Fall Fundraising Tips for Nonprofits 2026

Welcome everyone. All right, I'm so excited to get started. We have a jam-packed webinar. So, thank you for coming to nonprofit fall fundraising tips for 2026. My name is Lisa. I'm the senior marketing communications manager at Mighty Cause. Just a couple of housekeeping things before we begin. one, I will try my best throughout the webinar to uh keep track of any questions that come through within the chat, but uh there is a questions tool in your Zoom control panel. So, if you could utilize that to ask any questions, that's the easiest way for me to keep track throughout the webinar. Uh but this webinar is being recorded. So we will share a copy of the recording in a follow-up email as well as uh a copy of the slide deck as well in a follow-up email. So you don't have to worry about receiving that. We will be sending that out to you. If this is your first Mighty Cause webinar, welcome. If this is not your first Mighty Cause, welcome uh webinar. Welcome back. Uh for those of you that are new to Nmighty Cause, we've been in the nonprofit space since 2006. We're one of the largest technology providers for giving days across the country. Giving Days like Give Minnesota, Colorado Gives, North Texas Giving Day. Um and we are as well a free year-round fundraising platform. Uh we provide you the tools and resources that you need to fund raise years round such as embeddible donation forms for your website, a donor management system, peer-to-peer fundraising, integrations, reporting, etc. All right, so let's get into today's agenda. We're going to go over just general fall fundraising basics. Um how to start creating a fall fundraising campaign. um what you'll need to get started uh different fundraiser types on Mighty Cause because I'll be going through some examples of to give you guys some ideas. Um so it's good to know what are the different types of fundraising pages are on Mighty Cause. It will make it much more it makes more sense. And then we're going to go through fall communication as well as um just a checklist and as well as a general uh timeline that you can utilize. All right, so let's go through fall fundraising basics. So fall officially starts on September 22nd and it goes all the way until December 21st. And why is this so important to know? Um that is because December in particular is one of the biggest fund it is the biggest fundraising month of the year. Um, according to M&R Benchmarks report, 37% of annual giving happens in December and 4% of annual revenue comes from just the last day of the year. So, this is a really important time period because in particular fall, this is your leadup to end of year. Um, and it's also just an ample opportunity to start your communication and start uh the communication of what you want your donors to know about your nonprofit, what you've accomplished so far throughout the year. So, fall fundraising, it's your perfect opportunity to first gain new donors, donors that, you know, give more during this time of the year during um events like Giving Tuesday. It really attracts new donors to come um to participate and uh support an organization. You can utilize this opportunity to be creative and try something different that maybe you haven't um tried before. Utilizing as I mentioned um this opportunity to build momentum into your end of year as well as communication for your new year and to join the conversation. There are so many events that are happening throughout the fall. So, it's your opportunity to join your local community and foster relationships within your community as well. So, uh just an idea, you know, if Giving Tuesday is your big day, uh but you can utilize this runway for whatever fundraising day within fall to utilize. But, you know, you have right now, this could be your opportunity to start setting up your goals, mapping out your season, October, building out your pages. um building out your communication November, launching your campaign, utilizing Giving Tuesday, and as well as your year-end stretch. All right. So, um for before any fundraising campaign, um I always like to talk about writing down what your fundraising needs are. What are your goals? Because I think whenever you consider what type of fundraising strategy or fundraising campaign you want to uh utilize this year, you first want to think about, okay, well, at the end of the day, what are we trying to accomplish? So consider what are the outcomes and what is going to be most meaningful to your nonprofit. I would recommend looking back at your metrics from last year as well as so far what you've accomplished this year and what was your goal that you set up at the beginning of the year that you haven't yet accomplished that you want to accomplish by the end of the year. Um because that's going to make such an impact in terms of the type of strategy that you want to create and as well as your communication. So, how much funding is needed for your goals and and projects? Um, what are the gaps that you have? So, you want to make sure that your message reflects your unique mission, your impact, your community so that it can resonate with your donors. Um, and so I always advise this to do so before kind of designing your campaign is to figure out