Most nonprofit events follow the same exhausting rhythm.
You build for months, sprint like crazy near the finish line, pull off the big night… and then everything goes quiet. Follow-up slips. Donors cool off. Staff and volunteers disappear into well-earned recovery mode. And before you know it, you’re staring down next year’s event feeling like you’re starting from scratch again.
In this 501(c) Drop, BetterUnite Co-founder Leya Simmons shares a different approach: Momentum-Based Fundraising. It’s a practical leadership strategy that turns one fundraising moment into fuel for the next, so your event becomes an engine that keeps producing throughout the year.
Leya’s framework is simple and repeatable: Ignite, Amplify, Sustain.
Leya opened with a truth most teams feel in their bones: events take a huge amount of energy, and the “after” is often a cliff. Even teams that know they should follow up quickly struggle to do it when they’re depleted.
Momentum-Based Fundraising is built to solve that exact problem.
Instead of treating your event like a single-night performance, you treat it like a rolling system that:
It’s not hype. It’s structure.
Ignite is about starting momentum weeks or months before tickets or sponsorships go live.
Leya shared a story from her nonprofit days: she inherited a breakfast event with a tiny “committee” (two people) and a board demanding more revenue. She couldn’t guarantee results, but she could create traction early.
So she created an ambassador group.
What changed everything: they raised about 40% of the goal before tickets were even offered.
That early progress did something powerful:
That tone shift matters. Scarcity doesn’t recruit people. Movement does.
Your ambassadors don’t need to be the biggest donors in the room. Leya emphasized this clearly: commitment matters more than status. Your ambassadors can be:
The goal is to recruit people who will help you secure early gifts and share a short story that builds belief.
“Would you be willing to be an ambassador for our [event]? We’re inviting a small group to help us secure early gifts and share why this matters so we can build momentum before the big day.”
Simple. Human. Not frantic.
Leya also noted a trend worth paying attention to: fewer everyday people are giving year over year, even while overall dollars can rise due to larger gifts. That’s not a stable long-term pattern for the sector. One of the smartest plays you can make is building broader participation, not only leaning on major donors.
Momentum fundraising helps because it turns giving into something people want to join, not something they feel cornered into responding to.
If Ignite starts the fire, Amplify is what keeps it from flickering out.
Leya pointed out something fundraisers know intuitively: people give when they feel something is happening.Movement attracts participation.
Amplify is where you make the momentum obvious through:
Use a progress tracker, percentage complete, or thermometer anywhere donors will see it:
The point isn’t to be flashy. It’s to show that support is already building.
Don’t wait for the final goal to act like something matters. Build mini-moments that create urgency without chaos.
Example:
“We just hit 40% of our goal. Help us reach 50% by midnight.”
That’s clean urgency. Not panic.
Leya recommended leaning into proven short-term tactics:
She also shared a great example from a live fundraising night: a nonprofit used a raffle-style incentive tied to specific paddle raise levels. It created a noticeable lift in participation because it was surprising, fun, and easy to understand in the moment.
Amplify is where you stop hoping donors will “feel inspired” and start giving them visible cues that participation is already happening.
Leya called this out as the phase where organizations most often drop the ball, not because they don’t care, but because they’re exhausted.
Her rule is blunt for a reason:
Follow up within 48 hours.
Not a week later. Not “when we get to it.” Not after everyone emotionally detaches and the moment passes.
Leya’s suggested flow is intentionally lightweight:
Within 24 hours
Within 48 hours
Then, about a week later:
Right after an event, donors are still emotionally connected. The impact story is fresh. The experience is recent. That’s when you can convert event energy into consistent support.
Even a modest conversion to monthly giving can change your revenue stability fast over time.
Leya made the point clearly: set up simple workflows and automation so follow-up happens on time without requiring your most burnt-out team member to carry it alone.
Automation isn’t about being robotic. It’s about being organized enough to show up when timing matters.
Leya closed with a challenge that fits the whole theme: don’t try to overhaul everything. Pick one small action you can take immediately.
Start here:
Momentum isn’t magic. It’s compounding.
And compounding is undefeated.
Transcript Recording:
Leya Simmons (00:01)
Hi everyone.
Welcome to our 501 C drop. I'm Leah Simmons. I am your host and the CEO and co-founder of better unite. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so happy to have you. I am here to talk to you today about momentum fundraising. So the idea here is that rather than, you know, that kind of sprint to the end of events or the, you know, the fall off or drop off that happens once the event has finished and then the
kind of blissful absence of the event for the rest of the 11 months prior to the next year's event, how can we instead turn something that requires so much effort into an effort that has legs, that has its own energy, that is itself a force for fundraising throughout the year as opposed to being a single night, day, whatever it is event, something that happens for the nonprofit.
