Begin in Alignment

One thing that's really important to understand no matter what industry or sector you work in is that you go further, faster, and are more effective when you're aligned with the leader of your organization.

If you're reading this book, you're probably responsible for a fundraising goal, but you may not be responsible for casting the vision of your organization. To achieve your goal, it is really important that you are in alignment with your organization's leader on what the vision of the organization is. If you are not 100% sure of what your leader sees as the vision and purpose of your organization, get this alignment before pursuing anything else.

Many times, a leader will cast a vision at a very high level. It is your responsibility to be the implementer, integrator, and interpreter of their vision. Take time to ask clarifying questions and add detail to take your leader's vision from dreamscape to landscape. In other words, you must take the vision from a high level and break it down into pieces of communication that can be more easily disseminated to your donors and supporters.

As an example, many pastors will tell their team about their vision to buy a church building one day. The interpretation of that vision is understanding what type of building, what location, why does the church want a building, what will be done in the building—all detail-oriented clarifying questions. Asking why, what, how, and other clarifying questions will enable you to take a vision and articulate it in a way that you can explain it to the people who have the means to give.

An example of detailing out a vision for a building could be the following:

Our vision is to purchase a building in the heart of the Silicon Valley because it will represent permanence, laying a stake in the ground and our commitment to serve this city for the long term. This building will be a hub of activity, full of life all throughout the week. Sunday worship experiences will simply be just one of the many activities in this building that facilitate community, connection, and transformative moments. During the week there will be a world-class cafe with high-speed internet where people from all over the SF Bay Area will want to visit, work from, and take meetings in. There will be an innovation wing where the hottest start-ups in the area that are mission-focused will call home and be a central place of operation for their staff. A fully accredited college will host courses, lectures, and practicums in the main auditorium and all throughout the building. There will be a recording studio for musicians and artists to produce art and albums. The venue as a whole will be a highly coveted event space where the most exciting product launches and meetups will desire to be held. All of this is in alignment with being a light in the community and a place of connection and transformation!

This vision statement for a building is an example of how to articulate a vision for a place so that people can start to imagine it!

Start here, because everything else you decide for your year-end event should flow from this vision.

Select the Guests

If you're not intentional about who you're inviting to the year-end giving event, whether it's digital or in person, your gathering will have zero impact. You need to have a filtering process to decide who in your community you will invite to your event. Your guest list will affect so many of the other decisions you make about the event.

At VIVE Church on an annual basis, typically in November, we host what we call our Vision Gala. Choosing the beginning of November for the event is very intentional so it doesn't compete with Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas, while still taking advantage of the year-end giving momentum. Placing it in this time frame also enables givers to hear the vision, commit, and prepare over several weeks to fulfill their gift before year-end.

Our guest list for this event is derived from the people in our organization who have given over a certain threshold in the previous 12 months. Those people are sent a specific, personal invitation from our lead pastor and CEO of our organization to come to an exclusive, invite-only event, our Vision Gala.

We're explicit about what the night is. Attendees know that this is not just a night to dress up for a nice meal or date night setting. They know that this is a night where we're making a financial ask for them to partner with next year's vision. So our filtering process means that we're inviting people who have already shown that they're a supporter of our organization at a high level and are opting in to being asked for money, which is really crucial to ensuring that we have the right people in the room.

We have specifically chosen the threshold of giving that earns people the right to attend our gala based on the needs of our organization and the ask we will be making the evening of the gala. Everyone in the room that night will be in the top percentile of our givers and therefore likely able to give generously that night.

The threshold you set for the givers within your community will give you a benchmark of how many members your event needs to serve. This will really inform the style of your event.

Consider what the size of your invite pool means for your event organization. For example, at VIVE our threshold leaves us typically with 500 to 1,000 people. That matters, because that informs our style. We know that in this range we can still do a physical event with round tables and seat a leader at every table.

No matter the event, you want every attendee to have the opportunity to connect with a leader from within your organization. You want a leader per table facilitating conversation: connecting with the community and making sure the conversation at each table is fostering generosity and gratitude to the organization and reminding everyone of the results your organization has achieved. Make sure the ratio of leaders to guests is thoughtful. You will then need to take adequate time to prepare the chosen leadership team to support at the event.