what is your core messaging. what is the message that you want to get across to donors about your organization? And that's where the goal is really helpful um that to come in. Um if you have a goal of, you know, at the end of the year, we really want to feed 500 families, but we're only at 200 families, that's a really great talking point to bring up and have that as a focus for your campaign. So, uh, in terms of storytelling for a fundraising campaign, um, I would really recommend to keep your story really simple and really easy for a donor to visualize and understand why they're giving to your nonprofit. Um, you want to I always say the golden rule is that donors should know their role in the outcome, right? what how are they helping your nonprofit and that's what they want to know when they come to a donation form is what's the impact that I'm making because at the end of the day that will also help incentivize larger giving. So you want to think about what is one clear problem. So what is the specific need that you're addressing this fall? Is there a story, a person, a a an event? Is there something that makes uh that concrete that really say says that story? What is the outcome? So what changes will happen when your goal is met? And as well as a simple ask, what are you asking them to do? So, uh, we don't have to do this right now, but as just a challenge, I want you to think about, um, just some questions to really ask yourself for your campaign. So, one, what is one specific program or need your nonprofit is gathering support for this fall? How does a single gift or an amount make an immediate difference? And what bigger outcome will donors help achieve by year's end? And I always, this is my rule of thumb. I always recommend how would you explain this to a child, right? Cuz the more concise, the shorter it is, the way it's more easier for a donor to really, again, as I mentioned, visualize and get that impact. Uh, yes, Margaret, the slides will be available in a follow-up email. So, we'll send that out. Okay, just a couple questions. Um, yes. Yeah, there. Yeah, the slide deck will be available. All right. And we'll talk a little bit more about communication at the end, but I think the having that messaging is really important and will inform what you're going to plan to do. All right. So, we're going to talk about some a couple of different fundraising campaigns on Mighty Cause. uh because I'll get into some examples of different nonprofits and what the t different type of fundraising campaigns that they've done on the platform. So the first type of fundraising campaign that we have or fundraising page that we have is just a general campaign fundraising page. Um, so this is a standalone page that a nonprofit can create and it can represent a specific program um or a specific campaign that you want uh direct attention for. So as you see in this example, this is a fundraising page for a fall fundraising drive. The language is and this campaign is for fall fundraising. the language within it is going to be about the impact that a nonprofit can make in the fall. Um, and this is just a dedicated page that nonprofit can create if they want to. So, we also h then have different peer-to-peer fundraising pages. And I'll talk about peer-to-peer in a little bit, but uh this would be a page that a supporter such as a board member, family, friends, anyone in your community could create that would represent themsel and they could share that with their friends and family uh and collect donations that way. And if you are looking to make a peer-to-peer campaign, something that's larger, you want group fundraising, uh we have two specific fundraising pages you can utilize, which is team fundraising. And team fundraising is where you can bring individual fundraising fundraisers together in a group page like as you see on the right hand side. and then an event fundraising page which brings teams and as well individuals together. And just to understand how that all can work together, this is an example of a readathon. So on the left hand side we have the event which is a readathon event. Then on the top right corner you see the team which is the kindergarten team. So this uh particular event they had teams for each grade within their school. And then within each grade, each student had their own fundraising page. Now, you can pick and choose what you want to utilize, but this is just an example of what is available to you, and you'll see how some nonprofits have utilized those pages on the platform. All right, so let's talk about fall fundraising ideas. All right, so how do you choose a strategy? You've thought about your goal. You have your messaging down. Um, some things you want to consider. So what is your capacity? So consider your team's size, your volunteer availability. Do you have the manpower to if you want to organize an event, do you have the ability to do that? If you're interested in peer-to-peer fundraising, do you have a couple of people in mind you think that would be interested in um participating in a peer-to-peer campaign? Knowing your audience. Um, you know, if you want to do an in-person event, do you have an older audience where you maybe need to consider where that's going to be located? Do you