Neon One Webinars: All right, all right, all right.

Neon One Webinars: I am excited to have

Neon One Webinars: you folks join us. We're going to get started very shortly. I want to make sure that you all can hear me if you are able to use what's called the webinar chat.

Neon One Webinars: I would love to hear about where you're calling in from today not gonna make you confess anything, but would love to make sure that you all can hear me. And we could start with who you are and where you're from. So we got Kirk kicking things off already.

Neon One Webinars: Love that love that right?

Neon One Webinars: Oh, we got some upstate New York love. Hello.

Neon One Webinars: Hello, Tammy! My hair in Schenectady myself.

Neon One Webinars: We got Ned from Philadelphia was just there, Kelly, in Orlando. I'm gonna be there later in the year for planet philanthropy. Hi, Jocelyn, good to see. Ya!

Neon One Webinars: My kids are

Neon One Webinars: going to the Jcc. Schenectady camp this year, so excited to see some local love, we got Georgia, Bethlehem, Georgia. We got Chicago. I'm going to be in Chicago in a few months. So very excited about that, too. Salt Lake City, Austin, Todd, awesome Seattle, hey? More Chicago, Vicki! Oh, good to see you, Vicki.

Neon One Webinars: I'll be in Seattle for Afp icon.

Neon One Webinars: We got a lot of interest in today's presentation. This is a new one.

Neon One Webinars: So I'm pretty excited. My name's Tim Sarantoni. I'll be guiding you through our presentation called Confessions from event Planners, avoiding fundraising fails and maximizing success. This is going to be a bit different than your standard presentation. I'm going to go through kind of some basic housekeeping items, and and then we can get into it.

Neon One Webinars: But this was very heavily driven by you.

Neon One Webinars: and this will continue to be driven by you folks in so far that. I want this to be a participatory experience. I want you to share what you're comfortable with in the chat like you're already doing now. And I think we're gonna have a good time

Neon One Webinars: while also learning things along the way. So over the next hour, we're going to talk about a few different things. But first, st before we do that, I want to talk a bit about me. Just so, you understand who's running you through this? My name's Tim Sarantonio.

Neon One Webinars: I am director of Corporate Brand at Neon, one who is facilitating today's presentation.

Neon One Webinars: I've been in the nonprofit tech space for about 13 years. I speak. I write. I think a lot about all of the things that we struggle with on a daily basis in the nonprofit world. A big reason I focus on this is, I'm also chair of the fundraising Effectiveness project would love to see in the chat. If anybody is following those reports, if you use those, would love to hear about that

Neon One Webinars: in the chat. But you'll also notice this fun little brochure here. This is a little bit of a confession. Here, too, is that I'm going to try to pull. From my experience. I want to hear from your experience today, I'm going to walk through how we're going through things. But this is an honest to goodness, scan of a brochure that I made

Neon One Webinars: for throwing my own birthday party.

Neon One Webinars: On April 29, th 2,012, I threw myself a birthday party. I called it the timtacular, and I raised about $5,000 for 4 charities that I like.

Neon One Webinars: and this is one of the 1st times I started at Neon in November of 2011. So I actually use neon. And if you've ever seen Sam Nyland on our team, Sam Nyland does our product marketing. You might see her on the presentations when we're talking about the new volunteer tools, for instance, she helped work this event

Neon One Webinars: because she was my intern back in the day. So I've been planning events just like you folks have for for probably a while, even if you're new to the nonprofit space, or you've been doing this for a long time. I think we're going to have a great time today. What we're generally going to talk about is

Neon One Webinars: how to approach event planning, and the lessons that all of all of you have shared with us on some things to avoid, or some different ways to think about event planning. And I think if you're going to get anything out of today, I just hope

Neon One Webinars: that you

Neon One Webinars: rethink what the role of an event is in your overall strategy. Right? If we're baking a cake, let's think about this. Strategy is what the cake looks like after it's done. That's the output.

Neon One Webinars: But the inputs that you put in the sugar, the eggs, all of that type of stuff. That's what makes something come alive right?

Neon One Webinars: So when you're thinking about your event, what do you want it to look like? And I think that if we think about it like a generosity experience, and we're going to get into what that means, practically. But we don't do events anymore. There's too much technology around us.

Neon One Webinars: And the technology in many ways can distract us of the core point of the event. So there's a lot of fun things that we're going to be doing today. But 1st we're going to start with, we have to start with the whole point of all of this, which is generosity. So you folks are actually in for a treat.

Neon One Webinars: Later in April neon. One is going to be releasing its next research report, called the Generosity Report.

Neon One Webinars: and the Generosity Report is our most ambitious research. Yet if you've read anything by us around email, for instance, or recurring giving. We we really like to take a different approach. We're not trying to sell you a product.

Neon One Webinars: What we're trying to do is learn together on what is the changing behavior of supporters in the broader world. This is something that we're obsessed with here at neon one, because we want that to translate into how you use technology.

Neon One Webinars: The generosity experience is when the technology and the people come together. It's that zone of trust or distrust

Neon One Webinars: that gets created. And so, especially with events, there's a lot of messiness that comes with the human experience that we want to address.

Neon One Webinars: So I'm pretty excited to actually walk through. Why, events in particular are so fascinating as a way to really accelerate

Neon One Webinars: the overall ways that you can connect with your community

Neon One Webinars: because it's all about community building.

Neon One Webinars: So

Neon One Webinars: this report will come out in a few months. I'm going to give you a way that you can actually get a sneak preview of this. But I'm giving you the earliest teaser that of this kind of deep dive data that we've done yet. So I'm pretty excited and so awesome. Keep the chat up, love, seeing those where people are, would also love to see any questions, any confessions that you have. I want to see that we're really wanting to make this a bidirectional conversation as much as we can have in a webinar. So

Neon One Webinars: if you're not sure.

Neon One Webinars: I just want to kind of make it very clear that the vast majority of people are not

Neon One Webinars: people like Melinda Gates, Bill Gates, Mackenzie Scott. Any of those folks

Neon One Webinars: 97.3% of people who give annually, according to the fundraising fitness project, which is the largest and analyst of of individual giving data in the world. 97.3% are giving under $5,000 a year.