You will want to set up the seating in a way that will inspire maximum generosity. Though presumably everyone in the room is a strong giver, you may choose to honor your biggest givers. At VIVE Vision Gala, we seat our biggest givers together at the front of the room, but there are several ways to honor your biggest givers regardless of the format of your event.

Often, major donors don't seek public recognition but really appreciate private recognition. So any way that you can connect the founder, CEO, or leader of your organization directly with the major donors can be quite powerful.

Here are some ways you can honor major donors:

• Exclusive information. Major donors love being part of the process. If they're finding out about a vision element at the same time everybody else is, that's not honoring. It's a great honor to be able to have exclusive information early. We call this the meetings before the meeting. You should aim to have 25–50 “meetings before the big meeting” which serves as momentum towards the event.
• Personalization. If you have let's say 25 major donors in your organization, do you understand how they receive recognition and honor? Everyone is different. In the context of marriage we consider the five love languages (touch, words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, and gifts). It's the same way with your relationship with major donors. You need to build the relationship to the level that you know what you can do to make them feel valued.
• Big vision. Many times major donors get unlocked when the thinking is really big. If the thinking is too small, that's the best way to limit their giving. Their giving starts becoming unlimited as the vision becomes unlimited. And the best compliment you can have for a major donor is to expect much from them. They love accepting and rising to challenges.

Consider carefully the people you are seating together at your event. Will they be able to connect with each other and have a meaningful conversation? Will they be sitting with like-minded people who can inspire each other to give more generously?

The idea is that the people you seat together will inspire each other and connect with each other and that the people at your event will walk away with new friends. If people from your community connect and become friends at your event, they're going to feel grateful that they attended, and your event will forever be tied to a positive memory.

There is a really important principle and phenomenon in Silicon Valley called the network effect, which is a phenomenon whereby increased numbers of people or participants improve the value of a good or service. For example, as more users post content on Twitter, the more useful the platform becomes to the public.

Taking this same principle, if there is no intentionality in seating and people are simply there to watch and listen, there is no additional value with each person added to a table. But if you create cross-connection moments in your seating choices, you are establishing a mini network effect in real life. This can be accomplished digitally as well.

At VIVE we experienced this during the pandemic, when we were running the first-ever global Vision Gala completely online. There are various software programs out there, even Zoom, where you can facilitate connection elegantly online. One option is to use breakout rooms.

Carefully craft the different topics of the breakout rooms you're sending guests to pre and post your vision presentation so you can provide a more intimate setting for conversation. This takes your event from a broadcast, where your donors are passively consuming, to an engaging experience, where they truly feel like they're in community. Your guests still get to see each other and connect with other guests and with your leaders on the topics that are important to you and to them and that drive that spirit of generosity.

At our church, we centered the breakout rooms on topics such as location, people in the marketplace, ministries, and other segment-oriented topics. That's one way to make a bigger setting, even if it's online, seem smaller and filled with intention.

Organize the Venue

You have to understand, contextually, how you want to actually raise the year-end money for your organization. Some of the most effective ways of raising money involve creating a space for a catalytic moment. To give abundantly, people need to be in an atmosphere of generosity and abundance.

Our VIVE Vision Gala has such an atmosphere. Vision Gala is a black tie event, and guests are served a three-course meal. We put a lot of value on the way the event looks and feels because the aesthetics communicate value back to our donors, which puts them in a setting to hear, receive, and digest our vision and encourages a response.

What does that look like for your organization? You have to clearly define what your setting is and what that space needs to be to produce the momentum for your big ask.

Now we get into the tactical. Once you have done the work to put together your guest list, you can select your venue. You want to select a venue and a decor that create an x factor moment for guests and make them want to be generous. Don't look to cut costs here.

