hopper um we will do four drawings to receive a 250 prize and that's the date that i will do it on march 3rd we will send those checks out to you as soon as i mean as early as we can they will go out and that can go into your unrestricted it's not limited to just be used towards your east texas giving day campaign even though i encourage you to do that but that 250 is just unrestricted funds that can go to your organization to help meet the needs of what you're doing we do have east texas giving day swag you can order t-shirts or masks through our online store those can be ordered online and they are shipped directly to your organization so you could outfit the crew you can outfit your staff or your board and there's a variety of different um sizes that you can pick from but all of that is online through a portal and there's the link to it i'll make sure you get that whenever we post all of this onto our resources page all right there is a process to registration you go to easttexasgivingday.org click the red registration button it will ask you a simple question yes or no have you and your organization participated in the past if you have not you would select no this is our first east texas giving day it will push you into the second screen where this is the inquiry form you we just need a few items to verify to make sure you meet the criteria to participate your ein website your contact name city state that that kind of stuff you will be notified by email if you are approved to participate and that email will take you to a link where you can create your password to get logged into your profile that email looks like this you will click that blue button that says create my password where you'll take to a screen that you put in your email address and you create your password tips and tricks on that as it has to be uppercase one lowercase a number and a special character once you set your password you will be taken to a block that looks like this you click open and you're in your dashboard once you're in your dashboard you will see that the announcements are on the left this is where you can register to participate in our remind which is a texting service that we use i only use it in case of emergency for east texas giving day but i do appreciate those that register for it because in case there is something that i need to let everyone know instantly texting of course as you know is the fastest way of communicating there is a video on best practices for completing your profile i encourage you to watch that and on the right the little blue and green bubbles are milestones and deadlines you can click on any of those dates and if it's a if it's a webinar it will launch you to the rsvp page where you can sign up and become a part of that webinar you can also the link to order t-shirts and mask is also on that announcements dashboard whenever you log in and you pay your registration all non-profits must update their profile before submitting so both new and old pro uh nonprofits that are new to the event or returning have to update your ceo name um you have to if you have match money there's certain fields that you have to go in before you can submit that video is going to walk you through those steps and it's going to be very helpful in understanding what is required on the back end of your profile you should also plan to update your information in one setting so unfortunately once you open up to work on your profile it doesn't have a a save as you go type feature it when you get to the bottom there's a save button and so um sometimes i understand that you may get you know a phone call and you can't finish the task that you're doing and if that's the case i encourage you to um put in uh like like placeholder letters there so you could put like zero zero zero for a phone number or email at email.com something like that in order to fill in the um required fields but just know that you could have to come back and and put in the correct data before it all goes live and so once finished you can submit for approval that's how your that's how your profile goes live for east texas giving day and the public can see it but you have until april 21st to go back into your profile and update content as you see fit so um let's say you uh had a new photo that you wanted to upload into the platform well you have until april 21st to log back in and upload that video or photo onto your profile um you may not have an urgent need in the beginning uh when you complete your registration so let's say in february you don't have an urgent need but you are that food bank and your freezer goes out in early april well you have until april 21st to communicate those urgent needs in your profile so that's a much longer window than what we've offered in the past but i think it's beneficial to you guys because with this year of covid we just aren't ever 100 sure what our current and urgent needs are going to be so whenever that we're doing donations all donations that you promote um all your communications that you promote about contributing to east texas giving day all donations must go through east texas giving day.org for them to count for the for this event the leaderboards will track in real time the organizations the number of gifts the dollars raised your match money everything but all that happens through the mechanics of east texas giving day.org and the gamification of the site the event website is pci level 1 secure so your donor's information is safe the smallest donation amount that can be given on the platform is 10 but there is no max gift acknowledgements the tax receipts are sent by email moments after the gift is made so it takes part of the um admin off of it your staff doesn't have to send the tax receipts you are encouraged to send thank you notes but we'll get to that under under donor stewardship and charities can view your donors live in real time during the event through an excel spreadsheet that you can log back into your profile and you'll be able to look at the donors that have given to your organization immediately during the event and again you will receive your contributions and any prize money that you receive from east texas giving day within six to eight weeks we hope to do that by ach but you don't have to participate in ach if you want a paper check that's fine and on your profile you would just complete the mailing information so that we can mail that to you this is an online event which means credit cards are involved and credit cards charge fees no matter what the fee at checkout is 5.26 that is made up of 3 percent for our giving day vendor and two