Nonprofit Fundraising and Events Coronavirus Survival Guide

March 17, 2020
Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

 

Nonprofit Fundraising and Events Coronavirus Survival Guide

 

These are challenging times. From individuals to entire industries – we’re all feeling the pain. Between the fallout of social distancing and economic shutdowns, the mounting pressure is putting nonprofits’ program delivery and fundraising at risk.

So how do you navigate this new environment and mitigate that risk?

When your important events are canceled it doesn’t mean you have to surrender. Your community still depends on you and your funding – don’t put them in jeopardy. You have a few options besides blanket refunding everyone’s tickets and committed sponsorships.

You can postpone your events, convert them into giving day celebrations, convert them into virtual events, or try something completely different.

We’ll go through each option, including how to navigate refund conversations, and offer an actionable virtual event conversion guide.

how to survive coronavirus with your fundraising intact

 

 

OPTION 1: POSTPONE your EVENT

The simplest option might be to postpone your event for a future date. Allowing people to apply existing tickets and sponsorships to the future event.

You may not be able to nail down a future date right now, but shouldn’t stop you from making the ask. Start by picking a tentative date a month or two out, and communicate that you’ll follow up within X days to either confirm or pick a new tentative date. Repeat pushing out this tentative date as necessary. As long as you maintain consistent communication and transparency, and your supporters will be understanding and happy to help. We know we’re all in this together.

Instead of issuing refunds, give your supporters the following options:

  • Ask your supporters to hold on to their tickets for a future date
  • Offer to convert their ticket for a voucher to be used for a different event of their choice in the future, or to be used on something like merchandise
  • Offer to convert their ticket to a fully tax-deductible donation
  • Offer a partial refund
  • Offer alternative ways for them to support your work if they need a refund

Don’t forget to assure them how valuable it is for your organization to have their contributions, especially in this time of crisis response and need, and the benefits they are enabling you to provide.

Email template and talk track: Postponed and canceled event refund alternatives

 

 

OPTION 2: convert your FUNDRAISING EVENT INTO A GIVING DAY

Keep the date of your event, and instead dedicate it to be a day of giving and appreciation. You were already writing talking points and compiling data to share to honor your work and your supporters for your event. Now you can repurpose this content and collateral to use on social media. Post it throughout the day to recognize your community and get them feeling in the mood to contribute.

You’ll want to have a dedicated landing page for this specific fundraiser that features a countdown and a fundraising thermometer and keep people engaged throughout the day.

If you have already sold tickets, reach out to the buyers and ask them if they’d be willing to covert their ticket purchase into a 100% tax-deductible donation instead. That way, you can begin the official giving day with some ground covered on your fundraising thermometer. You can also consider offering alternative fundraising options such as rewards or merchandise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sample fundraising campaign and template:  Day of Giving

Email template and talk track:  Converting your event into a giving day

 

OPTION 3: MAKE IT virtual

Whether you have a breakfast, a conference, a concert, or a 5K, you can still get creative and have fun with taking it virtually.

Yes, even a gala! We love this story of Upaya taking a chance with their biggest fundraiser of the year … and blowing their fundraising goal out of the water as a result!

A 5K/Run/Walk becomes a “Virtual cruisin'” event

We got this idea from our friends at Oxalosis Hyperluria Foundation, who have been throwing this style of 5K for years.

Allow your supporters to complete their own 5K (or distance of your choice), using whatever location, route, and mobility variation that is most exciting and accessible to them. Participants can use an activity tracker of their choice to record their run/walk/hike/ride and post a screenshot to their campaign page upon completion.

  • You set the basic parameters needed to keep everyone feeling like they are part of the same movement, and leave the rest up to creative freedom. They can go for a 5K walk in the neighborhood, a run around a local track, a hike in a park, a bike ride, or a wheelchair stroll.
  • Instead of confining the event to a specific date and time like traditional run/walks, we recommend stretching the event to span a few days and making it a week challenge. This allows people from more timezones and different schedules to still join in the fun.
  • As they are completing the challenge, they can share posts or do a live stream,
  • and if you create a unique hashtag for the event, it will help your org and event be discoverable

Not only does this allow you to continue your fundraiser, but it makes it so much more accessible to people of varying schedules, ages, and levels of ability, which means it widens your potential participant count. Expanding accessibility and inclusion has shown to do wonders for fundraising results, too. It’s a game-changer when people with disabilities can be included and when families can bring their kids. You may find that your event takes on a whole new level of enthusiasm.

And encouraging people to get outdoors and be active has the added benefit of endorphin release – just the prescription for strengthening immune systems and stress-relief right when we need it most.

Sample fundraising campaign and template: Virtual 5K Cruise

Tools: Strava or any other fitness trackers that participants want to use such as FitBit, Garmin, and Apple Watch.