I have sat where you sit. spent a decade before working with Better Unite working on staff with different nonprofits as a fundraiser, as an executive director, as an event fundraiser for different nonprofits as well. I sat in a lot of different seats. So I have
fielded the 3 a.m. Panicked phone call, know, somebody giving me their guest list for their table. I have ⁓ gone through the ups and downs. I have myself done the, you know, kind of two week at the end sprint to the finish line of your event. And then myself noticed how my eye or my board or or the committee, nobody really continued on with the fundraising post event or even really the kind of follow up.
that we all know should occur, but for small teams particularly, and even the larger teams, once your event staff or your development staff or whomever it is is completely burnt out at the end of an event, it's really difficult to reengage those team members to go forward and continue to reach out to donors or continue to make some sort of effort in the ways that they're going to be contacted or spoken to following the event. ⁓
all of that energy, all of that work that you have put in, all of the energy that built during the event, the goodwill, the tears that got shed during the impact story, it all can just kind of die right there in the moment if some of these, the efforts that need to happen after the event aren't put in place well before. So I am now, as I said earlier, CEO and co-founder of Better Unite. So I get to take everything that I learned and my development seat and my event planning seat and point it
and turn it into an influence software tools for teams like yours to use. So instead of that gala being that sprint that left you flat and also dying at the end of it, right? Like, I mean, there's no, there's nobody that's not working hard here. We as people are just totally exhausted and done at the end of, you know, several nights of not even sleeping at all, the night before the event.
maybe one or two hours. I mean, you've got all of the board members that are your bosses, but now in addition, a lot of the time you have committee members that have become de facto bosses. And so like, I get it. Like I understand the desire to just ⁓ be done and end, but you
And also frankly, kind of try to distance yourself from the event afterwards. But how can we make a plan so that that is not what happens? So that's what momentum fundraising is here to do. It's honestly, when I think about it, it's a leadership approach so that the fundraising moments in this year's event turn into fuel for next year's events. It's how you as a development director stop firefighting, how executive directors
you know, get a steadier revenue and also happier teams that will stick around longer. It's how event planners make a bigger impact on their clients, how auctioneers can really influence the trajectory for a nonprofit as opposed to just a single one night total. And it's also how organizations can turn their events into these engines that we can rev up.
and keep going and keep performing throughout the year. So I'm gonna give you some simple tools, some very easy steps to take and a practical framework. I'm gonna call it Ignite.
amplify and sustain. ⁓ We're gonna talk about, and I'm gonna share with you some real scripts that you can use. You can use those this spring in the events that you have coming up right now. Some case studies that happen from my experience, both on the software side as well as on my nonprofit side. And also like,
I wanted you to see how this methodology can work and also is working for some of the organizations that we see and that we work with. And then I want you to leave with two things. One, a single action that you'll commit to doing tomorrow and also a 90 day habit that will change your season to season results. When I do these 501 C drops and I have a guest on, my last question to them is always if everybody watching today took one thing away from all the things that we've said,
what would that one thing be? So I'm going to answer that question for you several times throughout this session today. So before we jump in, let me do a couple of housekeeping components. If you have any questions for me, please drop them into the chat. I've got it pulled up here. I'm looking at it. I'll kind of look at it because I'm a solo show right now today. So I'll be paying attention to it, but a lot more towards the end of our time together. And I would also love to hear.
who's here and what your role is at your organization. So feel free to say any of those things in the chat. And then if you're shy and you don't want me calling out anything that you say in the chat, you can also email me or I guess if you are watching this later, email me, Leah, L-E-Y-A, my name's spelled weird right there on the screen, at betterunite.com, Leah at betterunite.com. And I would love to answer any questions, have a back and forth, talk through this idea that we're really...
⁓ we're really bringing forward with momentum fundraising. Okay, so let's begin with part one, Ignite.
As you can imagine, this comes from the idea of a fire. We're going to talk about how you can stack your winds, but in this analogy, we're going to be stacking firewood, how you can light it on fire and then actually give that fire some fuel. So we all know how most events and campaigns feel. They're really frantic. Like I said, that last two week push, it's even sometimes a whole month of sleepless nights, endless phone calls, script revisions, talking to the auctioneers, talking to the event planners.
you panicked freak outs about the flower arrangements and all of these things that are really actually quite important. ⁓ Even if they're only important to one single person, that person sometimes is either a larger donor or somebody that's really integral to the organization or frankly, just somebody that's given a lot. And so we want to honor all of that effort. And in doing so, it can really drain the people that are doing it. you know,
What were the in the ignite phase? We're going to build energy. All right. And so this is before any of that potential panic that of course this time we're not going to have, but before any of that happens, we're going to think about what could happen weeks, even months before a single ticket is sold or a single sponsorship is offered.
A few years ago, I'm gonna start out with a story and example. A few years ago, before Better Unite, I was running events and I was working with an organization that had a fall fundraiser, a fall event. And the team was, and like team in air quotes here, was two people, myself and a committee member who was also a board member. We were a committee of two, that's it. I was...
employed by the nonprofit. So I did have some amount of say and some gravitas that the board would listen to. But, you know, that board was also really nervous. They kept asking if we could guarantee revenue. And they were doing that at the same time as they were giving me all of these, you know, very limiting instructions around how this event needed to go, had to play out. You know,
I was the one in the room saying, I can't guarantee anything. don't know the people that are about to show up at this event. I was very new to the organization. I think I'd been there maybe a handful of months, not enough time to really have created relationships with many people beyond the actual board itself. ⁓ I was also grandfathered a breakfast event. Now I have seen since many breakfasts that work very well.