point two percent to six percent that goes to the credit card company east texas communities foundation does not make anything off of this event this is part of our mission to increase philanthropy within our service area giving day is our is our mechanism for making that happen now at checkout the donation page will say would you like to cover the fees for your nonprofit the majority of donors do 92 of donors covered the fees in 2020. i think the lowest that we've ever seen that is like 87 percent but the majority of donors know that it costs money to do these kind of events and they will cover the fees on your behalf um so just know that going forward um so we can talk more about fees if you're concerned about those uh you're welcome to reach out to our office and i will walk you through them but anytime you have an online event there's going to be credit cards and credit cards charge okay so what the public sees is your non-profit landing page so whenever you're on the back end and you're updating your profile it's going to populate on these fields on the front for the public to learn about you again donors can search for you by name city zip um county category matching tool matching funds all that your non-profit profile page has four tabs of data you will have overview programs events and there will be another one there this year for volunteer opportunities you will um have information about your mission your website your social media links your contact information your email all of that is also on the pla on that profile page you can add videos you can add pictures the youtube link is all that it supports i'm sorry for that we can't use like vivo or some of those other sites that have video capability it is a youtube youtube link only so on the back end whenever you are completing your volunteer opportunity it's going to have some simple questions that you have to complete but then this is a great opportunity for you to engage potential donors and let them know what type of skills that they might have that would lend to the mission and the work that you do so if you need someone to come in if you're running a preschool and you you need someone to come in on monday mornings and read uh stories to the children then you would you would want to put that in here if you need someone to come and sort and bag beans if you're a food bank then you would want to put those kind of opportunities in here whatever it is that your organization has that is an opportunity for the public to be involved that's what these volunteer opportunities are and you have until april 21st to add them and if you don't have opportunities in your organization that's fine too we want giving day to not just be about uh financial although that is very important we want it to also be about building those relationships and developing community across about helping the non-profits so on checkout the donor can indicate if they would like to know more about volunteer opportunities at your organization there's a button at the bottom that says yes or no on your donation form if you do not have volunteer opportunities at the whenever you're filling out your profile un unclick the little box by donation form questions most of you do have or have volunteer opportunities but if you don't then you need to unclick that that way this volunteer interest won't populate on the um checkout for the non-pro for the donor okay so throughout the event if you have questions and you want immediate answers we have a help box that's already been turned on on the bottom of every screen throughout nonprofit registration it says help in the bottom right hand corner if you select it then you can fill in all these questions and it will we will have an email response back to you about how to resolve your issue this is not a live chat at this point it is through email only but on giving day this does become a live chat so that we can assist donors or non-profits that are having issues but the chat bot has has lended itself and become very helpful in resolving issues uh for for both the donor and the nonprofit early giving we will turn on the site to accept donations starting on april 5th donations are processed immediately and you will be notified that that donation has been made to your organization via email donors do not have to create an account in order to give and you can start thanking donors as soon as those early advanced gifts come again that's part of your donor stewardship plan and we will have a training on that as well but you are encouraged to start sending out thanks to those folks as soon as those gifts come in the donor stewardship training will be on april 15th from two to three it's a webinar and we will try to share some best practices on working with your donors that give throughout the event peer peer fundraising is new this year it's a way to involve your most rabid fans into your fundraising donors can create a page in minutes all peer-to-peer are automatically approved so there's no admin worries on the path of your nonprofit however you can review and if you don't like something that's been put up you can easily turn it off and then do some outreach to that that person that created it and talked to them about what uh why you you turned off their fundraising page um nonprofits and peer-to-peer creators will get emails as soon as contributions are made to their made through their landing page through their peer-to-peer page we will have a webinar on march 2nd explaining peer-to-peer and how it could benefit your organization prizes happen as part of giving day we will have a we will release the prize list on march 30th they range in amounts from 250 up and it is a way that you could strategically plan on when to invite folks to give to your organization because then they could increase the amount that you went that you receive by helping you win these extra prizes there will be a prize webinar on march 30th at 2 p.m all of these webinars that we talk about are recorded and will be available for you to review matching funds in 2020 80 charities had matching funds that combined to raise over a million dollars non-profits that had a match did 153 percent better than those that didn't a match can come from donor or donors boards or a corporate partner or business partner that you already have we will have a training on wednesday february 16th to try to coach you on how to do a matching fund and how it could benefit your organization on the site the matching funds go dollar for dollar for contributions that come into the site it's it's a really great marketing strategy and i encourage you