Bluegrass Gives 2026 Fundraising Strategy Webinar

we can get started. Lauren, do you want to kick us off? >> Sure. Hi everyone. I'm Lauren Parsons, VP of communications for Bluegrass Community Foundation. And I am thrilled to have Emily with Mighty Cause here today to lead a webinar for us that talks about all of the different tools and functions within the Mighty Cause platform that you can use to help um bolster your fundraising strategies for Bluegrass Gibbs. This year, we're on a new platform this year. We're new to Mighty Cause and I was just telling Emily, I think I'm going to be learning just as much as you all today. Um, we're going to get into peer-to-p peer fundraising, how to plug in matches and prizes and all that good stuff. So, um, just as a reminder, if you're not already registered for Bluegrass Gives, late registration is open through September 25th. So, um, this is a good preview into how to use the platform once you'll get signed up. And you can just go to bgs.org/register and it'll walk you through that process there. But I think I'm ready to kick it over to Emily to get started. >> Okay, awesome. So, like Lauren said, I'm the Giving Day program manager with Mighty Cause, and I really just want to welcome you all. I know this is a new platform, which can be a little overwhelming, but today we really wanted to do a deep dive on some really great fundraising uh features that we have on the platform and how you can use those for the giving day. Um, so a couple housekeeping things. First of all, um this webinar will be recorded and posted to the website by the end of this week. And I do want to plug our first webinar as well. If you weren't able to join us for that one, it is posted on the website and that goes over how to register um and like platform basics. So, I would encourage you to watch that if you haven't already, just so you're getting a holistic view of the platform because today we'll be doing a little bit of a deeper dive. Um, I also want to mention that if you have any questions, you can put those in the chat throughout. Um, I might be stopping a couple times to answer questions in there and Lauren will be helping monitor that. Um, but we will have some time at the very end, too. So, um, we'll get to your questions. Uh, try to do that when it makes sense and not throughout. Okay. So, let's jump into what we'll be covering today. So, in the webinar, we'll be reviewing key details about donations for the giving day. Um, a couple fundraising features as well as reporting and resources available to you all. So, we'll finish up with that Q&A at the end. Let's start off by talking about donation types. So, there are two donation types, online and offline. Let's start off with online. So, your organization supporters will be able to make gifts online through your organization page with a variety of payment methods and when you go to that donation form in the platform, which is again accessible when you're logged in and you go to checkout and donation form, you can see what all of those are, but we have them listed here. Um, so you can see the various different payment methods available such as credit card, Venmo, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, DAFF, or a payments. And I will mention that the Daffer IRA gifts uh do have a minimum of $10,000. And my last note about AC is just that if your organization gets any questions about payment security, Mighty Cause does use a third party um platform called Plaid, which prompts donors to sign in directly to their bank accounts for a to make sure that's as secure as possible. So now let's talk a little bit about offline because we have some nuances. So offline gifts are check or cash gifts and they are accepted but just with a couple stipulations that we want to make sure that you know. So offline gifts will show in your page totals um which I'll preview in a moment, but it'll show in your total dollars raised on your organization page and on the leaderboards, but they won't count for prizes. So um I do want to walk through how to enter an offline gift. Let me switch my screen. Okay, there we go. So, um we are now looking at one of our demo pages. And I'm just going to turn off my camera since I'm looking at a couple different monitors. Um so I'm not looking all over. But when you go to your organization page like this one, but this has all just um sample fake information, you can log in in the top right, click sign in, and my information is saved. So, it'll just push me right through. But once you're on the platform or the organization dashboard, so when you have administrative access, you can see this organization dashboard and you can go over to reports on the left, donations, and then go up to add offline donation in the top right. So, um, on this page you can see that there are a lot of fields that you could enter if you want to, but I do want to note that the only required fields are the donor first name, the amount of the donation, the date the donation was received, and then the source. Um, so the source just refers to uh like the type whether that be check, wire transfer or cash. Um, all of the other fields are optional. So if you want to enter those, which I would highly encourage you to do if you have the information, um, you can enter those here, but they're not required. And just so you know, offline donation, like unique donor account, is determined by the first name. Um, so it'll look at the first name, it'll look at the email if there is one, and determine if someone is a unique donor, so if they've given once or more than once, um, from those fields. Um, and then when you're finished, you can go down here, click complete donation, and as long as those gifts are entered between November 24th and December 15th, um, they will be good to go and count towards the giving day. I will also mention that um