I will tell you from my personal experience, was a very difficult event to do. I, Leah, would not recommend doing a breakfast event of any sort. It's early in the morning. It's difficult to get people to do much, even show up, much less get excited enough to do something, you know, like, like
bid highly or actively on auction items. We actually were successful, um, cause I ended up having to do this event a couple of times. We did end up being successful in my second year at creating that kind of buzz and the kind of energy in the room. The first year, I'm not going to lie. It was pretty, it was pretty rough in the room itself. But so given that I had, and I had never done a breakfast event before, so I had no experience or idea of, you know, I couldn't even honestly, frankly, really picture it. couldn't picture how it could be a fundraising event now.
corporate breakfast or a friend raising or a committee meeting, those things, sure, breakfast, fine, I get it. But to actually have it be a fundraising event, I really couldn't connect the dots in my brain on how that could work. But what I did know...
is that if we could create some momentum, then I could, while I couldn't guarantee numbers to my board, I would be able to start a little bit of buzz and to ⁓ get some dollars flowing in the door that I had the hope, and again, here's our igniting part, would create a bit of social proof so that...
our board members would begin to go out and advocate on our behalf.
What I did or what we did, because again, there was a committee member and I working on this, we created early ambassadors. We identified eight people. weren't all board members. There was one that was a board member. Otherwise, they were really community members. They were advocates for the organization. The founder of the organization was one. So volunteers and board members is what I would say, who committed to raising a very specific chunk of the goal. And each one of them had a target that was small enough to be attainable, right?
I think that the goal was that or the the kind of outcome was that it felt doable, right? And again within this board I had the usual I don't feel comfortable asking for money comments or ⁓ You know, I'm gonna bring my friends
that, you know, really I don't know, the people that had bought tables, they were gonna bring friends. Actually, was what I really remember where there were several sponsors that were only inviting their staff. And they were kind of using it as like a staff acknowledgement because in the past, historically, this event had been much more of a friend raiser. And I had been charged with very, very specifically by this board to turn it into a revenue generator, to make it into a fundraiser. you ⁓ know.
That was difficult. Also, our founding executive director that was there at the time, an incredible woman that I have so much respect for, she was still in that mindset of it being a friend raiser, of it being, I mean, I wouldn't say that to her, but about her, I think she really was in the mindset of a community builder.
Let's put it that way. So she didn't mind that several of our kind of major sponsors were giving their seats away to their staff or just to the people that they felt had deserved or earned a seat or frankly, honestly, just a free breakfast. But you and I all know that that's not how we're going to move the needle. That's not how we're going to really raise significant funds. ⁓
So with these early eight ambassadors that we gave targeted specific goals to, I just, like the requests of them were very simple and small. And frankly, what I remember as well is that I had written down a lot of the scripts and the social posts that I was hoping that they would make. With that, we had raised about 40 % of our goal before the tickets had even sold, before they were even offered. And...
When we did that, here's what I noticed, that then once that initial money had already come into this event and my board members could see the campaign dollars already flowing in, they then became far more comfortable going out and asking their friends to not just buy a ticket, but to sponsor a table or to become a sponsor of the event from their business side. that...
The pitch then softened for the board because I think because I know we were moving at that point from a place of security of abundance.
and not from scarcity to use our modern terms, right? Like we had an abundance mindset and we had let go and put away that scarcity mindset. rather than, you know, for the staff as well, rather than please give, it turned into look at what we're doing, look at what we're building, come be a part of it. So that's what, and I have chill bumps when I say this, because that is, I think the magic of this. And it's really not magic. It's like very simple steps that you can do. That's where Ignite,
can create that shift. ⁓ The inherent sentiment in Look What We're Building is join us. And so, you know, rather than with your hands out, it's an open palm to come in. It's an invitation. So,
That tone, that energy, that shift from scarcity to abundance, by taking action, it's not this woo woo manifestation request. It's actually looking at dollars that have already come in and then moving with that in place. And then that's already momentum building. Yeah? So we're just joining an already flowing tide. I just thought of that analogy. So here's a one sentence.
⁓ ask that you can paste into a text or an email. Would you be willing to be an ambassador for our golf tournament or luncheon or breakfast? Although again, as said, I don't totally recommend that.
And then you're gonna wanna let those potential board members know, or excuse me, those potential ambassadors know we are asking people like you to help us secure early gifts and then share their story so that we can build momentum before the big night, day, morning, whatever it is. Again.
You're being very transparent. We're not saying, hey, let's build this money and let's give it to this campaign and then maybe potentially later we'll use it for our message. There's nothing like that. It's literally doing what we know works, but doing it well before the actual ticket sales or sponsorships asks happen. Okay? So nothing that's new. It's just changing the timing of it and changing the mindset around it.
you're inviting them into this like kind of exclusive club. I that's the thing is that was, think also another piece of the magic that I saw and that I think really works with this is, is it feels almost exclusive and people feel legitimately honored that you thought of them to be one of your ambassadors. There's some, there's some really great.
associations with that word, although there could be others. Honestly, Seth Godin calls them sneezers and that's literally what comes to my head every single time. The person that's going to sneeze your brand, your mission, what you're trying to do, sneeze it out to the world and it flies in a million directions. He called it that well before.
social media happened, and I still think of that, and I think that's actually true. Most people don't wanna be called sneezers, ambassador has a little bit of a higher ring to it, or a nicer ring to it, so use what you want, but you're still pulling them in, you're inviting them to this exclusive club that they uniquely get to be a part of, and then go tell other people about. Who doesn't want that? And you want the, you
You want them to know inherently in that exclusive club situation or environment, they're not alone. They're not the only one out there making these asks. They're going to be with other people and they have support behind them and they have social proof that it's working, that other people are also joining in this club. we're, the asks are short, they're specific, they're human and not frantic and not urgent. But I mean, they are a little bit urgent, but they're urgent without being frantic, which is really key here.
