Transcripts
1. Class Intro: What You'll Learn: Hi there, My name is John Shaw, could be and welcome to a conventional yet easy
fundraising strategies for online and in-person events. This title is a little
bit misleading. That's only because it might sound as if we're
only going to be talking about the event
planning side of fundraising. But that's not the case at the foundation of every
fundraising campaign, whether it's grant writing
or event planning, is doing prospecting
and data analysis. Why do we do this? We do this to make sure that whatever message
you're sending out into the world in order
to attract donors and, or funders is reaching
the right ears. There's no point in
advertising your event, e.g. if you're advertising it
to the wrong audience, we need to talk about a couple
of things before we get to the nitty-gritty about
how exactly we're going to organize our online events. And how we're going
to come up with unique and creative ideas for
events in the first place. Number one, we're going to talk about the software
that you should download in order to get the right information you
need for prospect research. And also analyzing
what's already happening in your
industry to help you run a successful fundraising
campaign and a successful marketing strategy to attract the right audience. Secondly, we're going to
talk about how you create your list of prospective
strategic partners. Who are you going
to reach out to to help you organize this
event and give it the cloud that it
needs to attract as many eyes as possible. Lastly, your final project for this course is going to be a
letter of intent or an LLI, is gonna be a template
that you can use the sent out to the different
perspectives, strategic partners on your list to convince them to support you and your amazing caught as whether it's a
non-profit charity, or if it's a startup, or if it's a product that
you're going to be test piloting in the near future. So make sure to take
copious notes and don't forget to rely on
the feedback of the other students in your
community that are taking this course in order to produce the best product. At
the end of this class.
2. Fundraising Fundamentals: Welcome everyone to the easy and creative
fundraising ideas for online and in-person events. I'm your instructor
for the class. Shell shock will be. Our first lesson
for this course. As I mentioned in
the introduction, is going to be
fundraising fundamentals. We want to make
sure that you have the foundational knowledge
that you need to make sure any fundraising campaign that you start is successful. No matter if it's an
online or in-person events or some other type of
fundraising strategy. And this is both for for-profit and
non-profit businesses. I will give you a cue
when one piece of advice is particular to a for-profit or
non-profit or vice versa. But before we get into that, so let me just show
you a bit of a teaser, this mood board of the information you're going to get later on in this course. I know that what's
really drawing your attention here is to get some new creative ideas for how to get the
funds that you need. And these images are teasers for the ideas that
I have to share with you. So get excited because
they are coming. But just remember
that these events, as creative and
innovative as they buy B, are only going to be as
successful if you have the fundamentals down pat
before you begin fundraising. So our lesson objectives for today include
organizational structure. Do you need before you
start fundraising? If you are someone who has not already registered
your business, this is very pertinent
information for you because you can use this exercise to determine how you want to
register before you do. Now, if you're
already registered as a non-profit or for
profit organization, do not fear this information and exercise is still
beneficial for you because you can see
the strengths and limitations of your
business structure when it comes to fundraising
and then plan accordingly. The second lesson objective
is to know what information you are going to be searching for before you
start fundraising, it is important to have certain information to guide your fundraising activities and planning so that you don't waste valuable time and
definitely do not waste any money when
you're organizing them. And then lastly, to know how to set realistic expectations
before fundraising. I won't tell you or spoil
it for you right away. We'll get to it
when we get there. But just a little hint. Note that not every thing about your fundraising
campaign is going to be guaranteed, including
the targets. So we're going to prepare
yourself for that. In the next video,
we're going to start by answering
question number one, what organization structure do I need before I start fundraising?
