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FirstGiving and CASA
FirstGiving and CASA
Congratulations!
Now that you are signed up with FirstGiving, you are well on
your way to ensuring your successful contribution to the
I Am for the Child Campaign
This presentation will take you through your new account and
show you all that you have available
and how best to get STARTED!
Guide to engaging constituencies
There are many ways that your supporters can raise money via FirstGiving,
but you’ll have to get them pointed in the right direction.
Your supporters can either raise money by creating a personal fundraising
page as part of an event, or as a non-event grassroots fundraising appeal.
Let’s take a look at those two choices, and how to best motivate your
supporters in either case…
Guide to engaging constituencies (events)
Certain fundraising events go really well with personal fundraising pages.
Here are some effective examples:
• Run/walk
• Road race (5k, 10k, etc.)
• Marathon
• Bowl-a-thon
• Dance marathon
If you’ve already been doing an event like this or if a third party is organizing
an event like this for you, you should start incorporating peer-to-peer
fundraising as soon as possible, and you’ll immediately expand your circle of
friends and the potential fundraising revenue from your events.
Guide to engaging constituencies (events)
To get started:
•Contact Lucas VanGombos ([email protected]) if your program is not
yet signed up with FirstGiving.
•Once you’re signed up, log into your account to add your event.
•Through your event page, your supporters can:
• Register (sign a waiver, answer custom questions, pay a registration
fee, donate, start/join a team)
• Create a fundraising page (set a goal, start/join a team, track
donations, easily solicit donations from friends/family)
•This is an easy and effective way to take your fundraising event to the next
level, so we encourage you to get started ASAP!
Guide to engaging constituencies (grassroots campaign)
If you don’t already have an event like this, that’s ok! There are still several other
ways that your supporters can utilize personal fundraising pages to support your
cause.
Anyone passionate about your cause can create a page and start fundraising via their
own personal grassroots campaign. Think your volunteers, local service organization,
company, or Theta or OD Phi chapter if in your community, as well as many others.
Here are a couple of reasons someone might create a page:
• I Am for the Child Campaign event or virtual event
•Birthdays (donations in lieu of presents)
•Wedding/anniversary
•In memory of a loved one
•Personal challenge
•Sporting event (if your program doesn’t have an official event, supporters can still run
a local 5k to support you)
Guide to engaging constituencies (grassroots campaign)
To get started, all you’d need to do on your end is promote the link to
FirstGiving to your page and give your supporters some examples and steps
for creating a page.
One idea specific to CASA/GAL would be to encourage all of your volunteers
to create a grassroots page for the I Am for the Child campaign. Each
volunteer could tell their story, why they are passionate about this cause, and
set a fundraising goal for the end of the year.
Check out the link below for a webinar on grassroots fundraising:
http://blog.firstgiving.com/free-online-fundraising-webinars/grassroots/
Best Practices with peer-to-peer fundraising
Personalize your FirstGiving page:
Your page will be pre-loaded with compelling I
Am for the Child Campaign language, images,
campaign video, and partner recognition area
Add your logo, website address, local statistics
and information, partners, events, and campaigns
Best Practices with peer-to-peer fundraising (nonprofits)
Use FirstGiving’s tools:
Set up a “Start Fundraising” link
Provide links directly to event pages
Be specific about suggestions for grassroots ideas- leverage
the I Am for the Child Campaign
Use FirstGiving’s email tool to target non-active fundraising
pages for extra help
Set up a donate button on your website if you don’t already
have one
Best Practices with peer-to-peer fundraising (fundraisers)
Promote your page:
On your blog
On Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Via email to your organization’s circle of friends
As a link in your email signature
In your newsletter and/or e-newsletter
When speaking with supporters of your program (i.e.: at Theta
Chapter events, or other speaking engagements)
Best Practices with peer-to-peer fundraising (fundraisers)
Personalize your page as much as possible:You’re off to a great start with the campaign branded template for your page
Add to that message (keep it short – think bullet points)
Customize provided language with your local information
Ask for a donation
Set a fundraising goal- what would you need in order to serve all children in need in your community/ service area?
Recognize up to two local partners, in the Community Partners templated area. (You will need Photoshop or MS Paint to edit the jpg file that is loaded to your page. If you do not have the required software to edit that file and add in your 2 local partners, please contact [email protected] for assistance. Please allow at least 48 hours for turnaround.)