Neon One Webinars: Let me repeat that again, 97% of people give under $5,000 a year.

Neon One Webinars: Yet this is one of the least analyzed groups of people.

Neon One Webinars: because individually, they're not giving a lot right? They're only giving up to $5,000.

Neon One Webinars: You know.

Neon One Webinars: What about the big bucks? Well, here's here's the secret. That's where the big bucks starts from.

Neon One Webinars: So when we looked at this. This is the largest analysis of under $5,000 annual givers that's ever been performed.

Neon One Webinars: And so we looked at 99,522 individuals.

Neon One Webinars: and so yes, we will be sharing the recording, and the slides will also be available. That'll be hitting your inbox by tomorrow, by the way, so all good, if you got to jump. But there's some good reasons to stick around. Live by the way, so we'll get into that. But I got some surprises. I got some special resources, and again we learn by learning together.

Neon One Webinars: So we looked at this, and we looked at a few different things because we're able to actually look, not at the organizations. We're not looking at you. We're not looking necessarily at what Jocelyn's doing in her job. She's a neon user. I know that.

Neon One Webinars: And so what we're actually looking at is the people who support organizations like Jocelyn's.

Neon One Webinars: And so what's interesting and different about this analysis is that we can have a better handle on the behavior of people.

Neon One Webinars: and what is driving generosity for them. So we looked at whether they gave to one nonprofit or multiple nonprofits. We looked at how they gave. If they gave pledges or recurring gifts, and as pertinent to today's presentation, we looked at whether they went to an event they volunteered, or they ran a peer to peer fundraising campaign, because all of those actually are heavily connected to what might be called a nonprofit event.

Neon One Webinars: So that's also an important point for today is that generally I am focusing on fundraising style events. But it should be noted that any opportunity to gather people together is something that could be very powerful and transformative to them. So it could be a volunteer kickoff. It could be a free educational session.

Neon One Webinars: But a lot of what I think we're going to talk about today is the fundraising style events. And generally I can bucket things between an analysis of peer to peer fundraising or kind of your more gala style, events and things like that. They're different.

Neon One Webinars: But they're still gathering. So we're going to get into that.

Neon One Webinars: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Marty, awesome. Yeah. Time-based analysis. There's a lot of things that we want to do with this. So so what we actually looked at over 5 years. So there's an element of time based analysis. But we do want to kind of back it up and go. Okay. But what are they doing during the year? Right? A lot of conversations on like, you know what's happening in giving Tuesday, for instance, when we analyzed recurring givers, we found that there's an actual interesting spike in May

Neon One Webinars: for initiating gifts.

Neon One Webinars: There was a whole debate last year. Why are people doing this. This is actually why we started to go. We have to think differently about this, because the nonprofit sector keeps asking, why do people do this?

Neon One Webinars: And nobody has a good answer.

Neon One Webinars: and I have a lot of theories on that. But ultimately it comes down to. We are not looking at people like people. We're looking at them like transactions.

Neon One Webinars: So this report

Neon One Webinars: has a few different archetypes that go beyond the transactions. You got your multi-year people, your multi organization people, your planners, your members and your connectors. What we're going to do in today's presentation

Neon One Webinars: is, walk through. Who are our connectors?

Neon One Webinars: Then we're going to translate that important group and go, okay, if we're going to build an audience around these connectors.

Neon One Webinars: what's holding us back?

Neon One Webinars: And I'm going to walk you through 4 things that are holding event planners like you back.

Neon One Webinars: that have nothing to do with

Neon One Webinars: dealing with the actual event itself. It is dealing with you and the way that you think about event planning.

Neon One Webinars: Then we're going to round things out in the final parts of our presentation and go through those confessions

Neon One Webinars: and apply them in a practical, real way

Neon One Webinars: on 4 different stages of event planning. And I've been using and doing event planning for

Neon One Webinars: 20 years at this point. And I've talked with at this point. Thousands. I don't even know how many nonprofit fundraisers, event planners, membership managers all of that that I've talked to over the years. But what this is is. This is your story. And this is the story of the future. On what community building looks like, because it cannot be based on. Let's get the most money out of a small group of people not going to work

Neon One Webinars: because people don't behave that way. I'm not even doing this from a oh, it's only the rich people. No.

Neon One Webinars: there's so much analysis and data that actually makes it clear that many, many people start their their legacy gift vision, or their multi-year pledges, or their big, transform transformative gifts that doesn't come out of nowhere.

Neon One Webinars: When you read about the old lady in the paper who left the money to the dogs and the cats

Neon One Webinars: that didn't come out of nowhere.

Neon One Webinars: What she's been doing is donating for multiple years. What he might be doing is supporting multiple organizations that are all focused on the same type of cause.

Neon One Webinars: They might be setting up recurring gifts. You get the idea

Neon One Webinars: for today, though, we're going to look at events.

Neon One Webinars: So we're going to meet our connectors. And again, I'm paying attention to the chat. We got about 45 min total. But I do want to make this in about a half an hour. So we have a good 15 min for conversation discussions, ideas follow up.

Neon One Webinars: I'm going to share some confessions, too. So that's 1 of the things is that if you want to feel comfortable sharing something. Yes, it is a chat. Other people could see that. So if you don't feel comfortable sharing something that's fine. But it would be good to hear what resonates with you.

Neon One Webinars: So 1st we're going to start with event registrants. When we looked at out of the 99,522 people, about 18%, 19% of them registered for an event it could be fundraising it could be. I take my kids to Clay class

Neon One Webinars: every every you know a lot of weeks I'm registering through neon system for that, because it's a local client, right? It could be an event that they registered for. But what we found is that the average gift, especially once you hit 3, 4, 5 starts to not only accelerate but go up.

Neon One Webinars: And so there's definitely a strong correlation between participation and increased giving

Neon One Webinars: people who show up show up in different ways, and that's also

Neon One Webinars: the same with volunteers. Check it out. Look at the look at those lines. Right nice correlation between the 2.

Neon One Webinars: And so number one. I think it's also important to kind of get into the fact here on a time-based thing, that if this teaches you nothing else, stop planning your events as singular year things.

