Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host, and I’m the pod father of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of polyphagia if I had to stomach the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, to tell us what’s going on. Hey Tony, this week it’s your fall gala strategy. The CEO of Trellis.org wants you to recognize your gala as a substantial fundraising growth opportunity. He shares his advice on unlocking new revenue drivers, turning one-night attendees into long-term donors, modern upsells, using tech wisely, and much more. He is Justin Goodhue. On Tony’s take 2. Will I see you at the bridge conference? We’re sponsored by the bridge conference. Tony will be with more than 2400 nonprofit professionals at Bridge, July 29 to 231 in National Harbor, Maryland. Info and registration at bridge.org. Here is your fall gala strategy. It’s a pleasure to welcome to nonprofit Radio, the co-founder and CEO of Trellis.org, Justin Goodhue. Trellis.org is the leading integrated gala and auction software for Blackbaud’s Razor’s Edge. Justin discovered that events, especially galas, are one of the biggest untapped opportunities for donation growth. You’ll find Justin on LinkedIn. Welcome to nonprofit Radio, Justin. Hey, Tony, thanks for having me. I love it. Uh, my pleasure, uh, look at that. I don’t think a guest has ever, I’ve never had a guest imitate my, uh, my, uh, enthusiastic arm raises. I’m just trying to bring the vibes, you know. Thank you. Uh, I’m glad it’s infectious to you. All right, uh, outstanding, outstanding. Thank you for that. No problem. Um, let’s talk about, uh, the high level first. What, uh, nonprofits could be doing better. With gaylas, what you see as, uh, the, the untapped potential in gaylas, and then we’ll, we’ll, we’ll have plenty of time to drill down. Yeah, I mean, like if you go really high level here, nonprofits are the only ones that are really allowed to do this, where you can get all of your favorite people, all the people that love you the most, and then ask them for a lot of money. Regular companies, for-profit companies, they can’t do that, right? So just high level like for-profit companies would love to be able to do that, but they don’t have an excuse or a reason to. You do, at your nonprofit. So, I think we get caught up in that, you know. These Gas, Gas, Gas, they, they take so much time, right, on the team, and that’s all that is focused on. But when you take it just one half step back, it’s like, oh my gosh, we get to give everyone the Kool-Aid for one night of the year and get them to fall in love with what we do, because they do truly care, that’s why they’re here. And what could we be doing better at this? Yeah, well, I guess, well, first, the, uh, I guess the closest that, uh, a, a corporate. Analogy would be, uh, like the shareholders meeting, but that’s not really, those are not love fests for the, they’re, they’re, they may be insurrectionists in, in the shareholder meeting, but I guess that’s not the closest they come. But then that, I guess that’s not, that’s not very close. It’s not and all you care about is, is your return or your dividends, right? This is so much more than you and now, but, but when I’m donating to my favorite charity, I go to the event because I wanna see the impact I’ve created, and I wanna feel even more engaged and, and, and connected to that, right? And that’s just, it’s, it’s a big note in the strategy of your fundraising that I think that the nonprofits have the advantage in, they can actually do it. And so what could we be doing better. Uh, just tick off some, some ideas, you know, we’ll, we’ll go into detail. Yeah, we’ll go into lots. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll start going and you can let me know where you want to dive in, but I think a big thing with, with galas is realizing that it’s not just the day. Um, so realizing that there, there’s a lead up, there’s a follow through, and it’s part of that strategy, right? You’re not getting those major gifts. There are, there are some charities that just do major gifts, period, full stop. That’s a great strategy and, and I think they should just keep doing that. But for a lot of these charities that want to get major gifts, that have events going on, you find those major gift donors at the events. I think that’s a key one that people forget. It’s, hey, what are the 20% of people that are driving 80% of the revenue at your gala. And make sure that you find more of those, and you just hone in on those. So, you know, you wanna be pre-planning, inviting the right people, right? You want to be integrating with the right system so you can identify those people, you wanna be upselling those people when they’re there, not because you wanna make more money per se, but because you want to identify the people that have it and that don’t mind giving it, right? Why is it, why is it just airlines and fast food that can upsell? Why can’t nonprofits as well, right? So we need to be doing those things, uh, you know, and then focusing on what really works in those galas, which you can dive into, there’s a lot of