You need to consider the logistics of how your guests will experience the venue. How are they going to get to your event, and how will they feel when they get there? What will traffic be like for guests coming to your venue? Will they be driving far or through slowdowns that will cause them to arrive frustrated? What is the parking situation at the venue? Will they be frustrated because you chose a trendy venue, but you didn't think about the parking situation, so by the time they walk in they are late and stressed? How far do they need to go from where they park to enter the venue? Are you choosing a venue with proper climate control, or will your guests be distracted all night by being too hot or too cold?

Is your venue the appropriate size for your number of guests? You don't want a venue you're drowning in. A room that feels empty doesn't create a sense of momentum. But you also don't want a space where there's no room to move around or connect. The size of your venue is very important.

After choosing your venue, create your decor plan. First impressions are everything. There are whole books written on the importance of first impressions. Within my team, we use the Coke bottle analogy. If you take a Coke bottle and undo the cap and let it sit, what happens? It goes flat. I've never met a person who wants to drink a flat Coke. Why? The ingredients are the same, the look is the same, nothing has actually changed about the Coke except that it's no longer fizzy. What does that mean? People don't buy the Coke because of the ingredients; they buy it because of the fizz. That's the same way people will interact with your catalytic event. What fizz moments are you planning for?

Although your content is important, your guests won't remember all of it; they will remember the way you made them feel. Consider the many touchpoints you have to draw them in. What do your table settings look like? Do you have seating charts and name settings on each seat well placed? Are you providing a flow that takes donors on a journey starting at the door, telling stories along the entryway about the impact your organization has had? Do you have a setting that inspires conversations that highlight your impact throughout the night?

All of your venue and aesthetic choices need to be oriented toward cultivating an atmosphere of generosity.

My wife and I recently attended an event called Messenger Cup where the venue selection, aesthetics, and intentionality in the experience was top notch! Their mission is to bring biblical teaching to everyone, including those in remote areas with no access to resources or the bible translated in their language. “Because everyone deserves to know.” When we walked into this beautiful banquet hall at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, we were greeted with a nice photo op (which was shared with us immediately after the event so we can post about it and share it with the world). And when it came to finding our seat, there was a takeaway element next to our table seat number and name. It was a figurine, and you received a boat, jeep, or plane. Based on that figurine, the team directed you to an experience and that experience would lead you on a travel journey either through the pathway mode of a boat, jeep, or plane, illustrating that they will use any means necessary, whether it's water, land, or air, to be able to get resources into the most remote places of the world. They illustrated this with a designed experience and by the end of the path you were met with a big wall of impact: all of the places and people they have reached over the years and what that has done to transform communities. This is all before we even had taken our seats!

The intentionality of the venue, aesthetics, and design all pointed toward the impact of the organization and put you in an atmosphere of inspiration and generosity.

If your vision is to hold your event online, there are a lot of elements you can incorporate to grow the event and cultivate a generous atmosphere.

When you're doing online events and you want to create a culture of generosity, there is much more prework involved. The success of your event is going to come from minimizing the level of surprises on the day of the event by stacking things in your favor in the lead-in time. Use the weeks leading up to your events to get loose pre-commitments from your community. You want to go into the event with a strong understanding of who is committed to showing up and giving on the night.

One element that will be crucial to build attendance for the event is the mastery of how you tell stories on social media.

Another key element that will enable you to gauge those pre-commitments is your ability to create peer-to-peer environments in anticipation of the event, for example:

• Online breakout sessions for like-minded guests to connect
• Master classes on subjects related to your mission or areas of interest for your community
• Facilitating one-on-one or small-group meetups in anticipation of your event with staff or leaders within your organization

Again, the goal is to go into your event with a strong sense of the level of possibility from the event, so that you're not surprised on the day. This event should be the cherry on top of the work you've done to encourage year-end giving. You want to stack it so that the night of giving feels like your organization is building forward momentum, rather than the event being disappointing because you've missed a mark or missed a goal. The prework of the smaller gatherings alert you to whether you're going to make your goal or if there is more work to do to build generosity within your community.

One example of how to determine pre-commitments leading up to the event is to start coining different levels. For example:

• $1000 giving level = core
• $10,000 giving level = influencer
• $100,000 giving level = legacy

In conversations leading up, you can invite people to share what level they would like to come in to support the vision, which helps set expectations and create momentum.