Neon One Webinars: it's not the one event that you got them in. It's the beginning of the relationship, or a milestone check-in that can accelerate their excitement for the work that you're doing.

Neon One Webinars: Don't think in a 1 year planning cadence. Start to think about a 2 year, 3 year up to 5 year.

Neon One Webinars: What does this event look like in 5 years?

Neon One Webinars: What are the people who come and volunteer for us look like and are doing in 5 years.

Neon One Webinars: It's exactly like a marketing marketing tool, Marty, you know what's up.

Neon One Webinars: And so volunteers. Very similar thing, right? Like, I'm excited. We just rolled out self-management in neon ones tools, right? I think that we're going to see a resurgence in volunteerism because we're going to give people the tools to self manage for a very, very long time in the nonprofit sector. I've been again in the sector for coming up to 14 years just at neon one. Before that I started fundraising in 2,008.

Neon One Webinars: In fact, I thought, that's what you would do to get started is to make events. I was terrible at it.

Neon One Webinars: That's confession number one. I didn't know what I was doing in the beginning, and that's because everybody focuses on the money that you can get out of people, not the experience, not the story, not the long term impact. And volunteers have long been set on the side. How many of you come on, be real? How many of you manage your volunteers?

Neon One Webinars: Maybe if you're using neon, that's a different story. But historically, have volunteers been in the same database as your donor system in a seamless and easy to understand way. No?

Neon One Webinars: Well, Jocelyn, yes, Jocelyn uses me, this is hard.

Neon One Webinars: and that's the same for peer-to-peer participants

Neon One Webinars: peer to peer. Fundraising tends to also be siloed off. You got a lot of great options out there.

Neon One Webinars: Then what

Neon One Webinars: they sign up, then what we actually found some really fascinating impacts, especially about potential burnout, of volunteers and peer to peer participants in year one

Neon One Webinars: so larger question, not events related is, what's your onboarding process like, right

Neon One Webinars: air table for volunteers? Okay, you're using something.

Neon One Webinars: You're using something. And I think that's the big thing. Is that what this data shows us is the more interconnected

Neon One Webinars: you can start to see people look at what happens.

Neon One Webinars: I think data mapping is a major major thing here. Part of part of the point of neon one is that we're doing a lot of that mapping for you, or where you're giving the control to make it easier how to do that right like, get a campaign synced up.

Neon One Webinars: You're rocking.

Neon One Webinars: Well, Edward, we could talk about that.

Neon One Webinars: because, no matter what we don't want to neglect the connectors.

Neon One Webinars: The connectors are people who make moves.

Neon One Webinars: Thank you, Judy, you rock.

Neon One Webinars: and and here's the thing like a lot of times. When you see data like this, the entire point is to try to get you to buy something right like I like.

Neon One Webinars: It's not the point. The point is is that we're supposed to look at how people are behaving and understanding where the technology can support them. If the automatic conclusion that we draw is awesome. How much money can I get out of them? And and all the average gift sizes and all? That's not the point.

Neon One Webinars: The point is is that the longer people connect with you and feel more deeply connected, they're going to come back. Big time for you.

Neon One Webinars: Technology helps.

Neon One Webinars: But here's the reality. Is that

Neon One Webinars: your event attendees your peer to peer participants, your volunteers beyond program participants, right members.

Neon One Webinars: recurring donors, all of these different people. They overlap

Neon One Webinars: even the term donor is problematic, because what you do is you bucket that person by the transactional approach that you're going to take with them? Oh, they're an event. Goer

Neon One Webinars: you want to be called. That

Neon One Webinars: is your identity solely designated, by the way, that you trans you transact with somebody? Of course not.

Neon One Webinars: So. How does this translate into event planning, though, right? So that's the high level. That's the larger context of why we're focusing on events today. Right? 20 min in, we we've been able to address the macroeconomic thing, because here's the thing. You know what you don't need.

Neon One Webinars: You know what you do not need

Neon One Webinars: a technology company telling you to diversify your revenue.

Neon One Webinars: You know

Neon One Webinars: you don't need us to tell you. To diversify. What you need to do is to figure out how to do that without staying up until 3 in the morning doing it.

Neon One Webinars: I'm very passionate about events planning if you can't tell Hilish good to see you.

Neon One Webinars: So, by the way, I'm going to pause on this.

Neon One Webinars: we're going to take a breath, and then we're going to shift into the back half of our presentation. But if you do want to get a sneak, peek, flip out your phone register for this upcoming special presentation by author and absolute genius, Abby Jarvis, on our team. I'm so proud of the work that she's put into it. And you're going to see it come through. It's going to be beautiful

Neon One Webinars: sponsor tables, familiar. Okay? So so, Naomi, what we're getting into is a very, very practical question. So that's a great shift. Okay, this is all nice and well and good on the macroeconomic standpoint. But people like Naomi are like, how do we streamline the experience right? And so I might want to bookmark that to understand that a bit better. But we're going to get in some real talk first.st

Neon One Webinars: So we're going to get into events very shortly. And I want you to continue to ask questions like Naomi's.

Neon One Webinars: But I want to talk about the realities of working in the nonprofit sector that often get kind of brushed under during conversations like this. And I think it's it's especially in 2025. It is critical to take a whole person approach

Neon One Webinars: in the world of AI. In the world of political upheaval and social weirdness. And all this type of stuff, what is grounded.

Neon One Webinars: well grounded is knowing who you are and what matters to you.

Neon One Webinars: You can't walk into work. If you're distracted about a bunch of different things. You got to be in some ways in the right mindset, right? It's not just mindset. There's resource realities. But some of this can come down to. How are we thinking about the work itself?

Neon One Webinars: I don't know if you're any severance fans. I've been excited to honestly use this slide. I'm obsessed with the show. Mr. Milcheck is a gift in many different ways, but I wanted to use him in particular to represent the professional mask that we sometimes put on. How many meetings have you been into, where something is bothering you? And you have to put a smile on

Neon One Webinars: right. You're at the event, and somebody's just insulted you on the catering.