3. Best Organization Structure for Fundraising: Our first question is, what organizational
structure do you need to have before
you start fundraising? Or for those of you who
are already incorporated? I do as a for-profit
or non-profit. What things you
need to consider in terms of the opportunities and the limitations of your current
organizational structure when it comes to fundraising. As a for profit organization. I also created a non-profit arm in order to meet
certain types of fundraising targets and to
achieve certain types of purposes and goals
with my organization. There's definitely room to do that based on this exercise. This is called the
culture of Canvas. Some of you might know it,
some of you might not. If you do know what
that is often used by startup organizations to
assess workplace culture. And by that meaning, how to create a
healthy workplace versus a toxic workplace. This is a revised version
because I do think that it's beneficial
for our purposes here, which is to think about
how we're going to align our motivations
and our purpose. We're fundraising with whom
we're gonna be reaching out to with our messaging for
our fundraising campaign. So we're going to
start at the top and talking about
purpose and impact. Registering as a non-profit, you are probably
motivated more by solving a societal issue
versus if you are a startup, profit is probably your biggest motivation,
which is fine. I don't want this
way, but the goal is to assess what is
your motivation. Now in the middle of that. And this is why this
is important to discuss something like a beaker. So e.g. you might say that, yes, profits are important
to you because e.g. you don't want to rely solely on philanthropy as your
main source of income. However, you do
feel that you are solving a social issue or are addressing a problem in society that you
care a lot about. Three or four profit business. And you want to make that
very clear to your audience, meaning your donors or funders. So you might register
as a B Corp. Thinking about this will
help you decide, okay, based on other
organizations that are in a similar
business structure, how much have they
been able to raise? How many how many funders
that are out there? Which goes to
question number two, that have the same
motivations, e.g. there are investors
who will say, I want to do social
impact investing. So I do want a startup that has a certification as
a B Corps being tax exempt is a huge motivator for registering with the IRS as
a non-profit organization. And on the flip side, there are donors
who would like to have a tax write-off
when they give to you. Because a huge motivation
for some people donate to charities is that they
know that at the end of the year they can write
that off their taxes. Lastly, you want to
make sure that you have a clear purpose
allied with the value that you offer to your your funders or your customers or
your beneficiaries. Purpose is another word
for a mission statement. The mission that
you are claiming that you are operating under, which is also based on your
motivations to some extent. Does that align with
what you have to offer in terms of solving
that societal issue, in terms of meeting
our customers need. Once we have that settled, we need to know the stories
that we're going to tell and how we're going
to measure our impact. So that's stories
and metrics. So e.g. if you are a non-profit
organization who didn't outreach campaign for youth
in a marginalized community. And that got picked up in the evening news or
in a local newspaper. That's an amazing story to
tell to a potential donor. If you're a startup and
you got picked up by a major tech magazine and
they built a story about you. That's also an amazing
story to tell. Now stories are great. That's the way our brains work. They processed stories much
more easily than numbers. But the story is just
the introduction that's to get them hopped in. Once you do that, then you have to have the facts and metrics to back it up. Do you have systems in
place for keeping track of the number of children that
your youth program serves. If you're a startup, e.g. you have a software that you've launched as a minimal
viable product. You want to measure how many people are
downloading the software. If you have an app,
how many people are downloading your app
from the app store? Stories can be
considered subjective, but metrics never lie. Next on the pyramid are
values and actions. The values are going to dictate the actions that
you're going to take. And the values needs to align with the story that
you're trying to tell about your organization
values you can have as a non-profit can include running a lean and
efficient organization. There's lots of controversy around how much you should pay the CEO of a non-profit
organization is six figures too much. The mid high six
figures too much is $100,000 or less too little. You need to decide what makes the most sense based
on how you want to be perceived by your
potential donors and or potential foundations
that are going to issue grants to you. Because they will also be
looking at your budget and judging whether or
not you are making the best use of funding. As a for profit values
could be making sure that you pay your employees
a livable wage. And even not just a
livable wage because maybe the minimum wage
is still not sufficient. But make sure
you're paying them. What would be considered
a good market rate to ensure that they are not worried about how they're going
to make ends meet. They can just put all
their time and energy into producing the best
quality outputs in terms of product
and services. And that looks
appealing to investors. If you make the argument that the higher cost of
salaries to Europe workers results in
higher quality work and then a higher
return on investments. When you reap higher
profits because you can price your products or
services at a higher tier. So those are the
personal values that you operate with and
that also determines basically your fixed costs and variable costs
and how you're going to plan fundraising
in that regard. So you'll list the activities
that are and are not aligned with the purpose and
the value that you have. But then also, and this
is very important, especially for non-profit
organizations. You need to know which
actions you can or cannot take legally based
on your business structure. Example, if you already have
enough profit organization, you probably know
that you cannot be, depending on what kind of
exempt organization you are. You can not be aligned
with a political, any kind of political group. And you also have
to make sure that no individual that is a part of the organization is
pocketing any surplus money. Now, we need to finally, make sure we know what
value we're offering to the people that we want to make an impact on our
customer segmentation. But you also need to
be very strategic and thoughtful about communicating that value to the
right audience. Once you have that segmented, then you can really hone in
on your value proposition. What unique value outside of anybody else who might be
doing what you're doing. Do you offer to the public? And also, most importantly, what types of problems
are you helping to solve? Once you have this, you basically should
have a clear idea of how you're going to communicate why an investor or donors
should support you. You basically have
your elevator pitch for your fundraising campaign.