have a lot of families um that uh participate or um you know that you support in your community that maybe you want to involve them. So consider your audience and what would be most effective for uh your community. budget and resources, right? How realistic of a campaign can you do? If you want to, you know, provide t-shirts or etc., do you have the supplies and assets to be available um to um complete your strategy? And as well as a timeline, right? Given your team and your capacity, do you have the runway to be able to complete your fall campaign? So, uh, I talked about Giving Tuesday, um, a little bit. So, one thing I definitely want to, uh, kind of just spend a a second talking about is Giving Tuesday because it is such an important fundraising day in the year. And it's definitely something if you haven't participated in a Giving Tuesday campaign or you haven't done anything before, I highly encourage that you do that. Giving Tuesday is the biggest fundraising day in the year outside of the last day of the year. Um last year $4 billion was donated in the US on Giving Tuesday alone. Um so you want to be part of the conversation. Uh we have our own Giving Tuesday event that we run that you can register for free and you can be part of a giving Tuesday campaign and we provide different resources you can utilize for your Giving Tuesday campaign. Uh and just a note about our campaign, if you are a organization that participates in another giving event that might cause provides the technology for uh you don't have to worry about participating in ours. Just participate in the giving event that or giving Tuesday event that your the giving event that you are involved in um will facilitate. So what do you get when you register? So, as I mentioned, you'll get access to all of our tools and features, resources and trainings. We have dedicated trainings on Giving Tuesday. You'll have access to uh email templates, checklists, and as well as you'll be eligible for our Giving Tuesday prizes. Last year, we gave away $20,000 in prizes to nonp participating nonprofits. All right. So, that is one easy way to have a fall campaign and to do something within this these last couple of months within the year. But what else can you do? So, one, you can utilize a special date and awareness month within this time period. Why are these so effective? it is because it is a really easy talking point and communication point when you're talking to donors or reaching out to people in your community. So, here are a couple of examples of fall dates and awareness months that are happening within the fall. So, for example, we have National Hispanic Heritage Month, we have National Grandparents Day, World Literacy Day, we have Halloween, um Child Cancer Awareness Month, National uh Children's Month, National Hiking Day, Thanksgiving, right? We have all of these different awareness months and days that you can utilize um for your benefit. And just here's a couple of examples. So this is Homeware Trails um for World Spay Day in February. They ran a campaign um where they talked about the work that they do regarding spaying animals in their community and they uh were specific in that we have a lofty goal of raising $25,000 this year, which is only 25% of what we spend to bring our free spay and neuter services across Virginia. So, they're being really clear about their goal and they're also specifying, right, the work that they do and the goal and why they're they have that goal. Um, and then they outline as well in the screenshot to the right, uh, what they've accomplished. So, how many total cats that they've spayed, how many dogs that they've spayed. Um, so being really clear to their donors and transparent, here is the work we're doing. We want to continue doing that and here's how you can support us. And then the way they talk about this is using world spay day as a talking point. So this is the auto-inflammatory awareness month. Um uh the auditory inflammator audi autoinflammatory alliance ran a lighting ceremony in support of auto-inflammatory awareness month where they invited supporters to make a donation and as well as come together um and to light a candle or um one of those uh you know uh lighting um skylights that um to support uh you know the awareness month and again kind using that as a communication tool, as a way to bring people together for their cause. This is domestic uh violence uh awareness month. Women's advocates ran a campaign of dedicated fundraiser talking about domestic violence awareness month and their goal of $200,000 uh dollars. and they utilize videos to inspire giving and also raising awareness about this month. And this is the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault. They ran a sexual assault awareness month campaign for Denim Day. So Denim Day is an international day awareness for survivors of sexual violence. And so they invited people in their community to contribute $5 and wear jeans for uh on denim day. So, as you see, these are all nonprofits utilizing these awareness months and days to their benefit. Um, to really hone in on their cause. Um, and as I mentioned too, this is could be an opportunity to also reach out to local community groups in your area that are affiliated with these um, you