Flickr Photo Album
Reporting information
In the next several slides you’ll have a step-by-step
look into your nonprofit account reporting area.
You can log in to this part of the site to add/edit
events, view & download fundraising reports, and use
features like FirstGiving’s email tool to contact people
who are fundraising.
The Home Tab
• General overview of your FirstGiving activity
• Graph in center of the page may say "Data cannot be found" - just means you have not had any fundraising activity yet
• Contains links to other parts of the nonprofit account area
• You can access the Success Center from this screen
The Events Tab
• View all your events, add new events, and manage offline donations
• If your fundraisers receive offline donations (checks or cash), those can be entered from this tab - you can manage them by clicking the name of the relevant event and adding or confirming new donations. For more info on offline donations, please check the Success Center!
• To add a new event, click the Create New Event button
The Events TabAdding an official event
The Events TabAdding an official event
The Nonprofit Page Tab
• Set up and manage your nonprofit start page
• Add your program logo and local information about the children and need in your community
• Text section: 4000 characters of text, images, and links
• Images section: Add your local partner information in the Community Partner Box
• Options: up to 3 resource links to display under the "About" tab on your nonprofit page
The Reports Tab• Information on your
organization's fundraising activity on FirstGiving
• FirstGiving Charts: view graphs of your fundraising and compare events against one another or view their progress over time
• Download an EFT Form: set up weekly electronic fund transfers if you'd like to switch from monthly check payments
• Create Custom Fields: if you use a separate database to manage your FirstGiving data, you may need to add custom fields to that data - we make that easy
The Reports Tab
Shows all the official events you have set up as well as all the grassroots pages that have been created.
• Team details: this report will appear if you have teams turned on for an event
• Registration details: this will apear if you are using custom registration for an event and will contain answers to registration questions
• Fundraiser details: this will show info on everyone who has made a fundraising page for this event
• Donor details: this will appear if the event or page has received donations and will show info on the donors
Fundraising Summary
The Reports Tab
• Information on all donations made outside of fundraising pages
• These donations can come in via the Donate button on your nonprofit start page or via the Online Donate Button you can install on your own website (we'll take a look at that later)
Direct donations
The Reports Tab
• Information on all the funds FirstGiving has sent to you
• Each payment will have its own line item, and you can click the Payment Details icon to see an in-depth breakdown of each donation that went into that payment
Payment summary
The Emails Tab
• Manage your communications with users -- send targeted emails to a specific group of people or handle the automated emails that come from FirstGiving when anyone donates
• Click "Auto-Email Settings" to edit your automated email message - this will be appended to the receipt sent to all donorso This message is a good
place to mention that donations are tax-deductible - if you do so, your donors can use this receipt as a tax receipt
Auto-email settings
The Emails Tab
• Clicking "Compose new email" allows you to send out emails to specific groups of people -you can select either Fundraisers (people who have created a fundraising page), Event Registrants, orDonors
• Filter these people further using the criteria dropdown menus - use as many filters as you need
• When composing the email, you can enter operators like [First Name], which will be replaced with the recipient's actual first name when you send the email
Compose new email
The Widgets Tab
• Buttons you can install on your own website to either accept donations or direct fundraisers to your FirstGiving start page
• Create an Online Donate Button to take donations without having to direct donors away from your website - all the reports will be accessible from your Direct Donations report
• Get a Fundraising Button, which is a link button to your supporters to your FirstGiving start page
The Widgets Tab
Multiple giving levels
Advanced Features:• pay the fee• recurring donations• donation notification emails (to
you, the nonprofit, as donors already receive an automated donation confirmation email)
• customized thank you email
Online Donate Button
The Settings Tab
• Manage the users who have administrative access to your nonprofit account
• Change your own account information and add or edit other users
• 3 levels of access: Admin, Standard, and Event Restrictedo Admin can do everythingo Standard can see everything
but not make changeso Event Restricted is the same
as Standard everywhere in the account except if you choose to give them access on a particular event - they will be the same as Admins for that event
Contact info – who to contact, for what
To sign up your program with FirstGiving, contact Lucas
VanGombos at [email protected]
For technical support, for you or your fundraisers, contact the us
at:
• [email protected] (for you)
• [email protected] (to give out to your supporters)