all to participate in the matching webinar to learn about how to incorporate that into your plan um as part of your donor stewardship on as soon as those gifts start coming in on um april 5th you can log in and you would have access to a report that looks similar to what you see on your screen it's going to say the name of the donor if it was in honor of or in memory of if they opted to cover the fees their address their email the amount the transaction time volunteer opportunities it has a lot of data this is to me one of the key reasons to participate in giving day so that you can always and increase your data content on that donor like i said it exports as an excel file so that you can import it into your crm or import those data fields into your crm the tax letters are sent automatically when these contributions came in but you are encouraged to send thank you notes so again that donor stewardship webinar is april 15th we will share a lot of insight and best practices and things that we have seen over the years that have inspired donors to participate so the benefits of participating in east texas giving day you're capitalizing on a moment in time it's 18 hours full of energy and momentum um that help highlight causes and non-profits within our community you can reach a broad range of donors again you're increasing your circle of influence you um hope that you know donor a shares that they participated in this event which reaches their 250 friends on social media which if one of them gives and it increases that you're just constantly like a ripple in the water increasing your circle of influence it levels the playing field so it doesn't matter your budget size or your staff size everyone pays the same registration fee everyone has the same opportunity to the webinars and information that we provide i promote everyone equally whenever we do the marketing for the event when etc buys the advertising i am promoting the event as a whole it's up to your organization to promote why you should be the one receiving gifts but the event does not limit your ability because of your size and again you get that data list on your donors and so that is just crucial to having a successful year-round annual campaign east texas communities foundation wants to help promote the event so we do buy yard signs we give those out to participants normally that would have happened on the kickoff web seminar but because of covid we've done everything remotely this year we will distribute signs sometime in march and once i get some re you know the majority of the registrations in i'll kind of know uh the communities that i need to focus on and how many signs i can take to each of those communities i'll probably do it as a drive-through event so watch for emails that will explain you know the time and the place and locations of when we will do these signed drop-offs i will try to make sure that each non-profit participant gets one to two signs these signs are a great marketing collateral piece you can take them into your board meeting and have board members take photos with them you could take it in front of community partners that you have with like local banks or whoever your local partners are and have photos with the signs in front of their location they're just a great branding piece and can be very useful in the marketing of the event there's a handbook that's a pdf it's available on the website now that you can go download it has trainings tips tricks checklists email donor templates so you don't even have to invent the wheel we've done all that for you you can just cut and paste that into a document and add in your own relevant information about your organization it has social media tips and a mock calendar and all of that is available for you so now it is up to you to decide if it is a good fit for your organization if you think it is get your board and leadership on board in order to commit to the event you must register by march 31st at easttexasgivingday.org you then should create your strategy and again you can refer back to the handbook for tips and tricks on how to do that if you hold an event and it could be a virtual event please notify me here at etc so that i can make the media in the area aware of it when we get closer to giving day the media reaches out and wants to know what's going on and what visuals that they can get examples of so if you do decide to host something whether it's in person or virtually please just let me know promote promote and promote again the key to east texas giving day success is all the voices coming together and talking about um giving through this particular medium it is what will drive people to the site promote promote promote and go ahead and like east tcf on facebook if you haven't already we also have a twitter account that way you can just share content that we put out the closer we get up as we ramp up for giving day i will be putting content throughout the days on the website or on the facebook social media page and then you can just click and share it and that will help like i said increase the circle of influence where we can raise awareness about the event upcoming webinars all of these can be registered by going to etc.org giving day events and that is a link down here that you could actually click and have access to those uh trainings why you should attend the trainings because those that attended last year one or more did 25 better than non-profits that didn't attend to training at all so if you come along with us listen to our best practices and implement within your campaign some of the tools and tricks that we tell you you should have a successful event we want you guys to be successful fundraisers and we try to provide you with the best the best tools to make that happen here is a list of important dates about the event again east texas giving day is april 27 2021. um so this video recording will be available on the website uh go to easttexasgivingday.org click the about tab and there will be a little tab that comes down that says nonprofit resources there you will have access to logos for the event the video recordings and slide decks from all of our webinars the east texas giving day handbook and you can register for future trainings and all of that is available at easttexasgivingday.org so if you have questions please email me i am here to help you and i will do my best to respond as fast as i possibly can i am so appreciative of you looking into this webinar today to find out um how you can be a part of this event we look forward to working with you in the future and we hope you have a blessed day thanks