know, your overall causes that your organization um, works towards. Awesome. So, just a couple of different examples to, you know, get your mind running of what you can do. So, National Grandparents Day, you could have a family uh friendly event at your nonprofit um where you can uh invite uh grandparents and their grandchildren and have activities. World Letterwriting Day, you can send out letters to supporters announcing the kickoff to your fundraising campaign. National Pumpkin Day. Plan a pumpkin carving or paint uh competition. Supporters can vote by making a donation and then designating their gift to the pumpkin of their choice. Halloween, you can have a fun run um or and invite families, pets to come along um for a costume parade. National Hiking Day. So, you can work with a local park, your local Department of Natural Resources, or a local farm um and organize a trail walk or a corn maze. Invite supporters to come together um especially if you're an environmental organization. Could be your opportunity again to raise awareness for your mission. Any questions so far? I just want to pause for a second. Um, if we accepted by mighty cause uh for Giving Tuesday, do we have to create a Giving Tuesday fundraising page or can you use your organization page? A great question. You can just use your organization page if you want to. You don't have to create a dedicated Giving Tuesday page if you don't want to. Uh, many nonprofits use their organization page um for Giving Tuesday as well. All right. So this can also be your opportunity to highlight a seasonal initiative that you have. So utilize this as an opportunity to talk about a program or a service that you really specifically need uh have need for within this time period. Um, this is your opportunity to kind of tell a story of the work that you're doing and the impact you're making. And by honing it in into a specific time period, you're creating that urgency for people to support your organization. Um, I always say this in in particular when talking about like helping visualize to donors how they're making an impact. You want to give them an experience as they're buying the impact that a donation will make. So, uh here are a couple examples. So, this was a PTA campaign. uh the um this PTA what they did was instead of inviting or asking kids to go doortodoor or have parents sell something um during the beginning of the school year, what they asked were for parents, friends, family, loved ones, teachers, etc. to go to this fundraising page and make a donation. And then they broke down for each goal the incentives. So, for $4,000, if they were able to raise $4,000, um the school would provide a treat for lunch from the from the principles. If they were able to reach the next goal, they would have extra recess. If they reached the highest goal, then they were going to slime the principles. So again create adding some motivation incentives um and bringing that back to a specific need which was uh in their campaign they talked about for the year they wanted to raise funds for field trip transportation expenses and classroom teacher support. This is another back tochool campaign. Um so this organization um similar in that they ran a dedicated campaign specifically for back to school to set up their organization um for for the year. And I I wanted to specifically outline because I think they did a really good job of again creating that visualization of if I make a donation now, what am I how am I supporting this organization? And so, as you see, help us uh help help us meet our goal of raising $100,000 by the end of the year. And then they broke down what each donation amount could do. $50 one day of a child's education, $100 uh translated materials for parent education event, etc. Okay. So, we're going to talk a little bit more about peer-to-peer fundraising because this is a very common uh fundraising strategy in particular during this time of the year. Um, so if you're not familiar with peer-to-peer fundraising, just a quick breakdown. Um, peer-to-peer fundraising is the idea of your supporters, your network of people in your community fundraising on behalf of your organization. So it is them asking their friends and family to make a donation to your organization. Why is this so powerful? So as you see in the graphic, it's powerful because it is an opportunity for you to receive donors that you would not have been able to receive a gift before. Um I've shared this story before. Actually, let me get to the next slide um before I share the story. But yes, as I mentioned, it expands your reach, right? Supporters are reaching out to their network of people that you don't have that connection with. So, as I' I've shared the story before, uh my sister had a very I had a actually just a friend from graduate school who started a nonprofit. And what she did is she sent an email out to her network of people, right? her previous classmates from graduate school, her friends, her family, and she wrote an email breaking down that she was starting a nonprofit and they were raising a certain amount of money and she broke down as I showed in examples before, what what amounts they needed to uh they were building a school in Kenya and exactly yeah, the donation amounts that were