any gifts, any offline gifts specifically that are $1,000 or less will be automatically pushed through and reflected in your page total. But if they are $1,000 and more, um then they will have to be manually approved. So, you won't see those go through automatically and show on your page total. You'll have to give it a moment for the Bluegrass Gives team to um go in, manually approve those, make sure all of the information looks correct, and then uh let that go to your page total. Okay. So, I will navigate back to our PowerPoint slide deck. All right, there we go. Um, so quickly I'm just going to look if we have any questions about offline gifts. Oh, thank you for um defining DAFF, Lauren. So those are donor advised fund gifts. Um, okay. And we did get a question. My understanding that offline donations are not part of the matching options. Um I might need more clarification on that. Uh you do have the option to if you have a matching grant have offline donations count in that fulfillment sum. [snorts] So like if you are entering offline gifts um when you set up the matching grant you can check if you want it to include offline or not. Um, and then does our organization have to have an account with these platforms to accept payments? So, do we have to be able to accept Venmo regularly to accept Venmo through Mighty Cause? Yes. So, um, Mighty Cause just integrates with Venmo, but you would have to set up an account um yourself to actually accept uh through Venmo. Okay, let's keep going. But, the questions come in. All right. So now let's talk about different fundraising features on the platform. So we'll do a deeper dive on peer-to-peer fundraising, matching grants, and then pretty high level for opportunities and the contacts feature. So let's start off with peer-to-peer fundraising. So, as you may know, peer-to-peer fundraising is a technique where a nonprofit leverages existing supporters to bring in new supporters and donors by asking them to create a fundraiser page and share it out with their social network asking for donations. So if you have supporters like board members, loyal donors that have already advocated for your organization or volunteers, they would be a great target audience to start out with to ask to create a peer-to-peer fundraiser. So first, before we go into um how to create the peer-to-peer fundraiser, let's talk about the benefits of why your organization should at least think about integrating this with your um fundraising strategy this year. So, first, peer-to-peer fundraising can help with donor acquisition because a supporter spreading the word about your organization can rally new supporters for the organization. Um, if someone is sharing out social media posts with someone who has never even heard of your organization, it could be a great way for them to learn about you and if they um, you know, have similar values, they might start supporting. So, second, peer-to-p peer fundraising gives the fundraiser a great opportunity to learn how to advocate for your organization and better understand your work. Because I know a lot of times with nonprofits, you have board members and volunteers that have the best intentions of trying to talk about your organization, but you might have a very clear um communication piece or like slogan that you want them talking that you want them using to promote your organization. and they might kind of be going on a tangent. So, giving them that language, giving them the tools to um talk about your organization and align that with your branding can be really powerful. So, thirdly, peer-to-peer fundraising could also expand your organization's reach by finding more supporters. So, this might not just be financial supporters like donors, but also volunteers. And lastly, your organization could raise more funds with peer-to-peer fundraising, which is the goal. So, as many of you may know, uh, nonprofits typically have a very limited bandwidth. So, helping the fundraising team really is a huge help if you can get board members and volunteers and major donors to help reach more people and um, hopefully raise more funds. So, your supporters could create an individual page or a team page to help fund raise for your organization. So, the well, let's talk about the differences between these. So, individual peer-to-peer pages are created by one supporter to solicit donations from their network. And team pages are made up of multiple individual fundraiser pages, which helps encourage competition because they have a leaderboard on there. So, the leaderboard would show which peer-to-p peer fundraiser has raised the most um or which peer-to-p peer fundraiser has gotten gifts from the most unique donors. An example of um who might be good to create team pages would be maybe a football team or if you have um you know, you're raising money for a school and you have each grade level in the school create one individual peer-to-peer fundraiser. You could create a team for all of those so you can see the rankings and how they're all doing. You could also use a team page for your board members if each of them has an individual page and they're each raising money. Um you can have an overall team page to show the progress for all the board and lift everybody up lift everybody up with some friendly competition. Okay. So now let's walk through how to create a peer-to-peer fundraiser. So I'll switch screens again. Okay, there we go. So supporters can easily um create this peer-to-p peer fundraiser uh by going to your organization's website. So first we're going to go through what it looks like for someone in the public to create a peer-to-peer fundraiser and then we'll go into how you as an organization admin can help set them up for success. Okay. So, if I was someone in the public, for example, a board member and I went to your organization page, it would look something