Neon One Webinars: I understand. No, that's really that's really frustrating. Okay, we'll look into that right?

Neon One Webinars: And so it's important to know that events in particular can be very stressful.

Neon One Webinars: See, look at this, Ada Jenny, right like like

Neon One Webinars: there isn't a procedure that just turns off the event planning side, it will bleed through.

Neon One Webinars: And so you also need to put your own boundaries up. Otherwise you're going to be a very sad man like Mr. Milkshake, Mr. Milkshake all of the above.

Neon One Webinars: So

Neon One Webinars: oh, lots of compartmentalization. I think this is like this is literally that show that show is is talking about that right? So that's the thing it bleeds into your dreams. It affects your relationships with your family right like, if you don't feel good, you're not going to be able to be your full self. And so that emotional labor does not get addressed.

Neon One Webinars: 63% of event professionals report extreme high levels of stress 11 have been diagnosed with mental health conditions. Because of that work. There's last minute changes. There's budgeting. There's tech issues. There's guest management. Naomi's thing right? That's guest management.

Neon One Webinars: work-life balance is just one piece.

Neon One Webinars: So you have to step back and go. What is our process like, what is our planning process like first, st that is making these things clear. Right? You got an air table. You got an Asana.

Neon One Webinars: That's that's a way you might be able to manage the logistics of the event. It could be as simple as pen and paper

Neon One Webinars: firefighters and policemen. Cody, I would love that source reference. Right? Like, I think I have the references references for this data. But a lot of this is coming from American Psychology Association stuff like that. Right?

Neon One Webinars: The other part is the invisible networks that connect all this together. Right? We talked about the volunteer connections. Well, think about data transfers. Right. You use your your auction platform. You use your peer to peer platform. You get that downloaded, or you God forbid! You got people emailing you donor lists because they handled the offline gifts in a separate situation. And right.

Neon One Webinars: And so part of the reason you partner with a technology company is to not worry about data attacks.

Neon One Webinars: But even beyond that, you have control over elements of the data.

Neon One Webinars: So do your events connect with your core. Crm, does it connect with your website? Does it connect with your email? How does all this stuff work? How does the payments work?

Neon One Webinars: And so a lot of things that go into this. There's some fun things for in person that we're working on, that's all I'm gonna say now. But the ultimate point is that this should be something that, like a tech vendor, should be helping take off your plate

Neon One Webinars: in some way. But I think it's important, because somebody mentioned the mapping that like don't just assume we know everything about you. There needs to be a literacy of the data that exists with this, too. Right? This is where I think a lot of the event. Situations that we're running into are being amplified. Because look, for instance, I remember running an event.

Neon One Webinars: and it was a private event at the Catholic school that I was working at, and I ran the list of the people who were coming and in the database, and that actually kind of gets into the last part, which is the technology can help here, but it can also be an issue. So incorrect data can influence your guests. Perception of the event. Confession number One. I screwed up the nickname Field.

Neon One Webinars: so I was using razor's edge. We went to the thing. It obviously was not connected to anything on the Internet at this point, you know, about 8 years ago.

Neon One Webinars: or excuse me, oh, my God! 12 years ago, fine! And so

Neon One Webinars: I printed the guest list, and we did the name Tags, using the 1st name, field and Razor's edge. No, should have used the nickname. Field

Neon One Webinars: should have used the nickname Field right?

Neon One Webinars: And so that she crossed out this woman. She wanted to be like Mitzi, or something like that. Not her actual 1st name. She crossed that out. I ran upstairs and I updated the database.

Neon One Webinars: Now, in a cloud system, you could just be on your phone and do that. But

Neon One Webinars: the reality is is that if the technology is a distraction, this is what I mean by the generosity experience, you can have the most beautifully planned event on paper you can have all the people aligned, and all it takes is a tech issue or just a misalignment on what happens afterwards. Right? Like real talk, event confessions

Neon One Webinars: I had to connect with my marketing operations person right before this webinar, to make sure that the lists of people who attended versus not attended were going to load properly.

Neon One Webinars: It's not the event itself.

Neon One Webinars: The technology lays over all of the experience. One misnamed merged field can have an impact. And we're going to get into that

Neon One Webinars: because it's confession time. We are halfway through our time together. Total. But in the next 15 min we're going to get through some concrete confessions. I have a basic planning framework that I've developed. People accelerate connections and experiences pace.

Neon One Webinars: You don't need to remember an acronym. We're going to handle it naturally.

Neon One Webinars: but this is also where, if you want to put out some confessions, we're already starting to see some marty. My event coordinator just quit last week waited till 5.

Neon One Webinars: Our event is in 2 months.

Neon One Webinars: If you want to share things like that, I'd really appreciate it, because it can help me understand what your headspace is at

Neon One Webinars: and where I can honestly help, because some of this is is a bit of a therapy session.

Neon One Webinars: But realistically, this is also a practical technology session, too. So I'm going to have a mix of psychology and tech tips.

Neon One Webinars: This is generosity, experience, design, Katie.

Neon One Webinars: I hope you take like a warm bath and light candles and stuff like that afterwards. And I want to hear what people's after event. Ritual is.

Neon One Webinars: what do you do once the event is done, would love to hear that by the end of the thing I have to constantly remind my board chair that this is a mission focus event. Not a private party. A board member demanded numbers right in the middle of our closing event. I thought he was kidding. Luckily I was carrying my laptop, I mean, like, this is hard.

Neon One Webinars: This is hard, it's hard.

Neon One Webinars: Thank you.

Neon One Webinars: All of this. All of this.

Neon One Webinars: you know, an event is close, and you have nightmares beforehand. No, like we don't want that. Sit in the dark in a quiet room at a past employer. I had some someone scream that we put 2 people at her. Oh, my God! I got to read this 1. 0, wow! Okay, hold on.

Neon One Webinars: we. An event is done as a past employer.