distractions, I would say, Tony, in these galas. And we don’t need to be doing a lot of those. We need to keep these people focused on what the reason they’re there for, and, uh, and then of course, putting that cause first. I always leave that to the end because I want people to remember that and really that’s why people are there and leaving them with that, that feeling and showcasing that. OK, cool. Oh, that’s, that’s a, that’s a great timeline. Um, I’m, I’m very interested in this topic. Uh, I find myself working on, uh, a, a gala with a, with a client, which is not in my. Wheelhouse, uh, at all. In fact, I, I, I shun galas. I, I mean, I go, I’ll go when I’m invited, but I’m strictly a participant. Well, there, there’s a, there’s a client I’m, I’m interim co-chief Development officer of, and, uh, there’s a gala coming up. And, um, Uh, you know, we wanna, we, we wanna do well. And I, I’m, I’m not sure we’ve done as well as, I don’t think we’ve done as well as we could in the past. Uh, the client agrees. Uh, so we’ll see. I may, all right, I may be asking you some individual questions, but I’m not, you know, I’m not looking for a free consultation either. That’s not, that’s not the case. Oh no, like this is, I mean, this is so much better. You’re actually in it. So why do you mind me asking, why do, why does your, your client, um, think that they could do better? What’s the big reason? Uh, it just doesn’t, it, it doesn’t raise enough money for the, for the, the level of the charity, you know, the last year they raised, well, They, I think the profit was about 165,000 or so. That was the profit. Um. The, the, uh, the, the auction raise, I was not at, I was not at the event, but universally understood that the, uh, the paddle auction was poor. It was embarrassing, embarrassing. At least one person said embarrassing, but if other people didn’t say it was embarrassing, they felt embarrassed that, that the, the, the, the, the, the raises were just not coming. The, the, the bids, the bids on the, on the auction items were just not coming. So we’re, we’re revisiting that entire structure to make it more mission-centric and much less auction item-centric, um. All right. So there’s, there’s a couple of, there’s a few things. Let’s, let’s start with your, Uh, pre-plan. I mean, you laid out kind of a timeline, pre-planning, having the right systems, upselling. I don’t know if upselling is that night or, or afterwards. We’ll find out, we’re gonna find out together. Well, you already know, I’ll find out. Um, avoiding distractions, putting the cause first. OK. And then, uh, gala versus gala. I, I don’t know. I’m from the Northeast, uh, New York City area. To me, it’s gala, but you say, you say gala. You’re in British Columbia, way Pacific Northwest, uh, of, right? Yeah, yeah. So I’m in, uh, I’m in Canada, right? And I don’t know what it is in Canada. We say gala. I mean, we’re maybe less fancy. We’re not as clearly as Southern. I don’t know if one is more, to me, Galla, to me, Gallo sounds more fancy, uh, honestly. Uh, I don’t know. Gala, I don’t know. Galla sounds hard. It’s gala is the long A, the harsh gala, gala. I don’t know. Galla sounds more gallant, like gallant, like the word gallant, gallantry, you know, gallon, a gallon of love, gala. I don’t know, gala, gay, gala. I can’t think of anything else that starts with gala. Gay, gay la la, but gala has lots of other, um, you know, similarly sounding words to play off. I’ll take it. I’ve seen the fancy galas in New York and they are, they’re, they’re fancy. And I mean, I’ll take it, you know, if we can be fancy in Canada, I’ll do that. Oh, yeah, well, well, I mean, I’ve been to galas at the Plaza Hotel. Mm. So, And, and where else? Oh, Cipriani, that’s another huge, I mean, I’m talking New York City now. This is strictly New York-centric because that’s where I, that’s, even though I live in North Carolina, my roots are in the New York City area. Cipriani, they have two locations in New York City. That’s another very big one. What, big hotels? Oh, the Saint I think Saint Regis Hotel. We’re talking elegant, you know, gala, elegant ballrooms with, Elegant gala potential if you’re, if you’re, if you’re exploiting the potential of the, of the venue and, and if you think about the, you know, those galas where they have so many people they can invite, they’re really focused on getting those people in the seats, right? So when you talk about the first part that I was talking about with the pre-planning preplanning gala before the, before the night of the gala, yeah, yeah, it’s, I mean, they’ve been doing this for 2030 years, right, where they’re, OK, we, this group of people that we. Invited, wow, they donated about 80%. If you go look, so I, I challenge you to, to talk to your client and say, OK, let’s look at the, all of our donors, all of our attendees, and let’s go and see who uh donated most of the money, right? Cause it’s always the 20% of attendees at the galas that did the 80% of the donations, the ones that did make those bids. It’s the other 80% that maybe didn’t make those bids. So what these galas have been doing and These planners