raise new dollars and new donors: lessons learned from six years of crowdfunding

Confidential document: Kimbia Inc. 2014

Raise New Dollars and New Donors:

Lessons Learned from Six Years of Crowdfunding


Dana Nelson Executive Director

GiveMN

Lori Finch Vice President –

Community Giving Kimbia

Speakers

Frank Miley Executive

Vice President, Cretin-Derham Hall


Crowdfunding Overview


What Crowdfunding Events & Giving Days Do For Your Cause

•  Create awareness, excitement and a sense of urgency for giving

•  Attract up to 68% new, high net worth/stewardship-worthy donors

•  Raise millions

•  Reactivate lapsed donors and inspire major donors and matching gifts

•  Provide high campaign ROI. All age groups from 18-75+ participate


Successful Event Models

•  Location-Based. Regional organizations connect donors with multiple orgs/causes from which to choose.

•  Project/Mission. Nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions offer donors many projects from which to choose.

•  Chapter/Affiliate. Nonprofit organizations tap into local, national and international pride and friendly competition.

Examples:


Poll

Have you hosted a giving day or single-day crowdfunding event in the last 12 months?


Give to the Max Day Case Study


Give to the Max Day: History of Growth


6th Annual Give to the Max Day: 2014 Key Stats

•  $18.3 million raised, up 7% •  120,664 gifts received, up 13% •  62,607 donors gave, up 20% •  $151.80 average gift size •  5,544 organizations funded, up 25 •  $136,000 in hourly and supersized Golden Tickets •  $106,000 in leaderboard prize •  $6,785,925 in organization-secured matching gifts


2014 Give to the Max Day: Lessons Learned


5 Key Success Factors

Matching grants and fundraising prizes give both donors and organizations an incentive to give on one day. They inspire fundraising creativity, strategy, and a sense of urgency for all.

Giving Incentives

GiveMN receives generous support from a partnership group with tremendous credibility and influence in Minnesota. The Right Partners

Minnesota benefits from terrific earned media coverage, a large live event, creative media promotions, and broad media awareness throughout the state.

Highly Effective PR Strategy

With support from GiveMN, the nonprofit and school community creatively embraces Give to the Max Day and promotes it to success. Ownership of Event

The platform we use is easy to navigate and helps us prepare for the traffic of the day. With the site crash of 2013, the importance of a good platform became even more clear.

A Strategic Platform Partner


Giving Incentives: A key tool to shaping the event outcome

Nonprofit-Secured Matching

• Nonprofits secure their own matching funds

• Offers significantly more “matching funds” to the general public than event organizers could offer

• Great story for the media • Sustainable strategy • Good capacity building strategy • Platform offers tools to easily

promote matches and tally matching dollars available on giving day

• $6.7 million secured by nonprofits for Give to the Max Day 2014

Prizes based on "Total Dollars Raised

• Organizations compete by category (e.g. small nonprofits, medium nonprofits, colleges and universities, all nonprofits) to earn prize grants for organizations that raise the most money on the giving day.

• Easy to promote “help us get on the leaderboard” when communicating with prospective donors.

Golden Tickets

• Grants added to randomly selected donations.

• These inspire both donors and organizations to continue giving throughout the day

• Donors feel that gifts of any size matter.

• The media LOVES the story

Giving incentives inspire action and a sense of urgency. They shape the outcome of the day. Because the event is virtual, there must be a reason to click and go to the webpage. On Give to

the Max Day 2014, the following giving incentives created this excitement.


Ownership of the Event: The nonprofit and school community embraces and promotes Give to the Max Day.

2014 Key Strategies:

GiveMN hosted webinars to explain how organizations can best use the GiveMN website to showcase their work, add matching gifts to their GiveMN page, and creatively promote Give to the Max Day. The webinars also included training and tips for effective social media promotion.

Webinars

With the encouragement of GiveMN funders, staff conducted in-person trainings in small communities throughout Greater Minnesota and the Twin Cities, facilitating community enthusiasm and shared ownership of successful community giving events.

Live Training

Provided easily customizable tools to help nonprofits motivate their donors to give including logos and e-mail and direct mail letters to donors. Promotional Tools

Pre-campaign landing page included resources, tools, and a video of a webinar. During the campaign, the landing page featured four leaderboards with the latest results from all organizations, small- and medium-sized organizations, and colleges and universities. It also featured the hourly Golden Ticket winners. Post-campaign landing page included results, a thank you video, and post-event information.

GTMD Web Page


Highly-effective PR Strategy: More than 197 million media impressions

Our PR strategy was led by


Highly-effective PR Strategy: News

•  All four Twin Cities television news stations aired a total of more than 30 live shots from Nicollet Mall Station. Coverage continued throughout the evening including 9 P.M. newscasts by all four Twin Cities television news stations and several Greater MN stations

•  295 print and online articles across the state reached readers with GiveMN’s key messages.