needed to help complete this project and start this nonprofit. And what she asked was in addition to making a gift was can you pass this on to five other people um that you know and my sister forwarded that over to me and I made a donation um because as she had everything broken down. She explained her story and mission and I knew exactly why I was giving my gift but I did not have that connection with her. My sister had that connection with her and she shared that with me. And so that is what peer-to-peer fundraising is do is expanding your network of new donors. It's also an opportunity for personal storytelling. So if you have program alumni or board members, etc., this is their opportunity to talk about why your nonprofit is really important or um why it really speaks to them. Maybe they have the story of why they are a board member or how they became an alumni of a program that you have or how they have been supported or why they're passionate about your cause. [snorts] And as well as community building, especially if you have if you created as an event um a competition or just something to bring people together can really strengthen um engagement with your nonprofit. So very commonly this can be seen in fundraons. Um and we've seen almighty cause endless amounts of type of thons. We've seen readathons, artathons, danceathons. Anything you can think of, we've seen it. Um, so this is just a way to kind of build excitement, make a a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign fun, and have yeah, a way for people to easily uh join in with uh with having it be an event. So, this is an example of a paddleathon um for the Ben Carlson Foundation. So every year uh the Ben Carlson Foundation has this Ben did go event where 110 participants endure a 30-mile paddle across the Catalina Channel. And participants are challenged to raise uh $1,500 uh to participate. And so each, as you see in this example here, each participant um has their own fundraising page that they can share with their friends and family. And the way that uh Ben Carlson Foundation made it easier for participants to do that was they set up a fundraiser template so that all of the information is prepopulated for the participant. They don't have to add a story or image, add a goal if they don't want to, but they have the ability to customize that if they would like. Uh so this was a burpee aathon raising for ALS. Um so they ran this burpee aathon. and they worked with a local gym um and had people participate and people could also join in live um or join in virtually as well to support the uh event. Uh so this is writing for Dylan and five burrows. Uh so I specifically le love this example because instead of creating an event, they utilize what's already happening in their community to raise funds for their organization. So they encourage people to join and participate in the New York City five burough bike tour. Um and anyone, it's not an event that they created or they had to organize, etc. They used an existing event but invited people in their community to come and participate and by participating to raise funds for their organization. So again, sometimes you don't even need to create a whole event. If you're interested in doing a peer-to-peer campaign and you want it to be something where people are actively involved, look at what's happening in your community and maybe there's a way for you can utilize what's already happening so that you don't have to organize an um an event yourself. Uh so speaking of events, that's definitely a way that you can bring people together, especially during this uh the fall time of the year. uh because it is a way to one get face-to-face interaction with your donors or with supporters. Obviously, when you have face-toface interaction, you're able to kind of share have a more emotional connection and share your story in a more deeper way. And if and I always recommend if you do want to host something in person to utilize the resources in your community. So, in addition to just what's happening in your um community, a public library, parks, local businesses, there are a lot of local businesses. I've I've volunteer for a lot of nonprofits. There are a lot of local businesses, you know, when they hear you're a nonprofit, they're willing to offer their space for either reduced rate or for free. um so that you can um you know you can host a a happy hour or just a meet and greet with your nonprofit. Of course, you can make it ticketed and you can have giving right there live in person. We'll talk about a little bit of how you can facilitate that. But this is also an opportunity to kind of get more stories, more video, um and more photos about your nonprofit and the people who support your nonprofit. Uh so this is the uh doors uh walk for Halloween walk for autism. So they held a walk for autism and fall fun day. So this was a family fun day where they had live music, bubble show, uh pumpkin painting. They welcomed costumes and they instructed people either that they could participate and fund raise or they could donate. And then they asked supporters to update or send videos and photos to their team at the event. Um, and this is the annual AIDS walk in Tucson. What they did was they incor incorporated a