4. Prospect Research and Landscape Analysis: Question number two, what
information should use? Search for it before
you start fundraising. So you have your meshes
message crafted, you're ready to talk to
whoever is willing to listen. But the question is, who
actually is willing to listen? And to beginning, we talked
about customer segmentation, but we're going to go a
little bit deeper in debt in talking about research
for fundraising. So the first information
that you need is a spective owner and
founder behaviors. If you're a non-profit, you need to know the
specific behaviors that giving habits,
the interests. So e.g. hobbies,
activities, etc. And the demographic information
of potential donors. If you're a for-profit
organization, you'll want to note
the addressable market where your investors are, the ticket size for
your investors. So basically how much
are they giving away? And basically at what valuation
and the sector focus. So are they focused on agricultural tech versus Fintech in order to make sure
that you are again, still speaking to
the right people. So what does this
look like in terms of these three aspects of people, location and funding? First, with people, you
want to think inclusively. You want to make sure that
you're not being exclusive of any specific groups thinking
I'm requesting support from, wanna make sure that
you're affording any isms. So making sure that
you're articulating your value proposition or the work that
you're going to do. There's some ages
that is in cell, of course racist and it
doesn't sound sexist. That you're being all
inclusive in your language. They might be people from
the LGBTQIA community that sees value in the class
that you are promoting. And you want to make
sure that you're using proper pronouns when you're
addressing certain people, when you're talking to black
middle-class professionals. When it makes sure that if
you're serving a community that's predominantly
Black and Brown children, that you're avoiding
using prejudice language, endure communications
to potential donors. So you want to make sure
your messaging, it's not out of touch or insensitive. And you want to prioritize
them. Who has them? You want to prioritize
your audience. You want to prioritize
what your donors care about and want to prioritize which are investors care about. In terms of geography, you want to consider
constraints. So I did a lot of work in Africa, on the
African continent. When it comes to fundraising. Most of the time,
you're going to have to consider the constraints of being in-person versus doing anything that
involves tech, because e.g. Internet is not always
stable in certain countries, and electricity may go in
and outs from time to time. So even in-person
events can be shaky. So you have to consider
the constraints of your geography. Are the people who
you're trying to reach, able to reach you online? Or is it better to meet in
person in a specific way? That's very low tech. You need to know the
saturation of your market. So wherever you're
going to already have many other people who are
doing similar activities that you're doing or trying
to address similar causes or issues as you are trying to and are therefore
targeting the same donors. And we're gonna go
into that a little bit deeper in the next slide. You might have a saturated
market where people are already targeting the same donors that
you're targeting, then you also want to be
sustainable in terms of funding and sustainable in terms of environmental resources, etc. So in terms of
sustainable funding, they might be certain
countries and locations where the funding opportunities
are kept at XML. And it might not be sufficient for you to enter that market because those resources have
already been allocated, Douglas would non-profit
and for-profit, there might be fewer foundations that are providing funding for projects in the
DRC versus in Nigeria. And they might be less investors interested in supporting attack in Ethiopia versus Australia in terms of actual resources. So can you sustain working in a place
with limited internet? Would you be if, what if one of your motivations
is making sure that you're not leaving a negative
impact on the environment, especially if you're a B chord, that's an important
motivation to have because that helps you
keep your certification. Are you able to live
up to those values and standards in the
location that you're in? Do they have sustainable
methods for recycling? And lastly, fun thing. Where is the money? How many donors out
there are giving to this type of particular
cause if you're a startup, how many investors out there are giving to I protect
organizations. Fintech used to be the biggest verticals for
investors at one time. So you need to declare on who's
defining in what sectors. Then you want to know
how much they're giving and how often are
they doing it today, give a one-time gift to
only one organization, or if people donate mostly
around the holidays. And so basically you
have to plan your *** strategically in terms of
the time of the year and when people are more
likely to give to a charity or be willing to
invest in a new venture. Next, we're going to talk about landscape analysis when
you are thinking about the location or the geography
of where you're going to be targeting specific donors
or funders, investors. You need to think about what other organizations that are very, very similar to you. We're targeting the same people. In order to do this, you would want to do something
called a swat analysis. And they have symbols here to illustrate each of the
letters in the acronym, which is strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats. Your strengths are basically
your value proposition. What is the unique benefit
that you're providing to your target community,
your target customers, that other organizations
very similar to you are not able to do or not
doing for whatever reason, even if you are then going
into the same place. Similar organizations
are, you may have an advantage in terms of
asking for donations. What are your weaknesses? What areas are you not
able to offer value to a certain type of demographic
or certain type of customer in a certain location. So maybe you then
avoid that location, especially if it's
oversaturated. Opportunities are maybe things
that come down the road. That is a recent celebrity
that just started a investor fund after
years of being in movies. And now they decided
they're going to pivot from acting solely focused
on angel investing, a new investor entering
into the market. And they just so
happen to be investing in you as a company offers. And then lastly, threats are what's could potentially
also come down to bold that will prevent you from sustaining the amount of
funding that you need. I see this often with non-profit organizations
that start off really strong
at the beginning. So I'm thinking during
the pandemic in 2020, there were a lot of
people who were running food banks and saw an
uptick of donations. Potential threat to food banks in that kind of situation can be when the pandemic is over people whose interests
they did that, okay? Because that's a huge
priority anymore. And people forget about
deleting to those who pay. So anticipating that's low in interest around that
specific cause, you need to plan ahead
for how you're going to manage financing your services. As a startup, you need to assess whether or not
there's going to be in low demand for your products and services in a
specific location. How are you going
to communicate to investors that you'll be able to sustain yourself financially
during those laws. Finally, we're on
the last question of what you should think about before you start fundraising. And those are, what are the realistic expectations to set.
