On February 24, we presented a webinar called Competition for the cause: using fundraising teams effectively.”  Our own James Campbell talked about some of what we’ve learned about how teams and fundraising incentives can help motivate supporters and fundraisers to exceed their goals.

As you know, there’s a delicate balance between teamwork and competition.  Smart fundraisers know that people raise more when they fundraise in teams with some friendly competition against other teams.

Here’s the recorded video, and you can download the slides and read the Q&A below.

Watch video | View slides | Download PDF slides

Q&A

This is a lightly edited transcript of questions asked during the session with answers from Team Firstgiving.

Meredith: At what point in the event promotion do you begin to market the incentives?  Right at the beginning, in the middle, or towards the end of the event?  We usually begin in the middle.

Firstgiving: Market the incentives at the beginning so that all of the teammates and fundraisers set fundraising thresholds for themselves at the onset.

Cassie: Do most non-profits receipt their donors for 100% of their donation or for 92.5%?

Firstgiving: Yes, the full amount is the donation.

Cassie: So the non-profits “pay” the difference and take it out of expense budgets?

Firstgiving: Yes.

Cassie: The numbers that you’re showing for fundraising datapoint…are you saying that if someone joins a team, that individual on avg. raises $1517 vs. $455 if they’re on their own?

Firstgiving: Not quite – a team raises $1500 all together – the typical team is about 3 people so the amount raised per person isn’t much more, but the additional people are what makes the difference.

Lisa: Do you have a recommendation on how much you should spend in dollars on promotional incentives vs. targeted amount you wish to raise?

Firstgiving: I would defer to Turnkey Promotions, Firstgiving has no data on this.

Lisa: Do you have sample stories to assist in writing you own personal stories using a sample like a template?

Firstgiving: There are no samples per se, but there are a lot of featured fundraisers on our blog and some FAQs in the support section of our site.  You can always contact our support desk for help.

Tara: Do you integrate with databases such as Mission Research’s GiftWorks?

Firstgiving: No.

Dawn: Do you think teams would work for a school fundraiser?

Firstgiving: Sure, we’ve seen many schools doing team events, like walkathons for example – http://www.firstgiving.com/uncmarathon

Melissa: FG created a new “team registration” portion of your website. Is there more information about how to take advantage of this option?

Firstgiving: There sure is – try this page on our new help section: http://help.firstgiving.com/?s=teams

Karolyn: For an organization unable to pay for branded shirts etc, what are some examples of incentives we can use?

Firstgiving: Great question, Karolyn.  Coffee card, restaurant gift certificates, gas cards, movie tickets, iTunes gift cards, spa/salon package, vacation raffle, ski lift tickets package, golf package, baseball (sports team) tickets, be creative.

Jan: How does an organization offer incentives for teams?  Would we offer them to individual team members or to the “team”?

Firstgiving: I would reward and give prizes to top individuals before the event, and then award top teams based on final results.

Jan: How to do you incentives for teams when teams have so many members? do you do them by team or by individual member?

Firstgiving: Plan on rewarding individuals.  You can award team prizes too, but individuals want the personal recognition too.

Carol: How well does this work for organizations with budgets under 150,000?

Firstgiving: It can work fine, it’s really about your community and cause, not the size of your budget.

Tracy: How would this online/teamwork/incentive approach fit in with a silent auction fundraiser?

Firstgiving: I’m not sure how teams play into an auction event, but let us know how it goes!

Tracy: Does firstgiving have experience with npo that do international work?

Firstgiving: Sure, some of our customers are Team World Vision, Water Aid, and Doctors Without Borders

Kathleen: Providing incentives wlil be quite costly due to the shipping to these areas.  Do you have access to websites that provide ordering on line so shipping is done directly from the business rather than from the NPO?  Is this something that can be chosen by the volunteers so that their choices will be AT NO COST and sent to them directly with a billing to the NPO?

Firstgiving:  We often see people using Amazon.com gift certificates or other elecontric prizes, like itunes credit.  If you can get prizes donated by corporate sponsors, that can also reduce your cost.

Amanda: I’m with a Habitat for Humanity affiliate and we’re trying to fundraise for build projects which are more long term than a focused one day event. How would you recommend using teams for something like that?

Firstgiving: That’s great, friends/family, business, churches could form Teams, and enter the Building Project together as a unit, and fundraise together.  It’s OK that the campaign takes a long time to complete.  You can even have teams come and go during the course of the project.   Same thing, issue incentives to Teams based on their fundraising activity.

Kris: Is that as an admin?  or as the fundraiser setting up their page?  Can you create an event page for the organization that fundraisers can go directly to to setup their fundraising page?

Firstgiving: Yes you create an event page for that. The NPO has a dedicated Start Page on Firstgiving, then all of their individuals and team can connect their personal pages off of this central page.

Kris: Can the team page have a “donate now” button?

Firstgiving: That’s in the works, but it’s sort of complicated how we would allocate the donation across the team members.  So no, not right now.    Donors have to donate to a specific team member.

Terri: Is the incentive for the person or for the team?

Firstgiving: Incentives can be for either or both.  Some organizations mix both kinds, others do team only or individual only

Louis: It is okay to set minimum donation an individual member should raise?

Firstgiving: One warning I would give about setting a minimum donation level is that, once a fundraiser hits that threshold, they may decide they’ve done enough and stop.

Louis: You mentioned engaging local businesses can you use gifts from local business as incentives?

Firstgiving: Absolutely! You can offer to trade publicity for discounted (or even free) products. Donating to a non-profit is great for PR for a local business.

Louis: Thank you. That was a great presentation. Does the size of an organization in considering fund raising by teams?

Firstgiving: Thanks Louis.  The size of the organization only matters if you don’t have the staff to coordinate the event.

Katrina:  James – lack of pre-event promotion is the biggest mistake AFTER not keeping the promise to give one.

Garrett: For example, if three members of “John’s Team” all make personal fundraising webpages, is there a way to link them all so that their fundraising totals are grouped together? I think James showed that creating this was possible a few slides back (the slide had pictures of cats and dogs on it)

Firstgiving: Yes, if you create a team – support can help you do that – the total of all teammates fundraising will display on the team page

Garrett: Can you explain how team captains make their team “homepage” on Firstgiving. By “Homepage” I mean the page you showed earlier that allows individual webpages to be linked the team’s efforts.

Firstgiving: The “homepage” is what we call a Personal Fundraising Page.  Anybody can create one by clicking on the “get started” button on an NPO’s firstgiving page – it takes a couple of minutes, very easy.  From a NPO’s start page (for example http://www.firstgiving.com/exorg), the team leader can click “Get Started”, select the event the team will be raising funds for, then log in/register. On the next page, the team leader can search (to make sure the  team hasn’t already been created) and create the new team for the event.

Thanks again for attending or watching the replay.  See our other webinars on the main webinar page.