So a couple of really practical moves in the Ignite phase are one, identify the ambassadors. So right now sitting there, you can think of if you've got an event coming up, a gala, your spring event, come up with five to seven, eight to 12. Doesn't matter how many you're gonna choose and it'll depend on the size of organization, the type of event that you're running. Doesn't have to be a ton, but it can't hurt to have a few more than less, right?
And these are your people, right? They'll tell your story and they'll tell it early. And they don't have to all, and here is a very big, like, let's take the pressure off point as well. They don't all need to be major donors. They can be a client.
They could be an involved volunteer. They can be staff members. You know, the key is commitment. It's not status. People will give to people like them. That's what we're going to want to remember. And so we're going to want people that are all, you know, across the gamut, across the spectrum of your supporters ⁓ in a world in which this is, I think, very key in a world in which we see giving ⁓ decreasing by regular everyday folks. So, you know, in 2000,
I think it was then the I'm gonna get some of these stats wrong because this is not on my nose But I'm gonna say it anyway in the year 2000 and right around there We had about two-thirds of people self-identified as donors to nonprofits cut to your 2020 I think it was like starting in 2018
We started seeing that number go down to the point where we are now, which is fewer than half of people are giving to nonprofits on a regular basis or in any given year. Now fundraising is still going up. So that tells us that more and more larger and larger donors, maybe not even more and more, but larger donors are super ultra wealthy donors. They are giving more. So our overall American dollars are going up in our fundraising and are giving.
but the number of people are going down. That's not a sustainable trend. And if you have questions about that, the New York art scene lost two major patrons this past year, maybe it was in 2024, and the programs that those two large patrons patroned,
are very much suffering, really big institutions. So we need those smaller level donors. So this is my long winded way or plea to you to make sure that you're not just asking your biggest donor on the board, your major contributors, that you are really asking, sure ask them, but also ask other people too. We need people across the board to begin to advocate for our nonprofits, but also for our fundraising events as well.
We want to invite everyone in. All right. So that was number one. I'm going to go back to it because I made a whole lot of points in there. Identify your ambassadors. Number two, secure early leadership gifts. Now what I mean by early, and I don't think I've said this just yet, is I mean like at a minimum, we really want to be about six to eight weeks out, honestly, from ticket sales and sponsorships. I never want to say you shouldn't start.
I, there's going to be more that I'll talk about today that you could implement, even if you're already three weeks away from your event. But ideally, right? Ideally, we'd like to be about 90 days out from the ticket sales and sponsorships going on when we begin this effort. So, you know, there's a lot of adverbs in there. So we're not, you know, you don't, it's not like you're going to get all of your ambassadors lined up in a single day. Right? So you need to, you want to be thinking about this.
You want to be cultivating those relationships, identifying, and starting to have conversations as early as possible. Let's just leave it there. for leadership level amounts, what we're going to ask for are those that can create social proof. So that just is translated into we're already being able to raise money for this event. So you're definitely going to want to come. ⁓
You might not call them leadership gifts in public, call them early support or friends of the mission or the ambassador circle or whatever it is that you want to call it because the goal is going to be to make this language feel really inclusive and not exclusive. Now, we
kind of want for our ambassadors to have a sense of exclusivity when they're talking amongst themselves. But for everybody else and for out there in the public, what we really want is to say, look what I've done. I'm a part of this. Come join me. Okay. And our influencer age, this mindset works very well. And then the other piece is going to be that you're going to want to warm your donors up for the ask. So that means it's not, you know, a one-time phone conversation in all likelihood. It's going to be having several conversations where
you tell them a story with no ask. ⁓ You send a series of emails, a sequence to a particular segment. They have a video. You ⁓ kind of explain the arc of the event. Draw them into what you're doing building on the inside. Everybody loves to be an insider into things. So talk to them about what it takes to produce this event, how it's going, what happened last year, what we'd like to see happen this year, a mini impact story. Whatever you're doing, make it very personal and intentional.
you know, talk about your own personal favorite parts of the organization or the mission. The goal is, like I said, to let people feel invited behind the curtain so that there's not a mystique, there's no mystery. It's, want to join in because I'm now an insider. ⁓ And we want them to be clear. So here would be one little caveat to that. We want them to be clear that they're being invited into something that's building and it's exciting, but that doesn't feel like chaos. That's kind of this.
a drumbeat for me these days where the world feels very chaotic or, you know, that I frankly at this point just basically avoid a lot of the NPRs and news cycles because they can feel traumatic anytime you open them. You kind of brace yourself. You never know what you're going to get. That's chaos. And that's my ⁓ nervous system responding to chaos. What do we want when there's chaos? We want stability. We crave order.