registration part of their fundraising campaign. Um, and I wanted to highlight this because on Mighty Cause we do have a direct integration with Eventbrite. if you do utilize if you are planning on utilizing or you utilize Eventbrite for your event so that if there's a ticketing process for the event that you want to host um you can integrate that directly with your peer-to-peer campaign and kind of manage it from one space. If you don't utilize Eventbrite because I know a lot of nonprofits they also don't utilize Eventbrite you don't have to set up the integration. you can still sell tickets or utilize whatever event system that you have and you would just direct people to go to the your event page to complete their peer-to-peer page. Another tool that you have access to on the platform is text to give. So, this is also a really helpful tool if you are planning on having a live event where you can create a keyword and donors can text the keyword and then a text will automatically populate for them uh or a text will be sent to them with a link to your fundraising page so that you don't have to have a computer station or a laptop. Um you can have just an easy sign with your keyword and the phone number that people can text. you can have that in addition to a QR code or or anything else that you have at your event. Uh so this is an example of another fundraising event. This was uh the Arts League in Philadelphia. They every year have an annual ice cream bowl um event. They are a local um arts organization. And so they offer offer community ceramics classes, art classes, and again something that they were able to do is combine what their mission and their cause is with a fun event was for a $20 purchase. Um for $20, you would get a gorgeous ceramic bowl that was made by some uh some of their students and as well you would get ice cream at the event. Um, and then they encouraged giving as well at their event. Um, just a couple of other fall ideas to get you thinking. Um, so bonfire and s'mores night. So you can invite people to come to uh, you know, your a local area to have you can invite live music, s'mores kit. You could charge an admission fee or just encourage giving if someone has donated that chili cook off, pie sampling, October happy, October Fest happy hour, haunted house, fall trivia night, October movie night, outdoor paint and sip, bowling tournament, Friendsgiving, turkey trot, that's very common you'll see in the fall, or pumpkin run where you can have people dress in costumes. um a leaf rake up, no shave, November. So, a lot of different things that you can um utilize or you can plan in the fall that is fall- centered. So, just within the vein of peer-to-peer fundraising, um one of again the way the benefits of peer-to-p peer fundraising is creating a contest or adding comp competition to it. And it can be something that's fun. It doesn't have to be so overtly competitive. Um but you can have a competition where you know each donation is a vote. Um and I will show you an example. Um so uh this was Yes. Um okay. Yeah. So, sorry, I wasn't sure if this was in the the right section or not. Um, but this is the Colorado Pet Pantry. They ran a community event that happens every year. Um, and so they invite anyone to join. There's no entrance fee, etc. to participate. Um, they offer suggested donation of $25 that will feed five hungry pets. Um, and for those that wanted to participate, they provided prizes such as um first and second prizes um for individual or group costumes um would receive um a ribbon and a treat um for their pets. So again, trying to encourage giving but have a fun event. And then this was uh the Toucan Rescue Ranch virtual arts contest. I love this campaign because I think it's such a good example of peer-to-peer fundraising but in a really different way. um they have an annual event where they invite their community to um submit artwork that represents their nonprofit. And um when they receive all the submitted artwork, uh they create a fundraising page where they highlight the artist as well as their artwork and the inspiration of their artwork, a quote from the artist, and then they invite people to donate. And each donation is one vote and then the artwork that receives the highest votes. Uh their artwork is then printed on a t t-shirt that is sold by the organization. And then the top three winners will each receive prizes such as a copy of the t-shirt, um a design, a certificate, um a shout out on social media, etc. But this is a form of peer-to-peer fundraising in that yes, individuals, they're not creating their own dedicated fundraising pages, but what they're doing is if my artwork is submitted there and I want people to go to donate and vote for my um artwork so it can be printed on a t-shirt and sold, I'm going to send that to my friends and family and ask them to donate and support this cause. So again, it's a I think a really interesting creative idea of how to incorporate peer-to-peer fundraising in a in a different way. So we have a lot of resources for specifically peer-to-peer fundraising. Um, and if you plan or interested in doing a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, um, we have a toolkit for participants that will help guide them on how to create