have been doing for 2030 years in New York and all these bigger ones that have been going on and on is they’re always looking back, OK, who gave the most? How did we find them? Did we invite them through a radio ad? Did we invite them by, you know, one of our fundraisers invited them, for example, right? So that’s, that’s what a lot of look at, look at, look at the high, look at the high performers from last year’s gala, gala, now you got me all confused, gala. Uh, how do we, how do we get them there? How, how do we get more people like those people, right? Yeah, yeah. So make sure you do ask that question to all those people. How did you hear about this gala, right, in the ticketing form, something so you can take a look. Oh, I, you know, actually I was just invited by Tony. He brought me to my table, right? OK, so then why, who Tony brought 10 people that spent like $1000 each, and then someone else, you know, brought people that only brought $100 each. So now we look at Tony with a different light next year and try and maybe he gets 2 tables, things like that. OK. OK. Um, what, what do you, what do you, all right, anything else pre, pre, uh, on the pre, pre-night of, pre, um, yeah, so you do wanna make it really easy and prep, right? So you wanna make sure you get the list. You wanna have that list, you want to have everyone that’s invited. So if you’re sponsoring tables, if you have a bunch of people that sponsor tables and they invite their employees or their clients to the gala, you want to make sure you have their first name, last name, and email of everyone coming cause you do want to have that filled out before to make that check-in experience seamless. They don’t feel like they’re in a huge line at the start. They get to walk in and you can, you can invite them and say like, what is your name? They’ll let you know and then you can just simply, you know, shoot them a text, whatever that looks like on the system you’re using so that they can give for the evening because you already have all their information ready to go. It just gets a lot more personal. OK, uh, up, up front, did you ask for their cell number too? Yes, yes, Cell number is great because then uh when we, we talk about the next step which is integration, you want to integrate your systems into how donors work. They know how to receive a text message, they know how to click that, and then they can start giving very easily. They don’t need to log in anywhere, there should be no logging in, there should be no downloading apps, anything confusing, just integrating with what they already use. So getting their cell phone number is huge and then for future asks, donations, communications, you have that number. OK, right. All right. So night of, of course, yes, night of, we can be, we can be texting them, uh, updates, uh, link, right, link to give. Now we’ve got, we’ve got this item up or we’ve got this campaign going. Here’s the link to give. So they’re hearing about it from, from the stage, but they’re also getting text messages. Here’s the link to, here’s the link to give. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and it’s, and, and it’s prompting and reminding as well before and after. Yeah. OK. Oh, that’s true. Oh, before, right, you can, looking forward to seeing you tomorrow night. Yeah, also for the silent auction, right? Like, hey, the silent auction’s open 2 weeks ahead of time, right? And they’re already kind of thinking about the gala. Oh, I can look, I can peruse, I can start bidding on all my items before I show up. So most of the time, um, auctions on Trellis, for example, they have, you know, 5 to 10 bids on each one before the actual night. Because you should be launching it 2 weeks before. And then you should, because if you’re just saying, hey, get ready for the gala, get ready for the gala, that’s not really exciting, but hey, look at this auction item that’s already getting bids before the gala, like make sure you put your bids in and start getting excited about that. So you’re already thinking about it, um, beforehand and getting excited. OK, and you’re doing that by SMS. Uh, yeah, oh yeah, texting is just so much easier. People are not put off. People are not put off. They know they’re coming to the gala, and they can opt out. I’m sure they could opt out if they wanted to. Oh yeah, they can opt out, they don’t have to put in their phone number as well, so if you don’t have it, then we’ll just be emailing them, but I mean, not many people read their emails these days and, and we just text them for the things that matter. So if you’ve bid on an item, right, think about that thing you love, and you have, you could get two tickets to it or a gift card or a golf, whatever that thing that you love. You bid on it, you want to know if you get a bid, right? Of course, there should be things like auto bid, right? So you bid $100 and you want, and you’ll say I’ll bid up to $400. Again, that’s, that’s a great way for charities to ring up how much their bids are because if you and I both say oh we’ll bid up to $400 then it just goes right ladders up very quickly. Um, but I wanna know if