like this. And in the top right, you can click the fund raise button. Um, and then click whether you would like to do a fundraiser or a team. So, I'll do fundraiser for now. And then this automatically takes you to the fundraiser creation wizard. So, this is a feature that helps anyone from the public through the process of creating and publishing their fundraising page. So, if I click get started, um I can search for the cause. So, in this instance, I'll do our demo environment. So, Blackcat Society, and if I click on that organization, it's automatically linking the peer-to-peer fundraiser to your organization. So any funds raised through this fundraising page will go directly to your organization. So I'm going to click continue. And I do have the option to use a template provided by the organization. So this will of course only be useful if you have a template, which we'll go into next. Um but anyone from the public does have the option to uncclick this and um start from scratch if they would like to. But let's look at what it looks like from the public's perspective as far as templates go. Okay. So, they will have this little disclosure about um the preview and approval process for peer-to-peer fundraisers, which you can customize in your organization page. But I will exit out of that. And um this is what the template looks like. So this is something that your organization would have to create, but you would only have to create it once and then um everyone from the public could use it as a template. So we have the title up at the top. Um we have an image related to the organization. We have um progress to goal over here on the right as well as a story including what the mission of the organization is and any other key details. We also have any matches available down here at the bottom. So, um, if a board member, for instance, wanted to go in here and modify this at all, they have the option to do that, which the editing functionality is pretty much the same as the organization page, which I know most of you have already completed because you're already registered. But you can go up here, toggle the edit mode on, so it's blue up here in the top right. And then you can go in, click the pencil icons to make any edits. Um, for instance, for the title, you could go in and say, um, like Emily's support Black Cat Society on Big Giving Day fundraiser or something to that effect. And there is a character limit. So, I just went over that, so I won't be able to add it. But, if I did want to add that, I could click save um, and then it would be updated in real time. But, I'll just click cancel. Similarly, uh you can go through and click on any of the other pencil icons to make edits here. And down here, when you get to the story, you can click into the inline text editor and um just start typing. Just make sure you click the save button when you're finished. So, as we go through, we'll talk about matches in a little bit, but this is a key piece. if there are any matches at your platform level, um you are able to choose to integrate those with peer-to-peer matches. So that helps peer-to-peer uh fundraisers um raise more money because then they can tell their networks that um that their money will go further. And I see that Emily Metaf raised a hand. Um, we don't have the ability, well, we're not going to open it up to like people speaking um, in the audience today, but if you put your question in the chat, we will get to that. Um, the last thing I'll note for this story section, that's more of a paragraph section. Um, you can add links, you can add videos, you can add pictures, anything to uh spice up the peer-to-peer page. And when you as the organization admin are creating this as a template, um, you can also plug in here like what your mission is and the exact language that you would like peer-to-peer fundraisers to be using. Um, we found that other organizations have had a lot of success with adding brackets as well if you want the peer-to-peer fundraiser to modify it slightly. So, um, if we did do like bracket and and then name the peerto-peer fundraiser would hopefully see that and go in, enter their name, so it's a little more personalized. So, then it could be Emily's Black Cat Society fundraiser. Um, you can also do that down with the uh story section. So, if you wanted to put in brackets like add in a personal story or um like your favorite memory volunteering with the organization, something to that effect. That would be a really great way to um get them to personalize it a little bit, but also not have it be a huge lift. Okay. So now let's go back here. Might have to Okay. So this is at the organization level. So you as the organization admin have the ability to go here and it's popping up with some helpful hints, but I'll just exit out of that. Um, you can go here and go to fundraising tools and then campaigns to see any of the peer-to-peer fundraisers or team pages that have been created. So, um, you can see here that there is an approval process and this top one, Busby fundraising for Giving Day, uh, still needs to be approved. So, you can add in parameters if you would like, um, or you can have them automatically approved as well. But if you wanted to go in and um check on the peer-to-p peer pages, see what they look like or help someone who's struggling a little bit making those edits, you can do that by clicking on the three dots next to the peer-to-peer fundraiser that you'd like to edit and then you can go to campaign dashboard. So, this will take you to that specific peer-to-peer page. And like I just showed, you can go in and edit if someone is having trouble with that. Um or if for instance you add in brackets and um the peerto-peer fundraiser didn't see those or just hasn't updated that for whatever reason, you can go in and do that for them or um you can also message them whether that