And so let your ⁓ ambassadors understand that they're coming into something that is orderly, it's intentional, that it is stable, your organization and the preparation for your event. So here's an example of a call. You're the ambassador, I'm working for your nonprofit. I'm like, hey, Jamie, it's Leah. I just made that person up.
We are building something very different this year for our signature event. Would you be willing to help us get things moving by committing a small early gift and sharing one story about why this matters? We'd put your name on our friends list and it would help us show momentum to other donors. I mean, transparent. Here's what we're doing. Please join us. Very, very simple and straightforward. And then also if you hear some hesitation, you could add, this will be actually a very easy ask. I'm only asking you for
two short posts and I'll provide the script for you. So you'll just have to edit. it's, it's, know, a lot of times people don't want to opt into something that feels like change, that feels very new. So I heard the other day that only like 20 % of people actually look forward to or appreciate or really embrace change, whatever that looks like. 50 % of people are pretty indifferent to it. And then 30 % of people actively fear change. So
you can imagine that if you have a handful of people to call, eight or 10 people, 10 people, eight of them are either going to be afraid of the change or really kind of feel indifferent to it. And only 20 % of people are going to be like, yeah, let's go. I'm going to jump right in. Only two of those people are going to be that way. So when you think about it in those terms, you want to frame your request as an exciting something that's happening, an invitation to join and a very simple request. So not going to be hard.
It's not gonna feel brand brand new. It's just going to be these two quick social posts and I'm even gonna give you the words for it. All you have to do is edit it to make it your own. And that last part really, that's a really big deal. honoring that change averse nature of most people and giving them not an out, because you don't want to give them an ability to say no, but you want to give them tools to use when they do say yes.
⁓ An email could sound like, can you help us start something strong? That's a really good headline or title to the email. Subject line.
The body of it, hey, name in brackets, we're trying a new approach for this year's gala and I'm asking a handful of friends to help us build momentum with small early gifts and a short story that we can share. Can I count on you to be one of those friends? This will make a huge difference in our ability to hit our main goal and I'll make it as easy as possible. Thanks, Leah. Straightforward, easy, to the point. I can also share all of these for you if you'd like templates later, so just put a note in the chat if you'd like for me to do that.
The smaller asks, the more specific they are, they have a far higher likelihood of landing and of winning, of being accepted. We want to stack the wins, right? So go for those easy, quick gets. ⁓ If the ask is vague, if it's huge, if it feels like it could be huge, if it's amorphous, if it's 1,000 points of light, there's a higher likelihood of failure for any of those. ⁓
So I want you to, so take a second here, think of your top three potential ambassadors and write them down. And like I said, you're gonna want to, let me go back up, write those names down. And then even if your event's not until the fall, start thinking about them now. Just plant the idea in your head. And you're gonna wanna start that outreach, like I said, as early as possible. I don't think it's too early right now to begin that outreach for a fall event. As a matter of fact,
I think if you're in that, if that's what's happening for you, that would actually be ideal timing. It gives you lots of time to begin laying groundwork, to begin making small requests or outreach, or kind of feel out how these people might feel.
start sharing your mission, sharing your story, and also maybe identifying some new people that you can draw into the organization with this type of ask. You know, the more time that you allow yourself gives you room to convert early gifts into social proof and to build up those stories. So you've got a story arsenal ready and waiting for you. That's, that's all that I mean by ignite. We're going to build energy early, but not because we're like panicked or because there's like this big external pressure. It's because
Momentum is a compounding differential. We need it to be exponential. And the sooner that you start, the bigger that it can get. Okay. If Ignite is about starting a fire, then Amplify is about fanning flames. you know, the truth of it, it's like people say success breeds success. people...
give when they've when they sense something is happening when they when they believe that there is a new idea a new build that's a foot and that they can be a part of it and then it has energy and a lot of times they want to see visibility so you know our auctioneers i've got i saw that i have a couple of auctioneers here in the ⁓ in the chat auctioneers are like y'all are the og amplifiers you are the people ⁓ who create visible movement in a room you're
the people that can shift the energy from stagnant to on fire with just picking up a microphone and a few words. I love watching an auctioneer work and doing it in a room full of people because this is always the kind of special secret sauce that they can bring to an event. we ⁓
We want as fundraisers not to just rely on our auctioneers for that momentum, for that movement, for that amplification. We want to, again, begin early and utilize tech and storytelling to create our own amplification and make it really visible to everyone all the time, everywhere. Because unfortunately, our auctioneers are limited to what happens in those 90 minutes.
of the actual presentation at your event. I wish that we could have their energy all day every day, but they would all be exhausted and or dead. in lieu of that, we are going to try to cultivate some of that auctioneer magic, some of that amplification on our own using the tools that we have, and then let those auctioneers loose to run rampant and do their thing at the actual event. So to amplify, you've got a few options, again, relative to software.
tools, tech, and storytelling. Public progress tracking. You can put a thermometer or a percent tracker everywhere. Thermometers don't have to have an end state either. You can have the, you know, just ever-rising thermometer that doesn't have to be the rainbow thermometer that gives you a cap. You can just start tracking as opposed to, you know, competing with a number. And you can put those on your event page and social posts up on the screen at the event itself. ⁓
People, again, they're going to give to movement. They're going to give to what feels like it's already running. They're rarely going to give to just totally dead air.