Neon One Webinars: I had someone scream that we put 2 people at her table because she didn't tell us she was using all of the tickets. I had to reseat them, and we're fine. But the woman the sponsor was. The sponsor screamed at and made a scene. Aye, aye, the button for direct donation went down

Neon One Webinars: on our landing page, we received no direct donations to the night of the event. Oh, that's not good. I eat and drink my emotions, and then go to bed at 4 Am. And sleep. The next day I broke out in hives. No, okay, so I want to. I want to make sure people don't break out in hives. I have limited ability to do that.

Neon One Webinars: All I can be is a a South today.

Neon One Webinars: And we're gonna start with the people right? Cause. That's what makes it fun.

Neon One Webinars: I know everybody seemingly lost their minds as we've gone back into the world in the post pandemic world like. I have a favorite creator on Tiktok, Jacques the whipper, and he like literally had to make a video about people like do not grope me.

Neon One Webinars: Stop it.

Neon One Webinars: So like, we're all learning again how to be people.

Neon One Webinars: And so mixed messages, right mixed messages.

Neon One Webinars: And I will say, you know, a lot of this type of stuff. This is a confession that my wife put on by the way. So this is, these are actual confessions that folks like you have shared in the lead up to this webinar.

Neon One Webinars: Okay? And please continue to put this stuff in. I want to have time to go through these and chat through these, too. So here's a confession, this confessions from my wife. She was making fun of me. Okay, but what about the time you changed the price of raffle tickets midway through the event. Oh, yeah, I did this. That was stupid, awful awful idea! And and so love to make fun of me about this one, but really it comes down to. If I had the right people at the right time, this wouldn't have

Neon One Webinars: Yeah, keep sharing. Keep connecting. I love this. I love this so people.

Neon One Webinars: messages. A lot of things can can be streamlined. If you are auctioneer got drunk, I think a lot of. So I can't solve that. And I do want to address the role of alcohol, at events. But that's going to be a little bit later in this, but starting with segmentations before the event, and even lining up in your database. People who attended versus not attended people who donated versus just bought an event ticket. Get these lists ready before the event.

Neon One Webinars: because you can make segmented conversations that are relevant to these people by doing that.

Neon One Webinars: And so one of the things that this helps is during the event. If you have these lists prefabbed, sometimes your event system may even automatically start to to pull these together, based on the event happening right? Check in information stuff like that. Then you don't have to hunt around about worrying, do? Am I going to be able to contact these people.

Neon One Webinars: And and especially now, text messages are part of this. This could apply for for the the letters in the lead up to things. There's a lot of things that you can do that that have this. Oh, boy.

Neon One Webinars: let's keep going. I'm gonna I'm gonna move there.

Neon One Webinars: I cursed my Vp out of the event for hiding money, Samantha, we will have to talk about that one. That is, these are great. By the way, thank you.

Neon One Webinars: So what's a tech tip? I almost feel like silly about talking about mail merge tags. But like they're useful in this case, especially because 68% of people are basing their decisions on whether to open your email on the from name. Right? So maybe your Vp. Who is hiding money, don't put their name on the follow up email

Neon One Webinars: might might have a bit of a brand problem there. Right? So you got to check these types of things. So maybe the Vp. And we're going to use Samantha as an example, right? Like

Neon One Webinars: you have to check that. If you discovered that in the middle of the event.

Neon One Webinars: then you got to go and say, what are the follow up emails.

Neon One Webinars: My wife is an engineer, and she has what's called a punch list.

Neon One Webinars: I almost want to like, go back to everybody and like, make a punch list for events management. It's a checklist. And it's basically like things pre during and post event. This is one of those checklist items is is messaging alignment.

Neon One Webinars: You can assume that your messaging plan will hold up because somebody might be doing something stupid at the event.

Neon One Webinars: prepare for the worst. Hope for the best.

Neon One Webinars: I got hollered at by a guest because I did a buy now

Neon One Webinars: on bid before the guest checked in, and I did let her have it. Oh, that's funny.

Neon One Webinars: Yeah, auction stuff can be wild during the event itself. We'll we'll cover that another time. But a lot of this is pre-work.

Neon One Webinars: and and I think it's important to think about your segments before the event, because then you can think about what's the follow up experience like, and that leads to the second recommendation. So you start with your people. You start and visualize who's coming to the event right? If I asked all of you. Okay, we got a thousand black tie dinner for Mallory there.

Neon One Webinars: Who are these people?

Neon One Webinars: Why are they there?

Neon One Webinars: If you know that heading into the event.

Neon One Webinars: you're gonna have a better better understanding. You can even create archetypes around your event

Neon One Webinars: and say, Okay, I got my connector.

Neon One Webinars: I got my my Mega donor right.

Neon One Webinars: You could do many different things if you start to archetype and understand who is coming? Who's going to be in the room.

Neon One Webinars: Very important question for events. Who's going to be in the room?

Neon One Webinars: Okay, let's keep it rolling time.

Neon One Webinars: It's not about just money. It's about the time that you're spending

Neon One Webinars: a lot of time is wasted in event planning and event management, because you were dealing with stupid questions.

Neon One Webinars: Okay, so confession.

Neon One Webinars: timing and flow matters. I am obsessed with this in my events. Oh, going to Tanya's question. Dynamic content would be like.

Neon One Webinars: Okay, for an example. In neon you could ask people custom questions like, maybe you asked like, why did you give today on their initial donation form? And that's on their record. You'd be able to bring that into an email in the lead up to the event and say, like when you 1st contributed, this is the story that you told us right, and you can make it that if there's something in there, then show it, and if it's not, then it wouldn't appear right. So that's dynamic content. It's just like

Neon One Webinars: it's going beyond a it's a merge tag. That's 1 way to to refer to it in the world of AI. It's going to get even weirder eventually here. But yeah.

Neon One Webinars: flow streamlining. Ultimately, movement is kind of the operational word that I've embraced for a lot of these things. And so dynamic is a good thing, because if you can dynamically serve somebody something at the right time at the right place, that's when things click. That's when it gets magical in the generosity, experience, and so

Neon One Webinars: flow, and time. I am obsessed with having the idea of an anchor moment in your event.

Neon One Webinars: and the anchor moment is not to just have somebody play a video, and then you ask them for money.

Neon One Webinars: An anchor moment is where you get everybody to feel like they're part of the story.