be via email um or whatever else works and ask them to make those updates. Um, okay. So, that's how you go in and manage the campaigns. How you as the organization admin would go in and add the fundraiser template would be to go to this organization dashboard like on the back end, go to fundraising tools and then fundraiser template. And I'm just going to close report so it's not um visual clutter. But as you can see, there are two fundraiser templates that are created, but only one can be shown at a time. So, if you remember to the beginning when I showed what someone from the public would see on your organization page when they click on that fundraise button in the top right, um that can only be linked out to one template. So, uh you have to pick which one you would like to be showing at any given moment. Um, this one, the top one, support Black Cat Society on Big Giving Day is starred. So, that's the one that's public right now. But I'll just note the use case for this. So, for instance, if you want to um make asks for peer-to-peer fundraisers to create their pages in batches, you could make one peer-to-peer fundraising template for volunteers and then send out an ask asking them like, "Hey, within this week period, can you please go in and make a peer-to-p peer fundraiser if you're interested?" So, at that point, you can have the volunteer peer-to-peer fundraising template live. And then the next week you could do the same thing with board members but have the fundraising template for board members be slightly different than the one for volunteers. Um, okay. So when you go in to create a new one though, you can go to this fundraising templates page and then click the create button in the top right. So this will take you through the prompts um of all the fields that we saw on that fundraising template page. So, you can go in um add a note describing like this is the volunteer peer-to-peer fundraising template for 2026. Um fundraiser title, which would be like brackets, name, um Black Cat Society fundraiser, fundraising goal. If you want to set a goal for your peer-to-peer fundraiser, say you want each of them to raise $100 or more, you could do that. You can also add in the image and video here as well as a short story. So, this would be a quick takeaway of the goals of the fundraiser and then that longer story down here at the bottom where you can add in text, images, um, videos, links, etc. So, once you're finished, just create the just click the create template button. Um, and then when you go back to fundraiser templates, it'll show up here. Okay. So, let's look in the chat if there are any questions specifically about peer-to-peer. >> Emily, there's one in the Q&A section. >> Oh, okay. >> Let me hop over there. >> Yeah. About if they can create um peer-to-peer pages like for their board members and then just share the link. Uh, >> yes. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked that. Okay, so um, we would recommend that you just create the peer-to-peer fundraising template and then have them create the page just to give them that sense of ownership so they can um, go in and edit it. But if you would like to create the peer-to-p peer fundraising page for someone, you can go in, let's say, um, you can create a new campaign up here at the top if you want to make a new one for them. I will just go into an existing one. So, I'll go back to this one, campaign dashboard. Um, and then when you go in to settings, you can go down to who owns this. Yeah, fundraising owner. So, under settings right now, Ashley Meyers mightycaus.com created this fundraiser, but if you want to switch that over to a board member, we like to think it's relatively simple. You can just enter their email, and then they'll have admin access specifically to this peer-to-peer fundraiser. So, enter their email, click save, and then they'll get an email invitation um to take care of that. Okay. And then there's another question. Do you know if the platform is accessible for people using a screen reader? Um, oh, I see Lauren, you're typing. So, we are trying to make the site as accessible as possible. Um, so we do use resources to scan the site and see that everything is visually um [clears throat] able to be accessed by people with accessibility issues. But yeah, I'll let Lauren continue answering that one and then I'll look in the chat. Okay, no worries, Emily, for raising your hand. I just wanted to make sure. Um, okay. Okay, so Kendra asked a great question. Is peerto-peer fundraising um are those pages used for fundraising throughout the rest of the year or just for the giving day? So, you can use them for both. Anyone can use them for both. The giving day platform will be open after the giving day. Um, if any peer-to-peer funds are raised after the giving day period, though, they just won't be counted towards your total on the organization page. But yes, we highly encourage you to um get your peer-to-p peer fundraisers to fundra year round. So, for instance, a good example of that could be if someone has a birthday and they don't want to receive any gifts, they want to instead fund raise on your organization's behalf, they could create a like Emily's birthday fundraiser for Black Cat Society or something like that to help raise funds year round. So, that's a really great question. Okay. Um, so now we're going to go into matching grants. And of course, if you have any other questions about peer-to-peer, we can come back to those. But this is our other um deep dive and then we'll do more high level with simpler features. All right. Okay. So, let's move on to matching grants. If you are not familiar, matching grants are donations that your organization secures independently and leverages as a tool to help fund raise and bring in more donors and donations throughout the event. Um, so your nonprofit would leverage that