You can also celebrate milestones. So you don't have to wait for the final goal. Any of you that have run peer-to-peer campaigns, a lot of times we have triggered emails based around different milestones. You got your first donation. Here's an email that goes out. You've hit 10 % of your goal, 25%, 50%, 75%, and finally the end. And you've got an email already lined up and ready to go for each one of those. And that's for a simple peer-to-peer campaign. So there's our.
ever all that simple. The work is hard, but you hear what I'm saying. So we can do the same thing relative to events. We can make these, you know, 20%, 40%, 30%, 80%, make those ⁓ milestone hits, celebrate them loudly. ⁓ If your event tool offers customizable thermometers, something like Better Unite has, even better. Use those, put them wherever you want to, and additionally on the screen at the event itself.
And then timed accelerants. What I mean by this, matches, peer-to-peer challenges, and limited time asks. A 48-hour match will produce this kind of framed, ⁓ bookended, short-term urgency, and that we often see dramatically increases daily giving. We've all seen these happen, and the reason that they happen over and over again, time after time, is because they work. So steal from the best. Please do.
A couple of years ago, I actually, true story, I watched an organization here in Austin and I was on the software side. I was there supporting their event with a friend of mine was the development director is the development director at Waterloo Greenway Conservancy here. And they did what I thought was the coolest thing during their paddle raise at different levels. And they kind of picked really intelligently ⁓ levels that were attainable, but high.
So not the $100 level. I believe it was the $5,000 and the $2,500 levels. For those two levels, for each level, they raffled off an item to people that gave at that one particular level. So I think for the $5,000 one, they had a pair of diamond earrings. For the $2,500 one, they had like a case of wine or I don't remember what it was. But the software they were using, again, Better Unite.
allowed them to take that subset, know, enter in quickly, everybody that raised their paddle at that giving level, enter them into a raffle and pull a winner in those moments so that by the time the end of the call to action was done and they were about to move on, they were able to say, okay, here's, you know, at the $5,000 level, Leah Simmons has won this incredible pair of Canary diamond earrings, which I would gladly take at any time.
So the participation increase in that was notable and no one expected it. It was such a kind of bonus surprise and so unique. mean, we've all seen a lot of like last paddle standing or paddle drops or heads or tails. And I mean, I think this is, that was a very clever way to like, again, you know, a little bit artificially box in these particular levels that they wanted to get more donations at that maybe I don't know this is true, but maybe the year before had stagnated a
bit
and that was a really, really good way to do that. So leveraging your technology and those, you know, donated gifts or whatever that is, those are the, that's a kind of timed accelerant that I'm talking about that can, can really move the needle in very particular precise, you know, ⁓ spots throughout your event.
Another milestone update example would be we just hit 40 % of our goal, help us reach 50 % by midnight. That would be in advance of the event. It could be the night of. And we've always also all heard public radios matching call, a donor will match the next $5,000 that we raise. We're $2,400 away. And the reason that we can all call that to mind is because a lot of them do it and they do it because it works. again, short, urgent, easy to adopt CTAs. That's what we're going to go for here.
And which accelerant do you use? Matches, thermometers, or spotlights? You choose. You decide what is it that we're trying to accomplish? What kind of time frame do we have? Are we talking about something that's happening at the event? Are we talking about something that's happening just before the event? And then you're going to make your decisions based on what you have to work with. There's really, you know, I almost even hesitate to give too many examples because I think creativity is your friend here. Thinking out of the box. Doing something that you
have never seen done before. Roll the dice. mean, we've all sat through a lot of fundraising events. There is nothing wrong with doing something a little bit differently this year. I promise. Doing something the way that we've always done it has long been my least favorite thing to hear from somebody. And...
I think that this is a place that you can really stretch a little bit into, even if you do have that kind of board or you have that kind of event, like we have to do it the same way because we've always done it this way, trying to find little tweaks and little changes that you can make along the way really can move the needle and really change things for you. ⁓
Anybody else, any auctioneers here in my chat that have ideas about what they have seen work, please drop those in. We want tactical, we want immediate, and we want a tone that's clear and repeatable. So if you are like,
three minutes away from your surprise match, could say, we have a match ready to unlock when we hit $30,000. If you want to be a part of that moment, now is the time. That sounds like a classic auctioneer saying, right, or a statement. we, another thing that you can do is invite your corporate partners into this game. So if you've got those sponsors, major donors, ⁓ particularly a ⁓ company that has some
some desire for some brand visibility, ⁓ ask them to be a visible accelerant, like a public challenge, a named match, or a branded milestone. These companies, they want to be seen as leaders. They like their brand to be leading the charge. Give them a story to tell. And they're going to tell that story long after your event ends, which is exactly what we're looking for.
Stories that center the sponsor and their brand as the hero in this fundraising effort. That's all we're looking for. The amplify section of my Ignite Amplify and Sustain Momentum fundraising is it's about making the movement visible. The more people that see progress, the more people that will join in. All right, now.
We've ignited, we've fanned the flames with Amplify. Now we're gonna sustain the momentum that you've worked so hard to create. And totally candidly, and Stephanie Townsend and I talked about this, I don't think it's been like two weeks now, two weeks ago. Honestly, this is the place and the space where a lot of organizations will fail.