Tony’s beating me. I wanna know so I can go back and beat him again at the auction. It’s, uh, OK, a lot of fun that way. And does the, uh, does the software allow me to set my increment? So and on auto bid. So I bid, I bid $100. I’m willing to go up to $400. Your example, somebody else bid $150. Do I set the increment above $150 that I’m willing to go, or, or that’s automated? Like $50 above or $25 above, do I set that, the increment? That’s a great question. So we, for the auto bid, it’s a minimum increment. So the organizer sets a minimum bid increment. Um, so for this item, $400 probably the bid increment would be somewhere between $100.25 dollars. I would recommend $25 and then it would go up by $25 increments if it’s on auto bid because it just, it bids up to the minimum bid increment. OK there, yeah, well, you get, you get two people on auto bid. I mean the you get the $400 then you get to $400 in a couple of seconds. Yeah, so we push a lot of people to auto bid, um, which, yes, adds a little bit of friction, uh, but once they use it, cause a lot of them haven’t used it before, once they use it once, they love it, and we get a lot of reports of how much it’s easier because then they’re not glued to their cellphone, they’re not eyeing the auction table, they’re just enjoying it, right? And it’s, uh, they’re enjoying that event. And another fun piece is that overtime bidding, there are a lot of people unfortunately that forget that these auctions are for a good cause, and they try and go in at the end and just get it for the lowest price. So if you and I were both at 400, they wait till 1 minute before and they go 410. Or 425, whatever the next minimum is. If we, on our system, if we have a bid within the last two minutes, we just extend it by another 2 minutes, so everyone else has a chance to bid on top. So we’ve seen uh items go for 1015 minutes, 20 minutes longer sometimes because people keep bidding until it closes. Yeah, they, they don’t have the nonprofit spirit quite in uh, quite in their hearts. They’re trying to get the, they’re trying to get the item at the cheapest, at the cheapest price possible. Yeah, and that’s, I mean, if you wanna talk about like ethos and why I started this thing, and I mean like, you know, you look at this like social responsibility isn’t a trend, like what Justin is pointing to, uh, it looks, well, you’re he’s wearing the same t-shirt. Uh, so he’s pointing to the, but the, the t-shirt is also displayed behind him. So that’s what he’s pointing to, but he’s wearing this t-shirt that also, also wearing the t-shirt that says social responsibility isn’t a trend. Yeah. Just in case you missed it, right? So I wanted to have that covered, but really what it is, is. I, I find that sometimes in these events, the cause is forgotten. And it’s all about that donor and the experience and even I’ve been talking about it and we’re all, uh, we all get there sometimes, but at the end of the day, it’s for that cause, right? And I think that we try and put in these features and we try and talk to individuals and, and put out the message of, hey, at the end of the day, it’s about your cause, how do we put the cause forward and how do we get the most amount of money from these attendees into the nonprofit’s wallets. And that’s really what, at the end of the day, what matters. OK. Now we’re talking about features that I, I’m, I presume are part of Trellis, over, uh, auto bid, overtime bid. uh, if we don’t have the benefit of Trellis or we don’t have razor’s edge, you know, are these features that are in other auction software? Yeah, I think the, the auto bid feature is a common one we see, uh, for sure. The overtime not so much, uh, and we also do have this really, uh, sneaky one which is called donate your bid, which is we are the only ones that do that one. And again, I’m not trying to push. I, I do think if you do a silent auction, let’s, before we get to the donate your bid, let’s talk about what you can do. I wrote it down, donate your bid. Yeah, we’re gonna get to donate your bid. Yeah, yeah, but. For silent auctions, yeah, you don’t need trellis, and I think what you need is you need to get the right bums and seats. You need to have the right asks, so that’s not 100 items unless you have 1000 attendees, right? It’s, it’s, and, and you’re gonna get like, you know, your friend down the street is going to say, Here is my $10 gift card or my 10% off my business, and it’s like, but how do you say no to that, right? You can’t say no to that. Because then they’re gonna be upset and take it personally. So what you do is you say thank you so much, Tony, and then you package it up, bundle with some other stuff. So bundling is key. If the software does the bundling for you, that’s helpful, but you can also just, you know, have the items, and then, OK, 2 weeks before, all right, we’re done with items. I only want 20 items total, so we’re gonna bundle, right? And then you start getting the quality is there, so. That’s what I would say, and then again, yeah, less is more bundle for those auction items and uh and really, you know, ask your, ask your, your, your