Neon One Webinars: I do this. I do this with Trivia a lot. I had trivia at my wedding because I wanted that as an anchor moment, but generally you have to. I've been to a lot of events that like there's a lot of things going on, and it's all spread out over the place, and there's no energy that brings people together. I've run

Neon One Webinars: a bunch of events. This one was actually in relation to a Arcade event that I ran. I had the motion capture actor from mortal Kombat. I had the founder of cards against humanity. It was an Arcade tournament. It was so spread out nobody knew what the hell was going on.

Neon One Webinars: and it just kind of fizzled right, all those cool things. And it didn't matter.

Neon One Webinars: And that's because you need to tap into the peak end rule. This is the psychology portion of this section, right? That that when you want to accelerate things you need to think about the peak moment of your event, and then how it ends. So I just talked about an anchor moment. That's your peak.

Neon One Webinars: So what can we do to make sure that the end of the event is good. Now, when I was running cystic fibrosis Foundation, Chicago Festavale event, so I'm 3 years sober coming up to 3 years sober. I do have an ebook on how to run sober, friendly spaces for your events. You could check it out on my Linkedin. It's completely free.

Neon One Webinars: But I used to be really in the craft beer. And so when I was running this for Chicago, I remember the big end event that we would like everybody would look forward to was the delivery at the end of this, like massive beer festival of White Castle.

Neon One Webinars: like they just had carted in deliveries of White Castle. Burgers and people went nuts.

Neon One Webinars: But the end of your event is not the endpoint on your

Neon One Webinars: time of the event. It's actually what happens afterwards when you continue to tell the follow up story. And that is why, if you can employ automated workflows, this is an example of one from neon for a 1st time donor. So maybe they came in and they made their 1st donation at the event. Maybe it was an in-kind gift for the auction versus they gave a financial contribution.

Neon One Webinars: And so

Neon One Webinars: what the other thing is there, and I can't wait to see all these other things can't hear me. Can you still hear me? Folks

Neon One Webinars: did talking about sobriety. Kill my my time? Okay, sorry, Kim.

Neon One Webinars: but she can't hear me. So okay. So here's the thing. 86% of people like all of you are probably doing something you're not

Neon One Webinars: supposed to be doing. And and yet people want that level of personalization. Thank you. Everyone. Okay, good. And so one of the ways that you can end on a high note is, you map it out

Neon One Webinars: like literally, you can map it out in neon. You could do it down to the minutes like you could have something that the moment that event ends within 10 min

Neon One Webinars: something's starting to happen.

Neon One Webinars: This goes back to the lists, the people who's in the room, the data configuration. You see how

Neon One Webinars: it builds up.

Neon One Webinars: then you can start to accelerate a lot of really good event. Planning is what you do in the lead up to the event.

Neon One Webinars: And so this is one of those where you want to take it and set it and forget it, especially after the 1st time. And you're like, Oh, this worked really well, then, you can iterate on it, and you could add more splits and more different segmented automation. Follow up. There's a lot of cool things that you can do if you think about connecting the experience beyond the event. What's the full story? Automation helps you tell that without you freaking out.

Neon One Webinars: because ultimately people want to feel like they belong.

Neon One Webinars: I love the the book, the generosity crisis. I'm actually going to see the author, Nathan Chappelle, tomorrow.

Neon One Webinars: And so oh, this, Samantha? No, this is neon that's neon crm, so

Neon One Webinars: give them reasons to belong. So I'm going to see Nathan Chappelle, author of the Generosity Crisis tomorrow, and and I have to start kind of saying I'm sorry, but I don't think we have a generosity crisis. I actually think we have a participation crisis.

Neon One Webinars: I don't think it's that people are less generous. It's that they feel that nonprofits don't care.

Neon One Webinars: or that they can make a bigger impact if they buy a Patagonia jacket. I don't think it has anything to do with the dollars being given

Neon One Webinars: Naomi. So Peak end rule is this is actually something that was popularized by Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast and slow. So the end is not necessarily the event I want to actually take. I'm going to go back real quick to this one. A peak end rule is not just for events. It's everything in life. It will change your life if you realize that what people remember

Neon One Webinars: is generally the peak of an experience and the end of the experience. You have a role in defining both of those. But ultimately your guest. In the case of this situation. An event registrant is they're the ones that are, gonna you know, ultimately go. I had a really good time, and it ended very well, so you can only do so much. But if you understand that this is how people like like

Neon One Webinars: going back to the example where somebody mixed up.

Neon One Webinars: And they did. You know the example was that something with an auction item, a bit of miscommunication, and the person ended up happy, or the chairs right like the chairs were moved around. Right? Everybody ended up. Okay.

Neon One Webinars: just remember that in the middle of your event planning and somebody is freaking the F out

Neon One Webinars: peak and roll.

Neon One Webinars: How can I make this end? Well.

Neon One Webinars: because this might be a peak low for them? So let me end it on a high, cool

Neon One Webinars: dinner cruise going wrong. This is a nuts. This is an interesting one that we got. Evening dinner cruise canceled because tornadoes were touching. Down the boat company still ran the cruise, so that was a fascinating one. So I thought this was very fascinating, because there's things that you can control and things that you cannot control. But ultimately, like the guests, still went on the storm boat. And so ultimately people are going to choose their own path right.

Neon One Webinars: There is a if you read the email in the lead up to this webinar, there was a bit of a spicy situation. I did get some negative responses, but with over a hundred people registering for this event here today, and hundreds more that registered for the follow up. I think it was all right, but, like the reality is, you can't control your guest behavior in certain ways, and you can assume that people are going to do the right thing. So lean into the fact that people are chaotic

Neon One Webinars: is the point I'm trying to make

Neon One Webinars: and give them ways that they can show their excitement. And this is where we can shift a little bit more into peer to peer fundraising as a discussion. So I mentioned cystic fibrosis. I used to be a volunteer for the Chicago chapter, and so I want to call out their find a climb experience. They use us for a lot of different events, for all their different chapters.

Neon One Webinars: and it's just cool that people can go, and they can self select and say, I want to do this thing right. And we're seeing this with smaller organizations. They offer birthday fundraisers. Right?