grant as an incentive to donate to your campaign. And you would market that match and create excitement. So, you would make sure that you're using clear language and um that your donors knew if there was a specific time period associated with that matching grant. Okay. So, um the matching grant feature is pretty in-depth. So, I want to give a highle overview of like pretty much all the benefits and um caveats to it. So, the Mighty Cause matching grant tool offers total flexibility on matching grant start and end times, which is really great. And you can even start a grant in the past. So, if you get $1,000, for instance, like at the very end of the day, you could plug that matching grant in for the beginning of the day to match all of the matching grant or sorry, match all of the donations during a period earlier in the day. or if you forget to enter a matching grant, you can do that after the fact. Okay, so in addition, you can also have unlimited simultaneous matching grants all happening at once, which is really fantastic. You have the ability to cue matching grants as well. So if you want to have um or if you have more than one matching grant, you could use this tool to have one grant automatically start when another is fulfilled. So rather than having simultaneous matches, you can have them go backtoback. So matching grants also integrate with peer-to-peer fundraisers like I mentioned a little bit ago. So you have the option to um match donations with your matching grant from the peer-to-peer pages. You have the option to turn that off as well. Um but I think it's used as a great incentive. So, I would encourage you to keep that peer-to-peer matching on. You also have the ability to edit or close matches when they're live. So, for whatever reason, if you need to close a match, um you can do so. There is also a downloadable report of your matching grants, which I'll show you when we go back into that demo page. Um so, we tried to make sure you have all the information necessary. Okay, so let's talk about um the three main steps for securing a match. So first, prospect matching grant funders if you don't already have them. So you do have the option to pull donations to create a larger matching grant. For example, if you have five board members to each that each donate $100, you can have a matching grant total of $500 to be a little more impactful. So, we know it can be really difficult to secure larger matching grants. Um, but you can get creative with it and we've seen success for matching grants as small as $200. So, um, every little bit counts. Some other potential matching grant funders could be current major donors, sponsors, or partners who have supported your organization before or as collectives such as uh affinity groups affiliated with your organization like a young professional board or volunteer affinity group. So once you've identified that matching grant funer, um you can then cultivate that relationship. So, make sure you're communicating with them and learning about their motivations because this could really impact how you advertise the matching grant and or the funer. For example, you should find out whether your grtor or grtors prefer to remain anonymous or to publicize their philanthropy because we have the option to um make that funer anonymous. So, after you research the prospect and cultivate that relationship, you then have to make the ask. So, we do encourage you to um go in with clear language about how matching grants really can encourage donors to make a larger gift because the donors would know that their dollars are going further. So, we'll get into that in a second, but okay. So, now we're going to go into how to set up that match. Let me switch screens. Okay, great. So, once you have the matching grant, you'll need to add it to Mighty Cause. So, right now we're on a peer-to-peer page, so I'll exit out of that. Once you're on the organization dashboard, you can go to fundraising tools and then matching grants over there on the left. Um, and as you can see, this organization has one live match and then a whole bunch of past matches. So that's what this would look like um once those are already entered and live. We also have a section for upcoming matches. So to go in and add a new one, you can go in here, click create in the top right. Um, and then you'll have to go through and um, enter in information for all of these fields. So let's first talk about the different types of matches. So a matching grant could be matching a percentage of each donation or a cumulative threshold match. So, a lot of matches are matching a percentage of each donation. I would say that that is the most common. For example, a onetoone match is where someone gives $5. Their donation is then matched by $5 in the matching grant for a total impact of $10. So, it just essentially doubles. Um, and with our tool, you can also do a variety of similar things. So you can have a 2:1 match, a 3:1 match or a percentage of each donation again, so smaller than one one. So our matching grant tool does the math for you, which is really nice as long as you enter it into here. So all you have to do is choose how you want to structure your match. And you can also apply a match when a certain number of donations have been received, which would be a cumulative threshold match. So, for instance, if there's a power hour available um for the most individual donations, you could say that if you get 100 donations within one hour and you have to designate the hour, you'll get an additional $1,000 for your organization with the matching grant. Um, so that's a really great way to try to leverage this matching grant tool to increase your chances of winning a prize, for instance. Um, and as a reminder, you can have multiple matching grants at the same time. So, if you know there's one prize that you really want to offer