Raising Money while Capitalism Collapses: Fundraising with Powerbase

Description

With the economy in shambles, now is an important time to tighten our fundraising strategies and reinforce our networks of support and mutual aid. Raising Money while Capitalism Collapses focuses on building financial support using contribution pages, peer-to-peer giving campaigns, $X in X weeks sprint-style campaigns and integrating these campaigns into our organizing work so we can build holistic campaigns that support our communities.

Prerequisite: Comfortable creating and using groups.

Agenda

Training materials, including login information on the training database will be sent to everyone who is registered.

Day 1: Contribution Essentials

1:00 pm Eastern Time (approximately 120 minutes)

• Community Agreements and Introductions (Free Software) - A, J
• Orientation - N
  • Review agenda
  • Introduce network site and training site
• Logging in and getting around - J
• Explain and Demonstrate Contribution Basics
  • Campaigns - screen cast - N
  • Info on Payment Processors - N
    • Choosing a payment processor
    • Configuring payment processors
  • Two ways to record a contribution- N
    • Online contribution page - screen cast
      • Tracking In Honor / Memory of, Soft Credits - CiviCRM Documenation
      • Adding a widget or "thermometer" to the donation page or to your website - tip sheet with screen cast
      • Extra Fee Amount to offer option to pay credit card fees - tip sheet
      • Practice Time: Create an online contribution page
    • Backend (offline) recording of a contribution by staff - screen cast
• Demo: Planning & Managing Your Fundraising Campaign - A
  • Everything you wanted to know about fundraising with Powerbase in one packet! see fundraising packet
    • see pages 53-56 in packet
    • Fundraising Strategies (comparing fundraising activities, the matrix, Mimi Ho article)
  • Fundraising planning worksheets - also in packet
    • Who are your current and potential donors? Dashboards, Advanced reporting, segmenting/searching and evaluation
  • Ways to improve tracking your donors - Donor Tracking fields - see tip sheet
  • Create groups to segment your donors and choose strategies to reach them - Major Donors, new donors, recurring donors, lapsed donors, recovered donors, etc. - see page 64 in the fundraising packet.
    • Potential Donors
    • Major donors
    • Recurring or Sustaining donors and recurring contributions - screen cast
• Summary Fields - screen cast - J
• Exercise: Searching and Segmenting - J - See practice questions

Day 2: Fundraising Campaigns

1:00 pm Eastern Time (approximately 120 minutes)

• Welcome, agenda and login - N
• Review home work and questions - J
• Use Fundraising reports to help with choosing fundraising strategies, manage and implement your campaign, and evaluate the fundraising campaign - see pages 62-63 in the fundraising packet - A:
  • Key Numbers report - see page 30 and screen cast
  • Lapsed Donors report using Powerbase Donor Behavior Detail report - screen cast
  • Tip sheet of list of useful contribution reports in Powerbase and their best use
  • Tip sheet on basics of creating a report
  • Adding any report to your Dashboard screen cast
• Practice Time: Set up a fundraising report - include your first name in report title - A
• More Fundraising Reports with SeachKit - J
• Sprint Campaigns - a multichannel fundraising campaign
  • Overview & Planning - see Introducing Sprint Fundraising Campaigns by PTP and Rebecca Johnson - A
  • Demo: Use scheduled emails and groups for Drip Email Campaigns, see Drip Campaign Concept slides by Yee Won Chong - A
  • Demo: Phone banking with contribution link - J screencast and tip sheet
  • Personal Campaign Pages aka Peer-to-peer campaigns (PCP) - J tip sheet
    • Sample PCP page
    • Configuring a contribution page to enable PCPs
    • What it looks like to the PCP page creators and how to approve them
• Ways to track which link a contributor followed to make a donation - J:
  • Simplest method: create separate donation pages and use campaigns
  • Alternative method: use a custom contribution field and profile - see tip sheet
• Practice Time & Assignment - J: Practice setting up a PCP page with its main contribution page, create a direct mail appeal letter and/or mailing labels, setup up a phonebank, or create emails / scheduled reminders with idea of drip campaign - include your first name in the titles

Other Resources

• Mimi Ho Article on Grassroots Fundraising Strategies

Day 3: End of Year Workflows and Putting it All Together

1:00 pm Eastern Time (approximately 120 minutes)

• How are things going? Agenda overview and getting logged in and Evaluation - N
• Review home work and questions - J
• Tracking Foundation grants & proposals - A
• Fundraising Events - J
  • Using Custom data and Profiles to gather specific participant info: dietary restrictions, etc.: screen cast
  • Selling tables, providing group discounts, and Managing Program ads: tipsheet
    • The simple way: Separate contribution page
    • The more complex way: Pricesets, screen cast
    • Everything you want to know about Events - full curriculum
• Practice time (up to 15 minutes) - J: create a priceset for use on a separate contribution page or event page where donors can select more than one item, e.g. sponsorships for ads, donate for tables, etc.
• Prepping for Communications - A:
  • Handling Households - see tip sheet
  • cleanup and dedupe your lists - see tip sheet with screen cast
• Demo: Direct Mail - N
  • Export donor contacts to mail letters via mailing warehouse - screen cast
  • Print appeal letters and mailing labels - the DIY way
    • Creating and printing direct mail letters
    • Printing mailing labels screen cast
• End of Year & Thank You letters
  • Creating Thank you letters for specific contributions - screencast - N
    • See this document for more details on creating thank you letters
    • HINT: Use Schedule Reminders to automate sending thank you letters to those who donated on an online contribution page - screen cast
    • NOTE: there is an extension (Mosaico Message Template extension) that allows you to use your Mosaico templates and it converts it to traditional HTML email templates
  • Creating EOY Tax letters - screen cast - N
    • Summary Fields - screen cast - N
    • See this tip sheet for more details on creating EOY donor letters
    • Sending EOY Tax letters via Email tip sheet
• Practice time - N: Do the End of Year Tax letter workflow for donors who gave last year
• Putting it all together: show and tell - A
  • See image from Labor Community Strategy Center's Sprint Campaign see slide deck from Introducing Sprint Fundraising Campaigns
  • Sprint Fundraising Campaign 2020 Case Study - Iowa CCI
• Closing questions - N