•  Principals Challenge at Mall of America was the leading story on StarTribune.com for majority of the afternoon, including a series of photos and video interviews.


Highly-effective PR Strategy: Online Outreach

•  Social media: Regular posts on Twitter and Facebook announced Golden Ticket winners, thanked partners , and encouraged giving

•  Email: Provided tips, reminders, and resources (social media planning guide)


The Right Partners: GiveMN is supported by a partnership group with tremendous credibility and influence in Minnesota

Give to the Max Day Sponsors


Things You Really Wanted to Know…

•  You WILL influence the results by how you structure the giving day with prize incentives, leaderboards, and giving tools.

•  You can do these events on any scale or structure to fit your strategy.

•  Make the event as easy as possible for organizations/chapters to participate. GiveMN offers a toolkit with template emails, fundraising letters, letters to the editor, social media posts, and more.


Things You Really Wanted to Know…

•  Keep your messages as easy as possible to communicate.

•  Set reasonable expectations."For Yourself. With the Media. With the Nonprofits and Schools. With Donors.

•  A byproduct of a giving day is that organizations are much smarter about online giving. These events are often the motivation for an organization to begin fundraising online.

•  Be flexible. Things will most likely not go as planned.


Poll

Do you plan to host a giving day or single-day crowdfunding event in the next 12 months?


Participating Nonprofit - Cretin-Derham Hall

2014 Strategies


About Cretin-Derham Hall

Mission: Cretin-Derham Hall is a Catholic, co-educational high school, co-sponsored by the Brothers of the Christian Schools and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, committed to Christian values and academic excellence in grades nine through twelve. We educate young men and women of diverse abilities, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds for opportunities in post-secondary education.


Goals for 6th Year

•  1st prize for dollars raised

•  $500K +

•  1,000 donors

Results

•  1st prize for dollars raised

•  $610.6 K up, from $548.2K in 2013

•  1,069 donors, up from 839 in 2013

•  $10K Prize Grant

2014 Goals & Results


•  Letter sent to last year’s GTMD donors asking to repeat or increase gift

•  Announcements in Communicator, at Legacy Gala, and on school website

Methods


•  Event reminder in annual appeals

•  Story in monthly eNewsletter

•  Postcard sent to arrive one week before event

Methods


•  Football game announcements

•  Facebook: Ø  Ads leading up to event with

photos Ø  Day of: Updates on Facebook

•  Twitter: Day of updates

•  Phonathon

•  Campus signage

Methods


•  Video to all constituents

•  Results to all e-mail accounts

•  Results story on website, facebook and twitter

•  Format thank you letter and gift receipt

Follow-Up Thank You’s


Poll

What is/would be the most important benefit to your organization from hosting a giving day/crowdfunding event?

A.  Recruit new donors

B.  Reactivate lapsed donors

C.  Increase brand awareness

D.  Inspire major donors and matching gifts

E.  Engage donors on a new channel


Q & A


Kimbia has more giving day experience than

any other partner


SWARTHMORE COLLEGE RAISED

April 4, 2014

$400,000

NOTRE DAME RAISED

April 27, 2014

$900,000

UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY RAISED

April 4, 2014

$900,000

BOSTON UNIVERSITY RAISED

April 30, 2014

$1,100,000

BOSTON FOUNDATION RAISED

$1,100,000

TRINITY COLLEGE RAISED

April 30, 2014

$1,200,000

GIVE RICHMOND RAISED

September 17-18, 2014

$1,600,000

SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION RAISED

May 6, 2014

$2,100,000

SAN ANTONIO FOUNDATION RAISED

May 6, 2014

$2,100,000

SARASOTA CF RAISED

May 6, 2014

$3,100,000

LANCASTER CF RAISED

November 21, 2014

$4,500,000

MIAMI FOUNDATION RAISED

November 3, 2014

$5,200,000

UC-BERKLEY RAISED

November 20, 2014

$5,300,000

PURDUE UNIVERSITY RAISED

April 30, 2014

$7,500,000

PITTSBURGH FOUNDATION RAISED

May, 15, 2014

$7,700,000

Top Kimbia-Powered Crowdfunding/Giving Day Events


MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL RAISED

November 12, 2014

$18,200,000

DALLAS / FT. WORTH RAISED

September 18, 2014

$26,100,000

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RAISED

October 29, 2014

$11,064,000

raise new dollars and new donors: lessons learned from six years of crowdfunding

Government & Nonprofit

giving day

new donors

major donors

lapsed donors

singleday crowdfunding

nonprofit organizations

matching funds

event organizers