You have the event you feel great and then everything falls quiet everyone slips sponsors donors ⁓ Volunteers even staff they just kind of like slide away ⁓ Even the attendees at your event that cried during the big moments They've just kind of moved back into the shadows So sustain is about converting that momentum that you have worked for six months sometimes and through the evening Sustain is going to take that momentum. You've built it
let's keep it going for the whole year. The single biggest rule here is that you must follow up within 48 hours of your event with all of the guests and donors at the event.
Can't be a week later, can't be when we get to it, can't be when the development director gets back from her much needed vacation. It has to be within 48 hours. That timing matters because your donors are still emotionally invested after having attended the event. The follow-up, can be simple, it should be simple. It needs to be personal and it needs to be forward-looking.
So a 48 hour sequence, want you to steal this. So listen, day one within 24 hours, a heartfelt thank you. That's all it needs to be. Just thank you so much. We're so grateful for you. We couldn't have done what you did. What you did is having XYZ happen. Thank you. ⁓
Ideally, it could also include maybe a 30 to 60 second video from the executive director, from the speaker at your event. If you had a speaker for an award winner, it could also be the committee chair, somebody that was a presence at the event, films on their phone.
a selfie video, a very short one, maybe even at the event at the very end of it, and you're able to send that out to you. It could also be a beneficiary. That's another one that can be delivered via email. It could be posted on social as well, but it also needs to go to them personally. Okay. We want to keep it raw and human, vulnerable, inviting, authentic. Those are the words. That's the vibe that we're going for. I'm going to say, say thank you, maybe show a visible or tangible result. And then
You can also end that one with one tiny next step. Now, I'm gonna say something that maybe unpopular. And that 24 hour post email, text, whatever it is, I don't think you have to. I think you can just say we're grateful. And then a second email, text.
bone call even can go out with a small ask. And the reason that I would include some sort of ask in that 48 hour window is because again, everybody that attended your event, they're primed. have, they've, they feel connected. They feel a part of whether it's a false sense of being a part of the event, even if they showed up just at their friend's table so they could get all dressed up for the evening. They, they became connected in some way at some point. I promise they really did. And some small piece of it spoke to them. If they were
ever going to give to you at all, giving them one other opportunity within that 48 hours can be really key. And I've talked about this before, but a really interesting idea, maybe not for your major sponsors, but for, and you should in all, by all means, if you have the ability to segment here. you know, not everybody gets exactly the same message, but for people that were attendee only, those folks could get a request to become a monthly sustaining donor.
at a smaller level, attainable level. So maybe we do have a different ask for a longer term trajectory for our major sponsors. But for those people that, again, just came, we never know who those people are. We don't know their capacity generally. Sometimes we do, but not always. And there's definitely many of them. I don't care what kind of wealth screening software you're using. There are some people that were in that room that you don't know much about.
in all likelihood are some real hidden gems for your organization in that group. ⁓ you know, you can also send an impact story in that timeframe, but the point is going to be to make a small ask here.
So you want it to have low friction also. And I would say likely a decently low dollar amount again, depending on the segmentation. Now you jump to day seven, we're to have a small stewardship ask. So we're going to invite them to something with your next, ⁓ your next friend raiser, ⁓ a non fundraising event, a volunteer event, ⁓ a behind the scenes update. Some of those folks who might have looked through and have been identified to potentially serve on a different committee. We're inviting them into the fold in whatever way that looks.
like. Give them a next act. Something else that they can do aside from giving you money. Here's, so I did, I prepared a little video script that you can use. So for this ask, hi, I'm Leah. Thank you for being a part of our gala. Your energy and generosity are already changing lives. Because of you, we were able to fill in the blank, whatever it is that you did, enroll five families in our program this month.
In the next few days, we'll share more stories, but if you'd like to keep the momentum going, please consider joining our monthly giving family. It's the single best way to make our week, our work steady and strong. Edit that and make it sound exactly right, but you get the gist and the idea. It's short and it's emotional and it's an invitation and it goes one step beyond thank you for attending the event. you don't have to do all of this manually as well. So
Use very simple automations. Send the 24-hour video as a recorded email. We're going to schedule out the 48-hour impact email. Your software should have an ability to send some form of follow-up to everybody that was already at the event. That would be your event software if they're separate. Your CRM should absolutely have the ability to segment and then automate different flows for the different people that came to your event. This is where, and again, not to...
to sell on BetterUnite, but when you have everything in one single tool and a system of record, it is much easier to take that data and segment the event attendees into who you want to get what information. Now, it absolutely can be done transferring the data from your event tool into your CRM, wherever you're able to have that kind of moves management feature. But the point I'm making here is that I want this to be a low lift. It doesn't need to be you manually doing all of this work in the 48 hours and seven days following your event.
And it can be, first of all, this effort can be shared.
This can be something that your entire board takes different segments from. ⁓ This can be something that the committee does. This can be something that volunteers do or your group of teens that you have that are interning at the nonprofit, whomever can help you, let them help. But also there's quite a bit of this that can be automated and particularly at least the workflow can be, right? This is not a call to having robots reaching out to people. This is so that your...
Outreach stays organized, it stays on target, and it stays on time. So we want those kinds of workflows and automations to happen. And you can frankly get that pretty inexpensively, I'll say very inexpensively, with the software like a BetterUnite. There are others. But where you are able to take the information that already lives there, the data that already lives within your tools, and then decide who gets what when. Yep. So.