 

 

A WORKSHOP, EDUCATIONAL OR SPEAKING EVENT BECOMES A live WEBINAR + A LIVESTREAM

If you have a classroom or lecture-style setting, with a speaker(s) and an audience, you can recreate it as a virtual webinar. Just like a live event, your webinar can be live at a specific date and time. Using a webinar tool like Zoom or Crowdcast will give you specific tools to facilitate that in a way you couldn’t do with your standard group video calls:

  • Choose whether to require people to register before coming, or just show up.
  • Include much larger groups than on a group meeting, you can even broadcast your webinar to a live-stream on the internet.
  • Indicate roles like hosts, panelists, and attendees (the audience).
  • Hosts and panelists have control over running the session and curating the conversation – who is presenting and what is being presented, including both slideshows and/or a video feed.
  • Choose different levels of active audience participation, or allow it to be more of a passive lecture series.
  • Make events both more structured and more interactive by including polls or games, and using tools for managing audience questions.
  • Use breakout rooms to randomly assign participants into smaller discussion groups within the larger meeting

 

In some ways, this virtual format can prove even more efficient and conducive to holding these types of events. It can bring equity to participants by facilitating everyone feeling equally included and part of the conversation.

 

Sample fundraising campaign and template:  Virtual Speaker Series

Tools: Zoom, Crowdcast, Livestorm are just a few notable examples of many webinar tools available.

 

 

A social gathering becomes a VIRTUAL HANGOUT with breakout rooms

Think you have to cancel your brunch, movie screening, dance party, networking event, poetry slam, support group, you name it? Think again!

  • Take that catering menu you already planned and share it on the event page, along with links to recipes, so people can bond over sharing the same meal remotely day-of. Even better that everyone can customize their food choices.
  • Use a video limelight round-robin to allow each person to take turns speaking (or performing) to the group, use the breakout groups to allow more intimate conversations to take place within a bigger gathering, or the gallery view for a Brady Bunch style collective feel (good for dance party moments).
  • For film screenings, the meeting host can play a video while screen-sharing. While everyone is watching together, participants can still chat and see one another in the sidebar – or just go full-screen theater experience.

We assume so many of these activities are only enjoyable when you’re sharing them in person, but you’d be surprised at how fun it still is to share a drink, a meal, a dance-a-thon, or a movie virtually together with others. In fact, it can feel even more intimate and foster a deeper level of bonding between participants than at a crowded event. And now that you can bring people across time and space to join together – even better!

 

 

Sample fundraising campaign and template:  Virtual Poetry Slam

Tools: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts Meet

 

 

BONUS OPTION: try SOMETHING TOTALLY NOVEL

Maybe you’re ready to try something groundbreaking, in which case we have a creative idea for you.

Hypothesizing that people will now devote even more attention to screens; particularly peer-created content on YouTube, Instagram TV and Facebook stories; this could be a huge opportunity for content creators. And to become a content creator, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy or require a lot of extra work from your team.

What if you live-streamed, documentary-style, the work you’re already doing on the ground; on a channel where people could tune in, interact, and donate to you in real-time?

This new kind of fundraising is just starting to happen on Twitch – a live-streaming platform for various content creators (not just video games!). Charity: water did a major live-stream event showing the well they built – connecting individual donors in the US with the individual people they were helping all the way across the globe. That’s impactful.

You could set up your own show, have it scheduled at the same time each week, and allow your fans to anticipate a consistent routine. Remember looking forward to your favorite show on TV every week? It could be a way to bring your audience tangibly in contact with your work and build stronger relationships with your supporters.  A quality video camera on a smartphone with a tripod and someone to narrate and engage with the audience could be all you need.

It’s free to set up your live-stream on Twitch, where your viewers can donate to you while watching. You can invite your existing audience to join (chances are many are already using Twitch!), and new audiences can discover your stream as well. It’s an opportunity to create meaningful relationships with your existing donors, as well as increase both donations and new audience reach. Fundraising for nonprofits on Twitch is still so new and underutilized.

It’s still unexplored territory – maybe you could be the trailblazer!

 

Still feeling unsure?

In the face of novel and difficult situations, you may find yourself at a loss for how to respond. And it makes sense to second-guess continuing a business-as-usual approach when you’re sensitive to the fact that livelihoods are at stake. But this is definitely business-as-unusual; a time to summon deep reserves of resilience and grit.

Not everyone may be able to fulfill their planned contributions, and it’s important to honor that. But don’t forget that many will, and others will give even more. This challenge is a hidden opportunity for us to come together like never before. Physically isolated at home, many of us are craving for ways to connect with community and yearning for avenues to make an impact. Since we’re no longer spending money on outings and maybe, just maybe, we’d like to spend that money on something meaningful instead.

So if you’re still unsure if you should continue with your fundraising, I challenge you to take a moment to remember your mission and why you started fundraising in the first place. It was to fulfill a need and to serve a community. Well, they’re still here, and they still need you, now more than ever.

You, the nonprofits of the world, already are and will continue to be on the front lines providing relief, sewing us up at the seams, and innovating a new way forward.

We need you to continue to do what you do best – a sprout of new beginnings from within the darkness of the soil.

Thank you for all you do, and let us keep supporting you.

 

ADDITIONAL resources for nonprofits during coronavirus (covid-19)

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