Virtual Fundraising Event

Cindy Goga
Cindy Goga
Fifth Anniversary
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions
Happy Thursday! I'm looking for any successful virtual fundraising events you've done or are planning to do. We hold a luncheon every October that usually draws 350+ attendees; we are moving forward with the concept of a virtual event in view of the current (and most likely expanding) social distancing requirements. We envision a virtual event where there is a viewing opportunity (live, taped, video...whatever) and will be driving contributions through the Peer2Peer/ JustGiving campaign pages that we and our key stakeholders will create. Some questions that I hope to gather responses to: 
  • What experiences, thoughts or ideas do you have on a virtual event? What has worked? What didn't work? and why?
  • What text software/platform does your organization use for donor contributions?
  • If you have a colleague outside of the Blackbaud Community that has done virtual events, and done them well, will you please share this message and my email address with them? cindyg@standffov.org.
Thanks in advance for any information you might provide. 

Comments

  • Katie Cagney
    Katie Cagney Blackbaud Employee
    Fifth Anniversary Kudos 1 Participant Facilitator 1
    Would be interested in this too!
  • Elaine Tucker
    Elaine Tucker Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
    following - sorry I don't have an answer
  • Laura Chaney
    Laura Chaney
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant
    We too are hosting a virtual fundraising event that will be free (no tickets, no pre-registration, no registration) and will be soliciting donations in person, online, and using Peer2Peer.  In advance, we are soliciting high-level sponsorships that offer benefits of value that will need to be discounted from the sponsor level contribution, as well as tracking all donations that are not at a sponsorship level.  Right now it seems the best option is to set up a fundraising designation (rather than create a special event) to track all donations and manually deduct the benefit value for the sponsor levels.  I don't want to set up two user entry points online (special event registration to accept sponsorship gifts) and donation webform to accept non-sponsor gifts. It would be ideal if we could set up sponsorship levels outside of events and attach them directly to a fund designation.  We are not a membership organization so memberships don't apply. Any input from other Altru users would be so helpful. Thanks!
  • Carrie Aranda
    Carrie Aranda
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant
    We are making final preparations for our first virtual event through Facebook Live next week.  It is being done through our young professionals group.  They have each set up their own fundraising pages on JustGiving and are getting a head start on fundraising through their networks.  During the Facebook live event, we will use a combination of a donate button (hopefully pushing to a donation page on our website), the JustGiving pages and text-to-give.  For the text to give, we have set up an event in the platform that we use for our events that is a simple pass through.  They text the keyword and the software texts them back a link to donate.  The link goes to a hidden "text to give" donation page that is lives on our website.  This way the donations come through NXT gift management instead of having to move them over from the event software.


    We have had a pretty good response with the JustGiving pages and will be curious to see how the Facebook Live event goes next Thursday.  It was a pretty easy to decision to try a virtual event because we are only out the time it takes to plan it and not any hard costs (like venue fees).  Pretty sure we will learn a lot from the experience!

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