5. Essential Fundraising Software: Welcome to lesson two. I'm glad you made it
through the fundamentals and we're only halfway
to the fun part. This lesson is on essential fundraising
software, or in other words, using the right tools
to collect and analyze important data about
your donors and funders. Once again, my name
is Sean show can be an I am your instructor. Let's quickly go over
our lesson objectives. Number one, what free
or premium software is best for prospect research
and relationship management? Number two, what free
or premium software is best for project
management and automation. And then B23, what free or premium
software is best for hosting and planning events? For this lesson, I'm
not going to read all the details on each
slide because I'd rather use my breath and my
time to talk more about by experience
using the platforms. But you will see
essential information on the slides about pricing, about the most effective
way to use these platforms. Let's get started. So first we'll start with
prospect research software. This is the software
you will use to collect as much information on who
your donors or investors are, how much they have
to offer as in cash. And what's the
likelihood that they'll donate or invest in you? The first one that I have
listed is truly my favorite. If you have the money to spend, I know it looks like a lot, but please Spend it. I'm going to go into more detail about I wave in the
appendix videos for this class because I
don't want to take up too much time before we get to what this class
is actually about. I wave has so many
features that I can take up a long time. It can be it's whole
class by itself. And so I want to make
sure that we get to the prime reason for you
being enrolled in this class. But just know that I wave
is essential for getting as much crucial detail about your perspective donors for non-profit organizations
as possible. And even actually for profit
organizations can use it. I've never known a
for-profit business to use it in the past. You very much well can, especially in terms of the information about
individuals net worth, e.g. but I wave is Chrome. Telegram. Linkedin at the free level
requires more manual work, but you can get
very far with it. And I like it because it's the more personal approach to doing this prospect research and potential outreach
because people are expected to network on
platforms like LinkedIn. So it's expected that
you will have a message, a private message from someone that you don't
know for LinkedIn, you're missing the
crucial information that I wave provides like past donations made by this individual or passive
investment amounts made by this individual. You are solely relying on
people voluntarily sharing what they expect to do regarding philanthropic or
investment plans, which can be a good
thing, but also can be limiting if they decide
not to share too much. One strategic hack that I
have for you using LinkedIn. If you follow the hashtags, philanthropy and impact
investing on LinkedIn, you'll get a curated list of
individuals who are actively posting about those topics and posting their plants
in these two areas. And if you have
LinkedIn premium, you could then send
them a direct message. Or you can send
them a connection invite for free and then use the message feature when you're sending the connection invites. Crunchbase is basically
the highway for startups. And again, if you
have the money, I say spend it. The downside to
CrunchBase is that it's not the best for
early-stage startups. So you're almost better off
using my LinkedIn approach at that early stage
versus using CrunchBase. Crunchbase is good for when
you're in the series a, n higher levels when you're
getting more and more serious about your business
being sustainable. The information
that you're getting from CrunchBase is also retroactive meeting that you're
not seeing in real-time, which investors are
actively seeking to fund particular start-ups
or industry sectors. You can notice a trend
over time that shows where most startups are
that are similar to yours are receiving or have
received funding from. So it's also good for finding strategic partners who could sponsor a marketing or
product demo event. Because there are a
lot of corporations listed there that have a CSR arm or are actively looking to partner with
rising startups to promote a certain product if it's somehow strategically
mutually beneficial, CrunchBase is definitely
great for startup research. F6 s.com is great, not only for finding incubator and accelerator
programs to get funding. So traditional routes
for startups to, especially in the early
stage to get backing. But also it's great
for networking with other startup founders who can collaborate with
you on an event. Obviously, they would
only collaborate with you if it's
mutually beneficial. You do not want to
collaborate with a competitor or someone who is
doing the same thing you are if you are
a startup though, offering a product
and service and or service that's complimentary
to someone else's. E.g. let's say you're a mobile banking
solution startup and you find another telecom startup
that's similar to WhatsApp, then you can reach out to the startup team there and ask if they want
to collaborate. So it's great for
networking peer-to-peer. Next is project
management software. This is where you will store all the information
that you'll collect on prospective donors
slash investors that you found during
your prospect research. I'll also explain why
