At the beginning of this year, no one thought the year 2020 would turn out this way. Most of us started the year on a happy note and with great hopes, but then the pandemic hit so hard; life took a completely new turn for the majority of people around the world. Businesses have suffered and that includes the nonprofit industry too.
All strategies related to fundraising for nonprofits had to be revised and redrafted; nonprofit events shifted to being virtual ones over online connections. Numerous fundraising platforms including GiveCentral came up with video conferencing solutions to meet the requirements of their partners and audience. This article aims to help you in getting yourself prepared for your next virtual event.
Know your goal
In order to begin any activity for any campaign, it is important to know the reason why it is being done. Define your goal(s) and create a plan around it, all your activities should align with the goal that you specified. Coming to your virtual event, what is the motive behind it? Is it to increase your audience and expand the reach of your organization? Is it to generate more donations while the event is taking place? Your purpose will define the video conferencing platform you pick for your nonprofit. Highly focused on building engagement and simplifying online giving, GiveCentral LIVE is an ideal live streaming tool that accommodates a large number of participants. Your job as a nonprofit is to plan and choose right.
Prioritize relevance
Let’s begin this with an example; if you are organizing a webinar and the topic is no where close to the current situation, then there isn’t really any point in doing the webinar at all. We have a global crisis and the topic you pick needs to be as serious as that; you cannot talk about an in-person get-together when the entire planet is all about social distancing currently. The point here is that your event and the content of your event has to be relevant. If it is about fundraising for nonprofits, then you must prioritize online and mobile giving, remote giving in general.
Know your audience inside out
Without an audience that you really understand, you will not be able to execute an event that would really interest them. Study your audience, converse with them over social media and emails, know their likes and dislikes. What is the top cause that your audience is inclined towards right now? Is it helping the one greatly affected by the crisis? If that is so, provide them with more information on the topic and let them know how your webinar is going to help in getting help to these victims. Once you thoroughly know your audience, you’ll know what kind of virtual event you should be doing.
Audience activation is important
Different virtual events will include different sections of audience and donors. For example, an online class for nonprofit professionals is also a virtual event; however your donors cannot be a part of this event as it doesn’t hold much relevance to them. If you’re going ahead with an online workshop that deals with facing challenges in the nonprofit industry, the importance of influencer marketing plays becomes even greater.
Get influential speakers, you can request your speakers to share your promotional creatives on their social media handles and ask young professionals to register and sign up for the same. You first need to make sure that the audience for your event is well pumped and ready for the interaction. Your influencers can also ask their followers to send them questions that they can answer at the time of the event.
Communicate and connect
This includes creating promotional images and videos, sharing the same on your social media handles, asking your friends, family and supporters to share the posts. Make use of emailers too, personalize them and address your audience by their names respectively. Currently, there is nothing like “over communicating” online, because that is your only major method to get the word out to as many people about your virtual event.
Communication is apt not only for online events, but it is important even when it comes to fundraising for nonprofits, make sure you keep sending donation reminders to keep the funds coming.
When you organize a virtual event, make sure that all technical areas are checked, run a test at least once if not twice before the actual event. There are many virtual fundraising ideas for nonprofits that will work, however, a lot of it depends on how you are preparing to execute these ideas. If you are not sure how to turn an event into a live fundraising or what kind of technology is needed to get started you might find these FAQs helpful. It is also ideal to create a sociable environment during the event; always encourage interaction. All the very best!
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Last modified: August 1, 2020