Neon One Webinars: You saw that on Facebook for a long time as a really powerful thing. And I think that where we're shifting now is that people in the absence of like.

Neon One Webinars: really kind of really like trustworthy social media things. They're going to go shifting back to either owned virtual spaces like a private discussion group or special virtual, like video game tournament type stuff twitch live streams like virtual experiences or physical things like this. Right?

Neon One Webinars: Social media is a conduit. It's a way to get people to feel belonging. But this is really where it happens. So social media is a means to an end. Focus on creating spaces where people can outright join

Neon One Webinars: what you're trying to do.

Neon One Webinars: So cystic fibrosis foundation fantastic example. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna bring it on home. I'm almost done.

Neon One Webinars: So how can you make it magical?

Neon One Webinars: And this is important because I think that we need more magic. We need more joy in our work.

Neon One Webinars: And so how can you bring it together? So again, going back to that anchor moment.

Neon One Webinars: bringing people together right time, right place, it makes a difference.

Neon One Webinars: And what really drives this? We did this research in the nonprofit email report a few years ago, and we found that

Neon One Webinars: emotions like relief, gratitude, pride, excitement, optimism really drove open rates and engagement. And and I'm excited to kind of continue this research into where events lead this. But there's a lot of evidence to point toward that identity based emotional resonance is going to work in regardless of the Channel email, in-person events. Who cares

Neon One Webinars: because it makes people feel like they're seeing themselves.

Neon One Webinars: And so the way you communicate

Neon One Webinars: can make a difference. It could be the email. It could be the text at the event. It could be telling people that raffle tickets suddenly went up in prices in the middle of the thing, right? Like, how you deliver something impacts this.

Neon One Webinars: So what does this mean for events. So this is actually my wife, Jocelyn Sarantonio. She uses neon to raise money for her sister-in-law's memorial charity.

Neon One Webinars: So breast cancer, my my sister-in-law Megan passed away in 2011. So again, a lot of what I do is driven by

Neon One Webinars: the world that I want

Neon One Webinars: people like Megan to have lived in, and then that I want my daughters to live in. And so, being able to give my wife

Neon One Webinars: that that platform really really matters.

Neon One Webinars: and I think that we forget that sometimes when we're planning our events is that we're trying to

Neon One Webinars: create community and we're trying to create.

Neon One Webinars: That people feel welcome and seen.

Neon One Webinars: and yes, it's cool that you can have auctions like Look. I like got to meet Fabio from top chef

Neon One Webinars: right. I saw a woman who was painting a painting live, and then they auction that off like live ice sculptures like like celebrities. I've seen it.

Neon One Webinars: and what I remember more is the looks on my children's faces when my wife crossed the finish line.

Neon One Webinars: Because that's what resonated for me.

Neon One Webinars: and your supporters are thinking the same way

Neon One Webinars: now, the way that you can do this, we talked about a lot of different psychology, things, technology, things, how to take care of yourself. But at the end of the day. What you're doing is why I think it's important to think of this as a holistic one team thing

Neon One Webinars: is because that's the generosity experience. If we start to compartmentalize, sever our supporters and our technology.

Neon One Webinars: we are not going to find happiness, success, or long-term growth.

Neon One Webinars: And so when you think about it like this.

Neon One Webinars: It changes your perspective on, why am I planning an event?

Neon One Webinars: Because people accelerate connections and experiences.

Neon One Webinars: You start with people, and you end with the experience.

Neon One Webinars: Because peak and rule, right automation can free time up.

Neon One Webinars: You can let supporters choose their own pass. You can do this in a gala.

Neon One Webinars: You can. You can have a scavenger hunt around the space.

Neon One Webinars: you know. Think about ways that they can feel more connected.

Neon One Webinars: and make sure that there's the magic there. What is the magical moment and your own event planning?

Neon One Webinars: We've created a comprehensive planner for all of this type of stuff. It is awesome.

Neon One Webinars: and I want you to check it out. I think you're going to love what we've done. It's an interactive map

Neon One Webinars: for all these different types of things. But at the end of the day. What we're trying to do is just empower you to be better.

Neon One Webinars: And you already have it in you

Neon One Webinars: a lot of times your technology or the way you're approaching the technology is holding you back. So I'm really, really happy that you're able to join me for today.

Neon One Webinars: Yeah, I could get the link.

Neon One Webinars: Let me get that, Matt. Are you watching on my team?

Neon One Webinars: If Matt, on my team is watching, otherwise I'm here. Matt, could you drop the planner, URL, for people.

Neon One Webinars: even if it's not the Utm attributed one. That's fine. Just get him the the planner, Matt, on my team here to help.

Neon One Webinars: So we're going to do that. We're going to drop the thing in there for you. But no matter what happens in any of your stuff, people are generous.

Neon One Webinars: people are kind, people are welcoming all of you are, too.

Neon One Webinars: Let them show you.

Neon One Webinars: All right. I'm going to go back through some of this stuff while Matt is dropping that URL for people in there. I want to see what we said, that is, and

Neon One Webinars: generosity report. Yeah, I could do. I could do the sign up for that. I can get that while Matt's getting the planner.

Neon One Webinars: I want to see. I want to go back because we had some doozies in there, so sneak peek at the generosity report.

Neon One Webinars: Okay, I'm going to drop that in there

Neon One Webinars: and then Matt will get the planner itself.

Neon One Webinars: But let's go back.

Neon One Webinars: I'm not gonna hold you hostage. If you're like cool. Got it, Tim. Then we'll be good. But I'm actually going to stop sharing my screen. And so you can see my face here.

Neon One Webinars: Okay, thank you, Matt. He dropped the planner in there. Post event.

Neon One Webinars: What do I do? 1st get sick.

Neon One Webinars: The adrenaline wears off, the body catches up. And usually I try to take the next step off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually, I don't know if everybody anybody's read this book

Neon One Webinars: the body keeps score. I'm going through this right now, and like, look, folks, there's trauma here we have trauma that we deal with. So I love that Cody

Neon One Webinars: does neon have ideas on how to streamline on site?

