Post-Turning Point 2010

Questions & Answers

Session 1 | 5 Tools or Success: How to Turbo-Charge Your PledgeBased Fundraising Events9:15 - 10:00AM

Q. How do you nd, identiy, and recruit the ‘right’ team captains to lead the way? They seemundamental to the success o any peer to peer event.

A. This is a really great question. The answer is three-old:1. Make sure you have a ‘welcome’ strategy in place or all registrants. This is more than the automated replywhen you register or the event. There should be a series o emails (and a phone call) in place to welcomeand thank your undraisers. Through this ‘welcome’ you can include survey questions to nd out yourteam captains’ preerred level o involvement – based on passion, network reach, and time dedication.2. You can also add or track certain indicators o success to know which team captains to ‘nurture’ throughthe process. Do they increase the deault undraising goal? How many members do they expect on theirteam? How many emails have they sent out on your behal?3. I you have repeat team members/captains, ask them to help mentor new ones. Are they willing to bepart o your communication strategy to team captains by documenting their successes and tips? Also, payclose attention to their eedback on making the tool and event better. This advice is priceless, and willkeep them coming back year over year.

Q. Were you able to use the content or the sit reps in uture or or other communication andundraising strategies?

A. It was really the other way around. We culled the content or our campaign narrative rom a real-lie emer-gency response earlier in the year (meningitis outbreak), and also rom some o our standard mail piecesabout emergency preparedness and epidemics. We chose not to use this topic outside o our campaign com-munications, mostly because the narrative, though heavily based on actual events, was a ctional scenarioand we didn’t want any conusion that we were discussing the details o a real emergency response.However, one o our main goals or the Be There 1st campaign was to educate donors and the public aboutour medical emergency response and how the availability o unds makes it possible or us to act independ-ently and immediately when a crisis occurs. New donors acquired through the campaign were sent an emailseries highlighting the scope o our work with the hope o cultivating them to become loyal donors to theorganization—a communication strategy that is proving helpul with new donors acquired during the Haitiearthquake response in January o this year.

Q. By ‘people reading situation report’, do you mean only the undraisers? Were the donorsalso sent updates, or were the undraisers the only ones in on the ‘response team’?

A. In the rst iteration o Be There 1st, only registered participants (undraisers) received access to the situa-tion reports and eld blogs. Our thinking was that this was an incentive or “added benet” to participation.In hindsight, we believe that opening up these communications to a wider audience (or at least a sample)would have better served our acquisition goals.

Q. Most o these organizations have already etched a place in the social network. Can thistype o undraising model work or something new?

A. Absolutely! Doctors Without Borders, whilst a very recognizable brand, had never used personal pageundraising tools beore and experienced tremendous success. An event, or “virtual event”, can serve tore-engage your existing base AND stimulate new people to your cause. Make sure you pick an “event” thatts your mission and communicates your narrative. Make it dierent rom what is out there, but retain whatworks – team competition, drama, physical activity (i a real event)!

Q. What are the key sticking points in most tools?

A. You’d be surprised. There are essentially the same sticking points or stumbling blocks on all personal pageundraising tech tools. These may be ameliorated in the uture, as younger, and more tech savvy users par-ticipate. But, or the time being, these remain the problem areas:

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Uploading a photo or video to the personal/team page

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Importing the address book

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Sending an email to potential donorsMake sure you have robust FAQs that address each o these in detail, have an email address o a real personthat can help on each page o your tool (or live chat!), AND call your participants to make sure they are com-ortable with the technology.

Q. As a result o this initiative did you identiy new major git donor prospects? Do you have astrategy or moving the relationship along and securing major or planned gits?

A. The Doctors Without Borders Be There 1st campaign, though ultimately serving as a moderately success-ul acquisition tool, did not seem to attract higher dollar donors (with a ew notable exceptions). However, itwould be air to say that this was by design. We chose to make Be There 1st a grass-roots campaign throughwhich many people o all giving levels could participate and undraise. I think it’s air to say that an organiza-tion could certainly use an online undraising campaign to cultivate and acquire major donors, especially i you are already holding an annual gala or other event that is geared toward this constituency.