a matching grant for um, and then you also want to have a separate matching grant incentivizing something else, you can do that. So, while that might sound like a lot, the tool itself is pretty userfriendly and you have a lot of flexibility in how you structure your match. So, let's go through these fields. Um, so first you can name the match sponsor. And right here, the hide this name publicly is where you would click if the donor wants to remain anonymous. You would enter the match value. For instance, if this was $1,000, and I'll just put Emily as the matching grant sponsor. Um, and here include match and value match value and page metrics. Um, that just means that if it's checked, this $1,000, if the matching grant is fulfilled, will be reflected on your organization pages um most or dollars raised total. So, we'll talk about how matches are fulfilled to talk about if you need this box checked or not. You can also have an image advertising the matching grant, um, which could be really nice for promotional material or sharing it on social media. You can title the match. So, Emily's um thousand match. Or if you have a name for it, even better. But I'll just do something generic. It doesn't have to be fancy. You can also choose to cue this grant to begin immediately after another grant completes. So, that just means that if you have a $500 match that has been completely fulfilled, um this match will not start until that one's finished. So, as soon as that one closes, which is automatic, um, this one would automatically open. So, here is where you would click like which matching grant you would want this one to be queued up after. I'll just uncheck that for now. Um, you also have the option to just add a start and end date. So, you can customize this down to the minute. So again, an example or use case for this could be if there's a power hour and you want the match to be live specifically from, let's say, 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., you could add that in here. And then when you're advertising the match and telling your peer-to-peer fundraisers about the match, make sure that they're also communicating with their networks that this match will be live from 9 to 10:00 a.m. So down here in the set match type is where you would set if it was going to be a cumulative threshold match or matching a percentage of each donation. So, if you want a onetoone match where if someone donates $5 and that's matched with $5 for a total impact of $10, you would put the percentage at 100%. You can also choose to match up to a maximum dollar amount per donation. So, if your organization is super lucky and gets a ton of, you know, $500 gifts and you have a $2,000 um match, you could say that I only want the first, you know, $100 to be matched from this donation. So, then your match kind of spreads out for longer. But, um, ordinarily, I don't know that many people have this clicked. Okay. Okay, so the cumulative threshold match, just as a reminder, is when you have a match set up that in such a way that instead of matching a percentage uh like $5 with $5, you could say that you have to get your pool of donors to cumulatively raise $1,000 and then a $1,000 match will be released. So, um there are different strategies with that. For instance, if you know that your organization's donors are really motivated by getting to a goal, the cumulative threshold match might be better just because um with the other route, matching a percentage. If someone gives $5, then their donation would be matched by $5 and $10 would show up in the organization page total instead of just five. Um, so I know some organizations utilize that cumulative threshold match to further motivate their donors. Um, so they're not seeing the total kind of inflated. They only see the match entered when it's actually released. So you have the option to do that based on dollars raised or certain quantity of donations or number of unique donors. So, if you wanted um a cumulative threshold match to be released when you got 30 donations, no matter if one person gave 30 donations or it was 30 individuals, you could click that second option. You could also choose apply total match when a certain number of unique donors is reached. So, if you are really focused on trying to expand your organization's network this year, which a great way to do that is with peer-to-p peer fundraising, you could say that I want to get gifts from 100 unique donors. Um, and then $1,000 will be released. You could go that route to help encourage getting more unique donors. So instead of you know the total counting like one person donating 30 times, this would have to be all unique individuals. So the last thing we'll talk about with this is just that you can also set a minimum per the donation before it's matched. So um this will default like the minimum donation amount will default to what the bluegrass gives site minimum donation amount is. Um, but if you for instance noticed that last year during the giving day, um, like 90% of your donors were giving $10 gifts, then maybe you could make your minimum $15 to try to encourage them to donate just a little bit more to help their donation go further. That could be a use case. And then here, I know we got a question about that include donations in the match. Um, but I know Lauren commented as well that offline donations will not be included in the match. So, make sure to uncheck that. Um, and then include organization fundraisers in the match. You would have that checked if you want this match to apply to those peer-to-peer fundraisers. Now, this email section down here at the bottom um we'll talk about that in I think two slides, but that will be relevant to um one specific way that you can have your matching grant funer fulfill the match. So, once you're finished with this, you can create the match and then it will