and how you should use automation in this process. So Salesforce is another. If you have the
money to pay for it, It's practically going to do everything for you,
hence, the price. When I used it, it was my one-stop shop for
analyzing patterns in the way that donors
were giving to the specific organization I was working with
when I was using it. I don't know if
this has changed, but when I was using it, it didn't show where else donors were getting
outside of the organization. We also use Pardo, which is one of
Salesforce's apps, send out marketing messages
to donors and our email list. You can also use it for SMS or text messaging as
well, which is great. I also use it to keep track of project deadlines as well
as deadlines for grants. So it'd be a useful
tool for tracking all the components of
your event planning. Hubspot is great and it's amazing free alternative to Salesforce that I
still use today. It's very intuitive to use and even if you are confused
about how to use it. There are free HubSpot
Academy videos to train you on how to maximize
the use of the platform. You do not have to pay for
multiple team members to have user accounts under
one HubSpot location, which makes it extremely useful. It integrates with
websites well, like Squarespace websites e.g. and it easily integrates with other project management apps. Which brings me to probably my favorite out of all
the apps in existence, rivaled only by Trello, which we'll get to soon. It is Zapier. Let me know in the discussion
below this course, if you want a full tutorial on the greatness that is Zapier. Unfortunately, this
video is not for that. We need to get to the great
fundraising ideas, right? The font stuff. So I'm going to spare the
lung details about Zapier. But a quick example of how
you can use that beer is by automatically copying
any information you're entering
into a spreadsheet, a prospective donor or investor directly into
your CRM database. So it essentially reduces the need for
repetitive manual work like literally uploading
a CSV file into HubSpot to make sure that
information is captured there and allows you to focus
on bigger issues at hand. Lastly, Trello is highly
recommended by me for creating an Agile Kanban method
for project management. I use Trello boards today
as my main dashboard, which gives me and my staff a very high level
overview of what's in progress and what's completed towards any project
including event planning. Again, please let me know
in the discussions below, if you want a class on that, especially specifically
for fundraising, Trello is amazing for use when you're managing
fundraising projects. Finally, event
hosting platforms. This is where you
start the show. After all, you're careful
research and planning. You can finally
watch your events either in-person or if it's more beneficial online
using these platforms, YouTube is the easiest
no-brainer choice because almost everyone
has a Gmail account. And if you have a Gmail account, you're likely active
on YouTube as well. The only video streaming
platforms that beat YouTube in terms of
numbers of users, are not user-generated platforms where anyone can host events. So this is Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc. So YouTube is the place for online streaming, online events. I do have an asterisks next
to easy to use because if you want to throw a high-quality
event experience on YouTube, you may want to invest in additional equipment
and hardware, but this is entirely up
to you and it's based on what your audience will
accept in terms of quality. I'll discuss hoping and Vimeo together because
they are almost, they almost provide the
same exact features who've been allowing you more
customization and Vimeo. I think it's happened. Sorry if I'm
mispronouncing that. You may use happen because
it's a great freemium deal. It host or the processes for event management like
ticket sales, et cetera. However, I would lean
more towards using Vimeo because what's
more important to me is integrating
the ticketing and email what
communication within my CRM versus having it separate on another
platform entirely. Remember, we're
trying to work smart. If we set up our CRM
already to collect prospects information
and keep track of donor relationships that
we want to make sure that any additional platform
that we're adding onto our fundraising efforts
is connected to that. Finally, I included GoTo Webinar in here simply because of its low tech option
of Voice Over Internet Protocol and
dial in via telephone. When I was hosting a virtual webinar with
participants from across Africa, the saved my life. Because the participants,
they didn't need reliable Internet to
join our discussions. Obviously, you'll need to be creative with the type of
events are going to host. That's going to
still give people dialing in a great experience. And that's it for our
essential software to have for fundraising. So these are the key
takeaways sometimes and investment inexpensive
software is worth the return on investment. So just bite the bullet. Number two, you will still
have free options available that do provide worthwhile,
beneficial results. Number three, automate
as much as possible. Let me know in the
comments below if you want to Zapier course
because I'll do it. And lastly, software is equal to collecting
and analyzing donor slash investor data
and cultivating long term relationships with
those donors and investors. So get ready because our next lesson is
finally the fun part, the creative ideas for online slash in-person
fundraising events.