Specifically, for an online event, what's really important outside of who's invited is to ask them to dress up and prepare themselves as if they are going to an actual event. This puts them in the position to be front-footed and leaning into the event, rather than back-footed or passive. Make it fun. Have them take a photo and share it in a community forum or post it on social media with a specific hashtag.

Another way to increase the presence of the event is to introduce a draw card. This can be a prominent or influential figure, someone beloved within the community, or maybe even an athlete or respected celebrity who's aligned with the mission and the vision. A lot of times people will dial in if they know there's something to dial in for and if you create exclusivity in the invitation. For example, an app called House Party took off during the pandemic because they hosted digital, exclusive house parties where people could enter a video chat room and connect with a celebrity. An element of exclusivity coupled with a draw card can really drive the growth of an online attendance.

Content and Agenda

You've optimized the venue and guest list; now it's time to organize the night. As you are building the flow of the night, remember that you are aiming for a catalytic moment, which can be defined and distilled in the coordination of your reveal. If you give information too early, or hold information too late, you dilute the opportunity for this moment of momentum.

A catalytic moment can be engineered through a tiered rollout of information. Begin with your key staff: the people who are actually going to make this vision happen. Invite them into the process of shaping it and figuring out how to roll it out. From key staff you go to your board, because your board needs to be involved and committed to the vision and the ask as well. They typically overlap with the major donors, which would be the next tier. As stated previously, you honor your major donors when you let them know the big vision and the ask ahead of everyone else.

The content and flow of your catalytic event are crucial. Be sure that you are constructing this presentation with your leader. Your presentation needs to be compelling, concise, and clear.

We call this order of events the run sheet. You need to structure this night like a movie, with an introduction and welcome, a build, a climax, and then a reprieve where people can non-emotionally commit to giving.

Start first with reflection.

Be really clear with your guests about everything that happened the past year—at VIVE we call this our year-end review. Did you do the things you said you were going to do last year? In what time line? What was the impact? How is that aligned with your mission, vision and values? How is that reinforcing the driving mission and vision you've been communicating?

Emphasize and reinforce your impact by tying it back to your mission, vision, and values. This puts people in a place to celebrate and also puts them in a place of gratitude. When people are in a place of gratitude, they're more willing to give or give again. That's where this night has to start.

Make sure storytelling is incorporated. Whether it's a live testimony, a video story of the impact, or something else, you want to take your high-level statistics and numbers and turn them into names and stories. Go from the high-level macro view of your major metrics and big numbers from the year and create a story that contextualizes them to a person who's been affected. This story should be personal. At the end of the day, people connect with people and stories. Whatever methodology you choose, convey a very distinct story that is relatable or further illustrates what the organization does.

You're building a story arc. So you start with the warm-up via the year-end review. You build with the storytelling and personal testimony. Now, you're at your climactic moment, which is the vision pitch and the big ask.

To reiterate from Chapter 7, the vision pitch needs to be on the level of a billion dollars of impact. It needs to be something that challenges and stretches people, in fact, I dare say, something that intimidates people.

That's the only way you inspire big giving. If the people at your giving event feel that the vision is possible without them, you won't unlock big giving. But if they feel they need to give for the organization to even have a shot to achieve the vision, that's how you unlock their participation.

You also need to be bold about your ask. Your ask needs to come with a spirit of invitation, not desperation. The people at your event should feel so lucky to partner with your organization because it will give their life vision and purpose.

If you have rolled out your ask correctly ahead of time, this moment will be especially powerful because you already have a percentage of the room on board. With the first two steps of the run sheet you've already led people toward the impact, and then in this big moment you set people's sights on the future vision. If you have 20% of the people on board and already anticipating the big reveal, it heightens the atmosphere of the room.