their page and best practices. But I think overall for peer-to-peer fundraising, just a couple of tips. One, you want to recruit strategically. You want to recruit people that are actually going to participate. So maybe that's just your board members if you want to test it out. Um board members is a really common type of uh peer-to-peer fundraising campaign that we've seen. Um, you want to make sure that you are equipping them, um, that they feel that the process is easy and that you are empowering them by providing them resources or, you know, an email template that they don't even have to think of. They can just copy and paste and send that to their friends and family that you're keeping them engaged throughout your campaign and motivated and excited. and that you're easily being that you can easily track, you know, how your campaign is performing and also how your participants are performing. Um, do you need to help or uh provide support to a specific participant? Um, those fundraising pages that I talked about on mighty cause provide you tools to be able to do that. All right, I'm going to pause just about peer-to-peer fundraising. Um, what phone number do you use in text to give? There is a dedicated phone number for text to give. I don't have it memorized, but if you are on the platform, if you go to that section, the phone number will be listed there. I I don't have it um top of mind, but if you go to that section on your dashboard, it will be listed there. Um, what are the benefits of creating a specific fundraiser page for Giving Tuesday? Uh, easier tracking of success of that campaign. Yeah, pro really that's it. If you want to have um if you want to be really want to specifically and easily, especially in your donation reporting to see what are the donors that are just related to Giving Tuesday as opposed to year round. Um, you can you can do that. Sometimes the reason why people do specific fundraising pages for Giving Tuesday, as I mentioned, they're maybe talking about a really specific program and their organization page is a general kind of general fund page, but their Giving Tuesday p campaign is about a a dedic utilize your organization page. Um, and there's there is I would say that's for for giving Tuesday for our giving Tuesday event. That's probably the most common type of campaign page that people are using, which is their organization page. All right. So, what else for the fall fundraising you should consider um is matching grants. Um you want to consider uh seizing this opportunity to really encourage giving with a matching grant. For those of you that are not familiar with Imagine Grant, Imagine Grant is essentially it's really communication and marketing tool to incentivize giving. It is when someone in your community um a granter agrees to provide a match to your nonprofit um uh uh for example $5,000. And what you are telling your community is that um you know for every donation that they make for example that is matched and we could potentially receive a $5,000 donation if we raise $5,000. It acts as a buy one get one free and that is why it is so powerful for um to donors um because it incentivizes giving but especially if for a specific time period it adds that urgency to give to an organization. Um, so, uh, as you see on the right hand side, so $1 could mean $2 because matching gifts help not only boost giving, but help can increase your gift size as well. Maybe if I came in to give to your gift or give to your organization, I saw that, oh, uh, there is a match happening and my donation can go even further. Instead of giving $25, I might give $50 because I know my $50 will go a lot farther with a current match. And it's also a great talking point to utilize during a campaign um because again it creates that urgency and it also communicates that donors can make a larger impact. So as you see here on the right hand side um today only your donation doubled um want to double your donation help us raise 20k by the end of today and we unlock an all or nothing 20k matching grant. Don't miss your chance to double your match. So this can be a really powerful especially as we lead up to end of year again to kind of encourage giving during this time period in particular and of course an endofear campaign. Um donors tend to give on giving Tuesday in addition to end ofear giving. Um so how do you harness these opportunities? So, one, use your Giving Tuesday campaign or your fall campaign as a launch to your year-end campaign, your year-end communication. Um, or you can plan a completely separate campaign for year end. But this is why I think in the beginning I talked about looking at your metrics, looking at your talking points, and you know what what were the goals that you had in the beginning of the year, how how close are you to them to the end of the year? And this can be a thread that you can weave throughout the fall to the end of the year. So let's briefly talk about fall communication. So, you want to make sure that you are sending uh communication to the right group of people um and that you are also personalizing some of that communication because not all supporters are the same. You want to sort your um you want to sort your supporters into a couple of groups. Here are three groups