group, especially business owners and they’re, they’re very willing to give products, to give gift cards because it is cheaper for them than cash as well, right? And they get that sponsorship opportunity. So again, making sure that they, the sponsor of the event or the items are forward. On those options. That would be the key. OK, OK. Yeah. All right, so having the right systems, uh, maybe we could just tick off some additional features that we should be looking for. Again, you know, we’re not using Trellis or Razor’s Edge or, yeah, Razor’s Edge. Um, what, what, what else besides, you mean, you just named two or three. What else should we be looking for in our, in our, in our gala, Galla software? Yeah, so let’s go down to um a, a great thing is upselling, right? So you wanna have little upsells so you can identify those people that have the money, so then you can follow up later. So whether that’s an upsell at, uh when they buy their ticket, hey, do you wanna add a donation during the night, um, hey, thank you for making that bid, Tony. If you don’t win, do you want to just donate the $400? So that $400 we were talking about that you didn’t win because someone came in at the end and beat you. Do you want to just donate $400 or a portion of that instead? The people that donate their bid are very likely to then give you bigger gifts at the end of the year. The people that add in upsells and they’re like, yeah, take my money, I love the cause, um, they’re the ones that then you can go and take out for dinner, take out for a coffee, ask them why they love the cause so much if you haven’t seen. They’re the ones with the money and they can give those upsells, or sorry, give those, uh, those big donations at the end of the year because of those upsells. Because they upsold, yeah, because they were willing to give another $100 donation after they just bought a $1250 ticket. Yeah, yeah, and that’s, those are the people that have that, and, and that’s why businesses do it. They do it, yes, they make a little bit more money, but they’re doing it cause then they have the data on you, and then they can send you other things that are at a different price point. So we have a lot of uh nonprofits, what we see is, if they’re buying raffle tickets and small things, um, small items, they buy some drink tickets, they maybe bid on a couple of things, they’re not like, they’re not high, um, you know, high activity donors that are giving a lot of these events, they’re sending them smaller opportunities throughout the year. The ones that, that give a lot during these events, they’re being very careful at what they send them, and making sure it’s very curated and, and larger asks. Or what they care about, they know more about them. So it’s really neat to see how they’re segmenting the data, because when you’re talking about systems, the event software that you use, you really want it to integrate with the CRM that you use. Yeah, that would be the, that certainly would be the ideal, right, right, right, and you want it to integrate, not to get super boring and geeky on you here, but it’s, if, if you run a big event that’s hard on your team, and then you have to ask your team, hey, all of this great stuff we did isn’t in our serum that we use every day, and we got to push that over somehow and figure it out, then. Most of your leverage is gone, most of the, the spark is gone by the time it gets into the system, it’s 2 to 3 weeks later, your team’s forgotten, the people that attended forgotten, and you haven’t done that follow-up, cause the only thing that’s almost as important as pre-planning the event is also following up after, so. OK, right. You’re, because you’re envisioning, it’s, it’s gonna probably be a manual process getting the data into the CRM and then by the time the gift officers get in touch with the people who, you know, to say thank you for your generosity at the gala, you know, it could be two weeks later. It’s kind of, you, you lost a lot of the spark. Yeah. Yeah, you’ve lost almost all the spark and it should have been, it, it should have been instantaneous. It should be the Monday back from the Saturday night gala, right? And that you should have that information in the system, it should be automated and it should be integrated in there, at least, or at least that the, the, the high bidders, right? The, the high purchasers, um, the ones that bought the tables, like at least segment that as a minimum would be my recommendation if you’re not doing any segmentation right now. OK, OK. Now, if you, uh, uh, let, let’s keep in mind, you’ve mentioned, uh, as an example, uh, just off the top of it, you know, just in passing, you said a Saturday night gala. I wanna come back to that Saturday night and see if that’s a reality or, or what, but if you don’t, all right, so if you don’t have an automated system. What you could be doing now, you know, I mean, you can have folks taking notes. All right, we’re going, we’re going old school now. I’m talking, you know, you’re taking notes with a, with a little, little pad and a pen, or you’re taking notes on your phone. All right, that, that, we