Choose the person making the ask carefully. Their perspective cannot be that the donors are doing the organization a favor. The mentality has to be that the organization is doing the donors a favor. This ask is not because you need the money. Your organization will be doing these initiatives whether the people in the room choose to give or not, because you're all committed to finding people to resource the vision. These donors are the lucky few that get to be in the room to hear the vision and contribute first. Your attendees will not experience the fear of missing out! The sense in the space should be that your organization isn't desperate for their money, but rather that the donors feel a need to give. In Silicon Valley terms, they get to be in the earliest round of investment, which is always the most coveted stage to be in.

Invitation is better than desperation, because desperation creates the wrong dynamic. This is human psychology. If you see a person on the street and you start running after them, what are they going to do? They won't run toward you. They'll run away from you.

You need to understand that you have something that donors want to run toward. You have something that will provide them with purpose. You have something that is worthy of inviting your community to give to. The person who is making this ask should not feel or convey that your organization has to chase after your donors. Givers just run away from that. They need to create the atmosphere that is inviting the people present to join in and give.

Now, tactically, make it clear that there are a lot of options to give. Platforms like Overflow allow your organization to confidently say that you can give a wire transfer or give from your stock portfolio or via cryptocurrency. Make the options clear so that your guests know there are a lot of options. Awaken their imagination on how they can give.

At the end, create a reprieve so that the moment is not about emotion or manipulation. When it is time for your guests to donate, give them time to pause thoughtfully and consider whether they will give. You don't want this moment to be at the peak; you actually want it to be the wind down.

If a commitment is made because the person was drinking too much at the event, or based on the emotionalism of your presentation, or based on being swept up in a moment, then the pledge they make on that night is not going to be fulfilled. And if it is, it will be met with regret, and they will not want to do it again. You want your givers to have a sober understanding of what they're committing to, and that will minimize the discrepancy between commitment and fulfillment.

Build Anticipation

Now, you've selected the venue, constructed the run sheet, and you're working on the presentation and creative assets. As you build up to the event, consider how you're going to get people excited and in a place of anticipation for the event.

The base of the strategy is to ramp up your communication as you approach the event. Start by sending one email three months ahead, then one two months ahead. One month ahead, send one email a week, and the week of the event, send daily communication if you can, leading up to the event.

Marketing is all about frequency and recency. You want to increase communication more as you get closer to your event to take advantage of how people's brains work: to take advantage of recency bias. Something that you just saw or something that was just communicated to you will remain top of mind, so as you increase communication as the event draws near, the event will increasingly remain top of mind for your guests. Frequency plays into this as well.

The reality is that it takes multiple touchpoints for the message to actually be received and remembered. So you want to make sure you have both frequency and recency, especially leading up to the event.

From Chapter 7, remember that you have other forms of communication as well. Consider the platforms that your invitees may be using, such as texting, and how you can integrate those to provide additional touchpoints with your giving community.

From a branding and design standpoint, be very thoughtful with the choices you make to tie your communications to your event. At VIVE, everything we create for the Vision Gala is tied to our big reveal of our vision on the day of the Gala. We tie in our social media designs, the assets that we use for our email newsletters and everything about the look, the feel, and the language is tied to the big reveal on the day of. It's a subconscious way to begin telling the story before the event arrives. We're using our communication ahead of time to tie in the big reveal, the vision, and what the big ask will be.

To do this at scale, you need brand guidelines solidified within your organization. Do you have them? Figures 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 shows what Overflow's looks like.

To wrap this up, what's important to understand is that for most organizations, more than 60% of your budget will be made up in your year-end giving campaign—in your catalytic moment. Unless you are doing everything and implementing all of these best practices to maximize this moment, your organization will really miss out on the biggest tailwind of giving within the year.

It's easiest to be able to raise money toward the end of the year. There's so many implications here that are connected to year-end giving. There's momentum from people earning year-end bonuses. People are searching for year-end charitable tax deductions. You can even benefit from just being aligned to the holidays when people are in a more generous, giving mood. These are just some of the reasons that maximizing the moment is so important.

If you fail to maximize your year-end contributions, you will face an uphill battle for the rest of the year and will start from behind in the upcoming year.

Now that we have given you a lot of playbooks, tactics, and guidance, let's dive into real-world examples in Chapter 9 with organizations that are finding incredible success implementing many of the concepts we have covered in this book thus far!