that I've specifically highlighted. You want to consider speaking to them differently. Um, so here we have your active supporters. So, recent donors or volunteers. And maybe for these people, you're going to be talking about upgrading their relationship, inviting them to give monthly, increasing their gift. Maybe for some of them, you're going to send personalized emails and asking them to be a match granter. Um, for lapsed donors, so they haven't given a gift in 12 months. Maybe you want to lead with what's changed with your nonprofit. What's the impact that you've made that um they have helped create last year? And again, as we talked about, what are you then trying to reach by the end of the year? And making a warm ask that way. So then for new prospects or new leads, um, welcoming them and sharing your mission and inviting them to make a first gift feel easy and safe and sharing again just the impact that you're trying to make before the end of the year. And this could be something that you again ask your network to share along with their people. In your communication, you want to make sure that you are leading with impact and not just ask. I know I sound like a broken record, but I do think this is really important. Is that you want you don't want to tune donors out if they just see, oh, make a donation, right? Results speak more, impact speaks more. You want to talk about here's what your gift did. Meet someone you helped. Will you do it again? Um, you want to make it very powerful and not vague. And as well, you want to make sure that you are having a follow-up after a gift is made. A lot of the times, a lot of people put so much work into getting the gift and then they totally forget about the followup and then the engagement and holding on to that donor after a gift is made. But this is equally important. So, you want to make sure for your fall campaign that you are reporting on your results. Um, thanking donors for how much and reporting on how much you've raised, how how many people have supported you, etc. Sending a personal uh or making a personal call or sending a personal letter um with a non organization I volunteered for. What we did was we would for our giving Tuesday campaign, we would divide our donor list. We took every donor that donated over $50, took that list, divided it amongst a group of us and each person, we wrote hand letters to those individuals uh to thank them for their support. So we divided and conquered. Um so again, that's kind of at the beginning. Who in your network can you rely on or help support for your campaign? Something to consider is also a donor welcome journey. Do you have that enabled? A donor welcome journey is after a donation is made. What communication do they get from your nonprofit afterwards? What information do they receive about your nonprofit? We have a tool called um automated emails that you can enable and that will um provide uh enable an automatic welcome message that comes 48 hours after giving. All right, we're just coming to time so I want to make sure we get through everything. So here is a fundraising timeline, just a tenative timeline. Um if you want to think about end of year giving or with this works for any time period but of course you want to have your planning period. So set your goal set your segments your story building your pages launching them and then having that giving Tuesday push year end and then reporting and retaining your donors. So here is a brief checklist for you to follow for fall. So we have set one clear and specific goal, segment your donor list, build a mobile friendly donation form or add a donation form to your website if you don't have that. Um pick two or three fundraising tactics or strategies. Plan your email cadence. Lead with impact. Turn on um our automated emails and thank you. And make a plan for Giving Tuesday. All right. So, here is our list of resources if you in case you need it. Um, that will be included in slide deck, but just a couple of uh follow-up next steps. As I mentioned, we'll send a copy of this to your your email with a copy of the slide deck and the recording. If you want to learn about Mighty Cause, there will be a survey that pops up at the end. So, please let us know if you want to get in touch with us. Um, we're more than happy to also talk through any fall fundraising strategies. Um, if you're confused about, you know, what type of campaign you want to create on the platform, let us know and we can kind of guide you as to how best to utilize the platform and maximize your use on the platform. And if there are any other fundraising um, webinar ideas or webinar topics you want us to cover, please let us know. register for an upcoming webinar and of course follow us on social media because I love seeing everyone's um campaigns. So please tag us uh and follow us because if you tag us I will make sure that we repo repost your campaign um on our socials. All right, so I want to make sure that we have some time for questions. anything actually don't see additional questions. Okay. Well, if there were no other questions, I can give you guys five minutes back of your time. Um, I appreciate you joining. Um, thank I hope this was helpful and yeah, I hope you guys have a good rest of your day.