show up um on the matching grants page. So, if it's live, it'll be up here at the top. But you can also see queued up matches and make edits um as much as you want to. If you want to go in and make an edit to any of these matches, including the live one, you can go to these three dots on the far right, and click edit. So, this is also where you would go to download the donation report and download the summary report. Okay, so I know we're getting kind of close on time. Um, we've gone through most of this like the meat and potatoes, but we'll quickly talk about promoting your match and best practices for that. All right, here we go. So, one of the most important parts of ensuring that your matching grant is fulfilled is your marketing strategy. So, one helpful piece of marketing is that is already built into Mighty Cause. Um, it's the badge. So, when you have a matching grant live, there will be a little badge. As you can see in this top right picture over the donate button, there's a little square that says one matching grant live. Um, this is a really important piece to educate your supporters about what a matching grant is because not everyone's familiar and to make sure you're including um including that in your promotional material. So, every time you share out your organization's link, someone is going to be able to see that when you have a matching grant live. So, this is really important. Um, and as far as reporting goes, we went over where to see that. If you click the three dots in that matching grants um tab, you can see the reports available to you for the specific matches. So, Mighty Cause will also calculate how much of the match has been fulfilled in real time which will be reflected on the site. So, I know I scrolled over it, but there's this little box in the middle um which is the grant summary block. So, this will appear on your organization page as well as any peer-to-peer pages where this match can be applied. And it shows, you know, the name of the matching grant funer, that picture that you added if you did add one, as well as the goal and um how much money there is left to fulfill that matching grant. So, this could be really great to screenshot and then encourage your supporters to share out on social media or just to share out from your organization. Okay. So, the last thing I'll say about matching grants is just uh to say thank you um to your matching grant funer and make sure that they're staying informed and know how to fulfill their match. So, um a match ideally should never be fulfilled through that normal donation button on your website. Um there are workarounds to make that work if a matching grant funer is confused, but these are the two payment methods that we strongly encourage. So the first payment option is via check. So your organization could receive a check ahead of the giving day or the check could be promised to be delivered after the event. In this case, you would want to include the match value in page metrics because the money is not running through the platform. So in this instance, you also will not include the match as an offline gift because it's recorded in the matching grants dashboard. and adding uh adding on it's it would also be double counting if you did that. So the second payment method is by the fulfillment link. So once the match is completed, you can have a fulfillment link sent to your matching grant funer. Um so in that email box that I showed at the very bottom of setting up a match, I would recommend that you enter one of your staff members emails to that box. So then you get an email uh when that matching grant is fulfilled. So then you can reach out to the matching grant funer if they have not yet paid for their match and send them that fulfillment link. Um we'll have resources on the website just as a reminder for how to do all of this. Um but that means that the include match value box can remain checked. Okay. So, I will um just power through these last couple of things and then we'll have about 10 minutes for questions cuz I see there are a couple in the chat. So, first off, opportunities. Um these are um like volunteer opportunities or calendar events um that you can add into your organization page to help promote. So if you'd like supporters to register for your events, you can post them in opportunities um which is under fundraising tools and then opportunities. And then this also integrates with Eventbrite. So if you need folks to register for that event um you can tie it to Eventbrite and make that pretty seamless and get uh registration reports etc through there. Um okay so now moving on to context just really quick your organization also has access to the built-in mighty cause light CRM tool to man to help manage all of the people that have interacted with your organization. So these could be donors, fundraisers, volunteers, anyone who has interacted with your organization through Mighty Cause. So you can search for contacts with filters and organize contacts into groups by adding tags. And we've seen organizations use this for segmenting donors as well. Um, additionally, you can also communicate with your contacts directly through the platform by going to contacts on the left and then if you see someone that you would like to reach out to, um, you can click message. Okay, so the last feature that I'll just talk about and highly encourage you to take advantage of is the automated emails. So you can access this feature under fundraising tools and then automated emails on the lefth hand side of your organization dashboard. Right now we have three groups of target emails that will automatically be sent out um once you opt in and uh personalize these. So this includes peer-to-peer campaign creators. So, this email would be sent to anyone who creates a peer-to-peer fundraiser. Like, within the next day or so, they will be emailed