We want to diffuse the lift among several people so that even if you are using a workflow or automation tool, it's not all going directly to you, the development director. We can have outreach come from multiple different people. There's certainly organizations that I've worked for in the past that really, really want to see everybody get an actual person, personal phone call. That's great. It's a very wonderful way to connect with people, but that takes time and it takes effort and it takes more than one person. So pull people in. Don't be afraid because our one man teams are important.
and you being burnt out after the event is not going to serve your clients or your mission at all. ⁓
Again, I mentioned in our ambassador group, the ambassadors could be another group that you pull in to do this kind of follow-up outreach because the one rule I said about those is that they're committed. So anybody that's committed to the efforts, those are the people that you want to target with this task. if you just, so imagine that you converted just 15 % of the attendees to your event to monthly donors at an average of $25 a ⁓ month donation. Just 15 % of the attendees are, know, events have
300 to thousands of people attending. If you made that conversion, that is not nothing. That is not small. And if you do that,
over a couple of different events. Now you're talking about making real change in your sustainability, viability, and creating very, very real stability for the organization. And again, I'm not here to sell you software. I'm really not. It's not what this is for. We are a software company, but the point of this is to share knowledge that benefits our entire nonprofit sector. That is a
big passion project for me. I am here to share with you a much better way for you to go about your fundraising. But I do have to say that the tools that you use really do matter. So choose wisely and don't be afraid to make a change or to take a look and see if you're missing a major component, there is a strong likelihood that there is some other tool out there that's better suited for your organization's needs.
So if you want to see what Ignite and Amplify and Sustain look like in Momentum Fundraising practice, please let me know. I'm happy to talk to you about it on a more personal one-to-one basis. We can talk about your organization and your event. And I'm just loving having these conversations and beginning to really feel out how we can make this a tangible effort for as many nonprofits as there are out there.
Even if you're watching the recording, please don't hesitate to reach out to me about any of this. Okay, before I go, I wanted to check in to see any questions. I think I've actually gotten, I had a few, but I think I actually got to most of those. know, one of the questions that I saw was how long until we see results? Sorry, let me take a sip. So how long is it going to be before we see results? I mean, I think that that's, it's very dependent, but.
As you get, especially when you're in the ignite phase, as you get that ball rolling, I mean, that can be very fast. You're launching your event campaign in advance, decent enough time in advance of your event itself. If you're even your tickets or your sponsorship's going on sale, you're so far ahead of the game and you will see return on that pretty quickly. Another question that I got is why I was talking about that one person dev shop.
That's so common and frankly, as I said in my example at the beginning, that's where I sat and started. ⁓ There are a lot of AI tools that can help you with a lot of this. A generative AI piece can help you in creating first drafts for a lot of the things that you need to create for everybody. But laying a foundation of relationships, mean, that's what you do as a development director. That's your sweet spot. That's where we live. That's where most of us, that's what lights us up. So be you.
Go out there, talk to people, talk to them early, and get them involved in the process. Let them see there's no sausage being made here. Everything that you're doing is ⁓ necessary, it's important, and frankly to a lot of people it's pretty fascinating. So invite them in, invite them behind the curtain. All right, so if any of this resonated with you today, please take a small action, whether that's identifying those.
potential ambassadors or Seth Godin's sneezers. ⁓ It's beginning to create a single three-week plan. You begin to create a single automation or a workflow. Commit to that 48-hour follow-up. Just do that one thing for your next event. Even if your event is this weekend, you could create that, create it in a workflow, line out the tasks for whoever needs to do it, and make that one happen. It's the really small...
actions that create incremental change that have the ability to result in truly ⁓ true momentum and inspire widespread change within the organization. Really, really moving the needle with your fundraising goals.
Okay, thank you so much for spending this time with me. I so appreciate your attention. I know that your time is your most valuable thing. It's your currency. So that you're willing to spend a little bit of it with me is not lost on me. It means a whole lot. I hope this was helpful to you. And if it was, please share this ⁓ video once you have it with anybody on your team or within your network that you think would benefit from it. Again, my name is Leah Simmons and I am so happy to help you in any way that
I can. Oh, let me share my screen with you here and tell you about next week's presentation that's coming. I'm going to click through here. I've got it. That's what we just finished today.
Join us next week, Everything Gala with Shannon Eason, an auctioneer. I was talking about our auctioneers earlier. She's an incredible, she's been doing this for a while. She knows what she's talking about. She's gonna give you tips and tricks on your next gala. So please scan that QR code now and sign up. That's February 24th at 130 Central as always. Right here, scan, register, we'll send out some emails about it. And then if you have any other questions and you'd like to see, talked about BetterUnited, honestly more than
usually do. So if you've got questions, if I've piqued your curiosity, go ahead and scan the QR code there or email us at support at betterunite.com and we are happy to show you around, walk you through all the tools that we offer to nonprofit organizations looking to make some really big changes in the world. Thank you so much for joining me today. Let me see what my next slide is. there you go. More help. All right. Thanks so much for joining me today. I've enjoyed this time. If you want to know more about Momentum Fundraising, email me.
Have an incredible rest of your Tuesday and let's go do some good.