6. Online and In-Person Ideas for Fundraising: Welcome to lesson three. It is finally time
to discuss ideas for online and in-person
fundraising events. Let's quickly go over
the lesson objectives. As we always do. We're going to decide on brand identity and
alignment first, and I'll explain more in a
second why we should do that. Next, we're going to
consider accessibility. Because remember, we want
to always be inclusive and avoid isms in our
fundraising activities. Then finally, the part that
you've all been waiting for, we went to list
sample in-person and online fundraising
events that you can put into
practice right away. Before we get into
the discussion about event planning, warning, caution, it is difficult to
fix a bad first impression. So whichever type of event that you are
deciding to promote, choose carefully
and make it count. You have to put as much
effort into the quality of the event as you can
based on your budget. Because one of the things
you want to do is get the attention of first-time
donor slash investors. And then two, you want
to be able to build evangelists that are going to stay committed to
you in the long run. So whatever you show as your first presentation
as if first foot forward is going to set the expectations
for years to come. Put yourself in the
point of view of your audience that's going
to be attending this event. What would need to happen or
be discussed at the event to fully convince you
as the audience member, to give up your
hard earned money to this company or this
non-profit organization, it is very important
to brand with caution. In the similar vein,
you want to make sure you're being inclusive. We want to consider
the accessibility that is going to
be necessary for all your attendees to enjoy the events as
fully as possible. You need to also keep
in mind that not all diversity is visible. E.g. there are
neurodiverse individuals that are affected
by flashing lights. How do you plan to include decor or lighting that's not going
to adversely affect them. Also, how do you
plan to make sure that those who are blind or hearing impaired can feel immersed in the
experience as well. In-person events have
to be physically and emotionally welcoming for
those with mobility issues. Or others who associate with often marginalized identities
such as black, African, or people of color, and also people who are queer
or identify as LGBTQIA. So keep that in mind when you are thinking about
how are you going to be advertising is going to be
attending and how to make sure they feel as a part of the
experience as possible. Alright, so now
that we've gotten that all out of the way, let us speak in. I have some exciting ideas
to share with you a number. What is going to be an
in-person event partnering with a local bar
or a local cafe. I am actual living proof
that this idea works. I used it for the launch
of my foundation. I've been working remotely
since 2017 and often I would go to work from this black owned cafe during
the week in my neighborhood. And so I naturally built a close friendship with
the owner and the staff. And then when I may be asked, they were more than
happy to support, which brings me to my bullet
points for this idea. Number one, you want
to, like I said, build a genuine
relationship with your local small businesses
before making the ask, if you come there as someone
who is totally unknown, you have to understand
that the business needs to consider whether
or not this is good for their brand and
whether or not you are someone of it integrity
that they can trust, they need to definitely
most importantly, see paperwork that you are truly a registered business
or a non-profit to make sure that they're not
just giving money away to a total stranger who is
coming under false pretenses. But also they just
want to know that you are someone who is worth supporting to make sure that you can secure a
yes as much as possible. It is always beneficial to
first build a relationship on a friendship level before turning it into a
business partnership. Number two, you want to create one when you do get the yes. Two plenty events, you want to create one physical sign
that you're going to have at the event
with a barcode for patrons who are coming in and out to scan for quick donations. So that's what I actually did because people are just
going about their day. They're not really
paying attention to anything that might be
changed or different. I actually was working behind the register while I was
doing this fundraisers. So I just looked like
an ordinary employee to show that this
was a special day, that this was
something that there was something special going on. On this particular day. I had a physical
sign that people saw as soon as they walked
in or it's in a state, push the counter with a quick one-liner about
what my charity was. Pictures that would draw attention and then a
bar code for them to scan for more information when they're in a rush
to make their order. I don't have to worry
about trying to quickly give them
my elevator pitch about why it's
important for them to make their coffee
purchase today. I can just point
them to the sign really quickly,
place their order, and then as they leave the cafe, they've not only contributed
to my organization. Purchasing coffee, but they now have more information
on their phone directly that they can
follow up on and decide later to make a larger donation. If they decide to, number three, negotiate a
percentage beforehand with the business
about how much of the day is proceeds is
going to be donated to your non-profit or
towards your startup. If you are raising
capital that way, then number four
and get involved. Like I said, I was behind the counter making
drinks, fixing orders, doing anything that I could while also stirring
conversation with guests to show that I'm not just there with my particular agenda, genuinely trying to
build relationships with these prospective,
future donors. Idea number two is
another in-person events sell products with a food
truck or streetcars. Considered this idea, the
upgraded eliminate cart. And I don't mean that
in a belittling way. I actually mean that it's very lucrative in New York
City alone, e.g. one of the most famous
cities for street vendors. Street vendors had
it as a collective, contributed up to $293 million to the local economy