Neon One Webinars: yes, Nancy, and more to come. But we have. We have a partner. We got some other discussions that were happening there. And we're working on some onsite stuff, too. This will be followed up by email.

Neon One Webinars: Yes. Oh, I want to thank Bianca. I want to thank all of you because I wouldn't have been able to do this webinar without you folks

Neon One Webinars: get the workbook to go with the book. I literally just shared the event planner with my director, he was in love.

Neon One Webinars: Yes, the workbook. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're good to workbooks, Tim. Can you clarify?

Neon One Webinars: Oh, that that's Naomi's question from you before

Neon One Webinars: I'm a donor database specialist. I don't use neon anymore. But I did in a previous role, and I loved it. Thank you, Barry. Use quote unquote another Crm.

Neon One Webinars: They have a budget over 50 million. They don't believe in other people using the Crm Boo gatekeeping. I'm the only one who does everything. Boo!

Neon One Webinars: Any suggestions on how to create buy-in for my team to use our Crm!

Neon One Webinars: You're on the verge of burnout. Oh, man,

Neon One Webinars: Mary Elizabeth, I am gonna just follow up with you directly.

Neon One Webinars: and also, if you folks do want to follow me. I write a lot about this type of stuff in general.

Neon One Webinars: On Linkedin. So if you want to check me out.

Neon One Webinars: do you have a post event, rubric or way to measure success or adjust for the next time

Neon One Webinars: I can look through my stuff. But, Ada, I would, I would say, like I've used prospect scoring.

Neon One Webinars: and a lot of that is based off a combination of like engagement checkpoints. So, Ada, I would say, a successful event. Your Kpis for the event are going to be measured by the registration.

Neon One Webinars: the

Neon One Webinars: attendance rate. What's your attendance? Rate? Live attendance, rate, virtual or not right like for this webinar. We did all right. We did. Okay, a little below on live than where I'd want it to be. But you know, virtual, it's always shifting. If you could track engagement, did they do something? Can you track that? They did an action?

Neon One Webinars: And then what was the follow up potential? And obviously their financial impact like. So even if you could do a analysis of expenses like basically a a profit loss statement per guest

Neon One Webinars: that could be interesting, too. I should probably write this down, or our content team would come up with that. But connect with me on Linkedin, I might follow up on that one

Neon One Webinars: in all honesty. You you might inspire me to make something, Ada. If I'm going to be honest, my team hates my team hates me that I do that. But I might do it.

Neon One Webinars: Coordinate with us.

Neon One Webinars: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Neon One Webinars: Let's see.

Neon One Webinars: let's see some of these other ones. I had 2 different people in our system in the exact same name. I called the wrong one on a semi regular basis, because I didn't come up with a good system. Or remember. Put a note.

Neon One Webinars: put a note.

Neon One Webinars: Yes, take, put the note. Oh, Melissa, I'm gonna make you feel better.

Neon One Webinars: I called somebody who's Who. I thought their relative was dead.

Neon One Webinars: They were not.

Neon One Webinars: I had a wrong note in my database.

Neon One Webinars: and they were like, my aunt is very much alive. You have the wrong information. We had a virtual wine and beer tasting, and her Mc. Got really tipsy. Most people thought it was funny. The CEO did not last. 1st and last virtual event. That's a bummer on the virtual side, like, I think virtual events are great. You could have stuff like this. We run our virtual conference that, and

Neon One Webinars: you know I'll say that like

Neon One Webinars: I will make a plug if you're going to look for a great non-alcoholic option for your events. Go with athletic beer.

Neon One Webinars: It's my personal favorite. I am an ambassador. If you do contact me there, I might be able to get you some free product.

Neon One Webinars: So.

Neon One Webinars: Jocelyn, I sent a note to a woman whose husband passed, and they didn't know it. So I addressed it to both. That happens a lot that happens a lot more than you would think.

Neon One Webinars: That's what Ncoa updates are also helpful for. But I would always run that before you do a mass mailing. I think there's nothing that could anger somebody more than like that. And it's not Jocelyn's fault, right? Like the data. Sometimes you just don't have that information. So you just never know. Right? Like, that's why I started with segmentations

Neon One Webinars: and also merge tags. Practically speaking.

Neon One Webinars: you're not really in development until you contact a deceased person by accident.

Neon One Webinars: I think we need to frame that.

Neon One Webinars: Put that on a T-shirt

Neon One Webinars: communications. Yeah, Jocelyn, that's tough. We'll talk about that. I know you and I will talk about that

Neon One Webinars: Thinking out loud for board members say, who invite guests to event ideally, Staff would prepare for some type of script. Yes, guess what Chatgpt is good for writing scripts for your board members. If you give them the structured prompts.

Neon One Webinars: Here is your thing. You make a a framework guide right? I've been doing a lot of this in marketing and communications is creating those framework guides, Faqs speaking sheets for the board versus the Volunteers, right? Especially with something like Chat Gpt. You can

Neon One Webinars: hammer these policy, those sop documents out by using those types of tools that I could have a whole presentation on just policy documents and chat. Gpt.

Neon One Webinars: did it even happen if you didn't document in a neon? Another sign? Yeah, there you go, Katie.

Neon One Webinars: I like that one. Are there areas, flags and attributes you can make them. There's some built-in ones. Yeah.

Neon One Webinars: Greg, having neon do Ncoa. I think we're gonna be at it looking at. We're looking into some cool stuff there, data integrations, lots of deceased owners. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Neon One Webinars: So yeah. Okay, I just peek and rule

Neon One Webinars: folks. I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you for sharing community with me. I want to share the fact that I missed this

Neon One Webinars: Q. And a. But that's fine, and I think this was a really great conversation, and I think that all of you. I can't wait to see what you do with your events, so please report back to me. Share with the community. Let's just keep the conversation going. And and I'm going to be shifting really hardcore into our upcoming report. But we do have another event. Webinar, later this week, with our friends at clickbid

Neon One Webinars: and we got a lot more coming. So thank you.

Neon One Webinars: Let me know I can help.

Neon One Webinars: You're a rock, and I'll see you out there.

Neon One Webinars: Put in the database