a message welcoming them, giving them any additional instructions, potentially giving them like a suggested schedule of when they should post on social media, etc. The second email that you have um the option to add in is for new donors. So, when a new donor makes their first gift, um this could be used to welcome them and potentially ask them to sign up for your email newsletter. Um, whatever you think would be appropriate. And then lastly, our system will also send an email to donors who gave one year ago and have not yet given again. Um, so this could be really useful if your organization is bogged down with sending these emails because it's automatic. Okay, so last thing is reports. So moving on from the features, we also have a donations report which is found under reports and then donations. So this shows all of the gifts coming into your organization in real time and will be available year round. So you can use it um you can use filters uh to pull information specifically for time period um donation type etc. and then you can download this and see all of the information that comes in about donations. We also went over this in the first webinar. So if you have any questions, you can also refer back to that and we'll have more resources on the website. But when you're looking for information about donations, a good place to start is the donations report. Okay, the last thing we'll go over before resources is the retention report. So you have access to this retention report which measures how many people who donated to your organization in the past come back and donate again. So for many organizations reviewing your donor retention and calculating your donor retention can be really difficult and manual. So we try to make this as easy as possible. So this report will show you all stats um that you need for people who have not already given back to your organization and who have um and then you can download that report and use it to segment segment emails or communications. Okay. Now resources, you do have technical support resources at supportycaus.com via email. They're available 9 to5 um Eastern. And then there are also a lot of resources on the Bluegrass Gives website. So I would encourage you to look at that nonprofit toolkit. And mighty cause has resources as well at mightycaus.com/guide. Um so you have support and we're ready to help throughout the whole giving day planning and execution process. Okay. So let's jump into questions. We have about seven minutes, but it looks like there aren't too many. I'll start with a Q&A. Can the match be paid with a DAFF? Um Lauren, I know you were adding a couple um contingencies about the DAFF gifts. Would you be okay with the match being paid with a DAFF? Sure. I guess my only question is is that an option that's an option for that fulfillment link? >> Um, yes. >> Okay, then. Yeah. >> Okay. And then will there be a recording sent out to the nonprofit participants? This seems extremely different from previous years. Yes. So, the recording will be posted on the website and then I'm sure Lauren will forward that out as well. Um, and yeah, I encourage you to poke around the website. There are a lot of features, but focusing on the meat and potatoes, so your organization page, um, and then peer-to-peer fundraisers in this first year on the platform will probably be, you know, not overwhelming enough, but comprehensive enough for you to have a really great giving day strategy. Um, so I would encourage you to do a deep dive of those, get really comfortable, and then, you know, next year maybe add in another feature. Um, I would also encourage you to set up the automated emails though, just because that's kind of set it and forget it. Check it maybe every 6 months, but that can be, you know, helping with your fundraising strategy throughout the process. Okay, so now I'm going to jump into the chat. I'm going to grab water. >> [clears throat] >> Oh, the fulfillment link. Okay. Um, let me switch my screen and I'll show you where to find that. Okay. So, you can find the fulfillment link for any matching grant by going to fundraising tools, matching grants, and then you can click on the three dots and get that fulfillment link here. So, we do encourage you to get the buy organization link, but there's some information here to help you get through that process. And then here we go. So, matching dollars do show up in your totals um on your leaderboard and on your organization page, but they will not count towards prizes. Okay. And then my question regarding matches, is the sponsors that we have for grant matching the same as BGCF matches or is this one and the same? Um, so, uh, Bluegrass Gives may be having matches this year. Um, but you can also create matching grants for yourself as well. Um, so that was the whole process of going through how to secure the matching grant sponsor. Um, and how to set that up on the platform. But if you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to support too. They're more than happy to help. Um, okay. Just trying to see if there are any other questions. I think that's it because Lauren was answering some in the chat. Um, okay. If there are any other questions. Oh, I see one message in the Q&A and it looks like it was answered. All right. Well, thank you all for joining us. I know I threw a lot of information out at you. So, um, please do look for the follow-up email where, uh, the link to this recording is going to be shared, um, as well as the nonprofit toolkit on the Bluegrass Gibbs website. There's so much information on there. And we do have um resources broken down to whether you you know are in your first couple of years like entry level um for this giving day all the way to if you are you know very advanced in giving day planning and strategy we have resources. So make sure to check that out and um happy fundraising.