according to Spectrum news, of course, the revenues
that were earned by each street vendor could differ
from one car to the next. But with that amount of
money being generated, this could definitely be ideal for those of you
who are located in high traffic locations and large metropolitan
areas. So don't lock it. And it's also a creative way. Again, if you can't partner with a local business
in the community, it's a way for you
to still engage with your city, which
your neighborhood, but have a little bit
more autonomy and control over how the proceeds are
distributed and shared. So when you're doing the food
truck or street card idea, you want to think about
is weighing the cost of purchasing versus
renting a car. Will this be a
reoccurring event that you do and you'll start to build a brand around your non-profit or
startup that way. Then if that's the case, then it might be better to
purchase it because you can also put it on your balance
sheet as a depreciating item, especially if you're a startup, if this is something
that you just want to try out first
and you don't want to commit to it right
away and want to see if it's actually successful
in the beginning, then you can consider
renting a cards, but you do the cost-benefit
analysis based one, how much it is to purchase
versus how much it is to rent. Number two, you want to research food safety regulations for Street merchants in your city. That is very, very
important just because you are not
a street vendor full-time doesn't mean that
you don't need to still adhere to food safety regulations
that the city may have. New York City definitely has a license that you
have to purchase. I think the last time I
checked it was around $300. But of course, do your research to see if that has changed, especially if you're
watching this very far into the future
and make sure that you abide by those
rules so that you don't get stuck
with a huge fine. That's gonna be
even more expensive than the license number three before you even
start purchasing anything, getting a license, et cetera, do a survey or
observe the habits of locals interacting with street
vendors in your community. Is it always high traffic? Is there a long line on a specific street corner
for street vendors, especially during lunchtime or when people are
just getting into the office that
might be assigned that this is going to be
lucrative for you to do. But then you also have to
think about the competition that you have with
street vendors that might have built a
loyal customer base with people in the community. Then lastly, recruit, recruiters in your network
to produce the products, whether it's making food
or this making crafts, it doesn't always
have to be food. That can be a way to get out of step number two, regulation, whatever it is that
you feel that you can still creatively
on the street will garner attention from
those walking past you. Do it. I did. Number three,
we're going into the online events hosting
a YouTube fundraiser. Now this one's going
to be really in-depth. So bear with me. We're going to talk
about how you can use a YouTube channel that you started for
your non-profit, where you're
for-profit business. Not only for fundraising, but also to
continually cultivate a donor slash investor audience
using content marketing. So number one, a YouTube
event doesn't have to be live in the sense that you
were hosting it in real time. That's the beauty of
its premiere feature, where you can set a video
that is pre-recorded, publish at a certain time, making it seem as if it's
live while promoting it via a thumbnail that will show up on your YouTube channel. And we'll also show up in the suggested feeds for any
subscribers that you have. And this will allow your
subscribers or invitees that you're advertising to outside
of the YouTube platform. To click the Notify Me button
to receive both an e-mail, any mobile alert for
your event going live. If you'd have a YouTube
channel for your non-profit that is
eligible for monetization. This is even better
because you can set the video to Premier
as a fundraiser, allowing you to earn income
for every person I've used this content and this
goes on indefinitely. Or the AdSense that is
generated from this video, so long as it is published
and it's public, it will be donated towards your non-profit without
having to do very much. If you haven't reached YouTube monetization
milestones yet, you can still create a
YouTube channel and still do the pre-recorded
premiere video events. Just include an external link in the description
box for your video, for viewers to make the
donations and also make sure you've mentioned the link several times
throughout the video, prompting viewers
to go look for it. Now, if you want to promote something a little
bit more engaging, you can opt to host a
YouTube Live events. That is happening in real-time. Remember that I said in
the previous lesson, I suggest that you consider
the caliber of your content that your audience
is going to expect to want to watch in
the first place. So this means that
you may want to host a heavily produced the event
with live entertainment, people on stage, e.g. and activities that
keep viewers attention and make them eager to want
to support you financially. If you decide to go
live in real time, viewers can donate to you in
three ways via super chats. If you are a monetize channel
using an external link that you post and pin within
the YouTube chat feature, or using an SMS code that
you provide to them. Super Chats, by the way, are opportunities for viewers of your YouTube live
event to pay money to send you a message or a question that you
can read on camera, especially if you decide
to host a Q&A events. And know that this second
YouTube live option is great. If you're a for-profit company who cannot simply
say video to fund raiser mode because
you didn't have the necessary qualifications
for that feature. So in summary, for hosting
a YouTube fundraiser, the ideal is to create one piece of evergreen content
and set it to fundraiser or have
an external link in the description box that people can always
click to donate. The alternative is
hosting a YouTube live event with Q&A and
engaging entertainment always include a call
to action that involves collecting attendees
contact information, especially e-mails. Because again, the goal is
to not have onetime donors. It is to cultivate a
relationship long term. And if they leave the
platform without you knowing who they are and how to get back in
touch with them, you can cultivate
that relationship. Number four, you want to recruit creatives
in your network, as you did with the food carts. But this time to produce entertainment that people
are going to be watching. The final idea online
for an online event. And I'm going to suggest to you, is doing a gamified
streaming demo. This is a really
good for startups that have software that
they want to promote, an app that they
want to promote. Or it can also be good for a not-for-profit
organization based on what exactly
you're demonstrating, your showing videos of testimonials of people
who were served by your organization or if you're selling something specifically
for the organization, what does it mean to gamify? Gamifying means
creating some kind of engaging way
for people to get involved in the events
and they're getting rewarded if they come up with the right answer
for a quiz, e.g. if you're doing a demo
of a video game, e.g. if they managed to figure
out the cheat code, you can get them to engage basically in
the event that way, making them feel
as if they're part of designing the entertainment. Then of course, the
reward is going to make them want to continue
on with the events. For this, I have four
bullet points as well. First, you want to generate
as much buzz and excitement around your events in
advance via social media. Make sure you have
a really cool, inventive way that
you're going to create excitement around
them joining this. Because if they don't
know in advance, what's the point of
playing the game and what's the point of
wanting to win the awards? It's gonna be hard to make sure that you have as much
of an attendance as possible number to have a
strong Internet connection and a strong CPU that can
handle long streaming times, it costs more energy
and power to host a stream than it does when you are doing it
YouTube live events, or just posting a
YouTube video online. And you also have to
consider, of course, whether or not the people
who are gonna be attending have access to a strong
Internet connection as well. So keep these two
things in mind when you're going for this option. Number three, you
want to repurpose your events clips into short-form content
after the event to continue to promote. So think of it again as a demo, especially if you
are a tech startup, what is the best
way to highlight the most important features
of your software or your app in a way
that you can clip into shorter one-minute videos, or three-minute videos or 10-minute videos that you
can promote on YouTube, on TikTok, on Instagram Reels to further bring attention
to your business. Then lastly, have
a meaningful prize or reward for participants, e.g. do they get free, a free
subscription to your software? Do they get an upgraded
version of your app that is only available if
you pay for a subscription. Normally, make sure this is something that is
meaningful to the audience, not just something you think is meaningful or that
you can afford. I hope that you
enjoyed those ideas. I know you've been
waiting patiently for me to premier those. Now we're going into the class project where
you're going to learn about the components of a strong
letter of intent or LUI that you're
going to send out to prospective
strategic partners. We're going to either sponsor your events or help promote it.
7. Project: Crafting a Letter of Intent: Congratulations. You have made it through a rigorous process of
thinking critically about the right data and the
right tools that you'll need to execute and innovative, compelling fundraising
event that will not only garner support
from individual donors, will help you secure a
strategic partnerships and corporations or
other foundations, or even high net
worth individuals. So now we've reached the
end and it's time for you to submit your project task. In some, you're going to upload
a letter of intent or an LLC that is going to clarify your potential
strategic partner, why they should work with you to help you raise the
funds for your project. And there's gonna
be three critical steps to completing this. One, you need to clarify your purpose,
outline your events, main objectives with clear
and concise language to communicate the
value proposition. What is the unique benefits of this event and the
project that will fund? What impact potentially will you have on the community
that you serve, the audience that
you're targeting. Then lastly, number three, you're going to have a
call to action. Craft. They persuasive requests. One sentence that encourages your perspective
strategic partner, to follow up with you to
have further discussions about how they can support
you and your event, including your contact
information and suggested times for scheduling
a follow-up meeting. In other words, you're
going to be following the three Cs of
writing your elbow. If you need that outline, you can find it down
in the description box for this class. And also, don't forget to reach out to your fellow
classmates for feedback and advice on whether or not you're using the best descriptors
or whether you're being very clear and articulating your goals or your
fundraising campaign.
8. Conclusion: I want to congratulate
you on taking this very important step in your entrepreneurship
journey. And I commend your
bravery for just putting yourself out there
as a business leader. It's not always easy. If you felt like you've got some amazing tips and
advice from this force, don't leave before you give
it a rating and a review. That helps me by
providing you with feedback on what to put
into my next courses. That it's customized
specifically for your needs. If you follow my
profile on Skillshare, you'll get an
immediate alert for the next time that
I upload a course. So don't leave the platform
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follow my stuffs, that newsletter
where every week or so I sent out freelance
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principals reading advice, and then just general
tips on how to be your best self
professionally. I can not wait to see
you in the next course.
Seun Shokunbi, Your Friendly Business Coach