know that, we know who the people are because we assigned them all the tables. So, Mr., Mr. and Mrs. Goodhue, you know, they, they just, uh, they just, Well, well, yeah, they just got the top bid on the $5000 you know, on the $5000 week in, uh, in the Caribbean. So, we, all right, we want to get to the good hugs. We, we gotta, we gotta get to them. Uh, we gotta get to the other folks because they did $7500. I mean, it’s not optimal. I agree. I’m not, I’m not saying, I’m not saying don’t look into Trellis.org because there’s another way of doing it. But if you don’t have a, if you don’t have the, The wherewithal for the software or you, you, because you’re an integration with Razor’s Edge, you know, if you’re, if Razor’s Edge isn’t your CRM, you do have alternatives, either automated or the 64 year old guy suggesting the old school approach, just taking notes on who, who raised their paddle for the, for the high dollar items. Mhm mhm yeah and I think if you have a conversation honestly with your whole team and you say you have like a gold star system and anyone that sees things or you pull that data right away after and that’s the one thing you do, if there is one follow-up piece, it is taking that 20% and trying to identify who they are and if it’s not automated, that’s OK, right? I, I truly think that’s OK. It’s you because you’ve done the 20% and you found that that’s given you the 80% of the value, so you’ve really covered it. The software makes it easy. And there’s so many other softwares that integrate with other CRMs, so I think I would definitely do some research, um, on what that looks like. But yeah, no, I agree. If you, if you can just identify this handful, um, one trick though that I think a lot of people forget too is a lot of, a lot of, um, individuals, they, they show purchase intent by saying I’m gonna bid, I’m gonna bid, I’m gonna bid, and then they lose. So they bid up to $5000 and they left by spending a drink ticket, you know, yeah, you’re like, oh, they said they’d pay $5000 and they spent $10,000. Dollars, right? And so like that’s a like a little tricky one, and then it’s really trying to, the second piece is you all know those people that talk a big game and then you go look at the data and the ones that don’t have to talk a big game and they do give a lot, right? And so just because they might seem like they’re giving a lot, make sure you do check with the numbers there and identify those table purchasers. So yeah, that’s what I would do whether you have software or not. Very good advice, uh, on, on both, on both counts, and I’m just, I’m, I, like, I’m underlining, um, don’t be distracted by the, the loud talkers. Go, go, go with the action, the actual bids. And, and to your point, they didn’t necessarily win anything. They might, they might have bid a bunch of times, they didn’t win anything, but they’re still, they still were very willing. They just got outbid each time. So, absolutely very good advice. It’s time for a break. We’re sponsored by the Bridge Conference produced by AFP DC and DMAW July 29, 231 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. More than 2400 professionals will gather at bridge. Tony will be with them. The question is, will you? Thought leaders from nonprofits, associations, foundations, hospitals, higher ed, faith-based, and mission-driven causes across the country come to Bridge to discover new ideas, solve real challenges, and connect with smart people shaping the future of our industry. From 125+ educational sessions and hands-on pre-conference workshops to bridge tech, the faith and fundraising forum. And inspiring keynote speakers, Bridge offers something for every mission and every role. The conversations happening at Bridge will shape strategies, careers, and organizations long after the conference ends. Don’t hear about it afterward. Be in the room. Register at bridge.org. It’s time for Tony’s take 2. Thank you, Kate. Indeed, the Bridge conference, our sponsor, which I’m grateful for. Thank you very much, Bridge, for being with us. I’m gonna be there. The, the conference is the 29th to the 31st of July. I’m gonna be there on Friday. The 31st, um, you can see me on the exhibitor stage. I’ll be there from 11:10 to 11:40. Don’t, don’t come at 11:15. You’ll miss, you’ll miss the 1st 5 minutes. They’re very precise, 11:10 to 11:40. And I’m talking about, maybe I, this is, this is really the headline. I kind of buried it. The Martignetti three-step, one-week planned giving launch. It’s an excerpt from my book. That’s, uh, that is something that I feature in the book. It’s important that you know that you can start planned giving within 1 week of what I set you up with. 3 steps, 1 week. Launch planned giving. That’s what I’m talking about, uh, on, uh, Friday, July 31st, on the exhibitor stage at the bridge conference. This really is, uh, it, it’s a preeminent conference. Um, uh, like 20, they’re saying 2400 people or more. Um, it, it’s, I think this is the 4th annual or something. It’s, it’s gotten to be very, very big. Uh, they have big name sponsors. Uh, I was just told that Amazon came on as a sponsor or, or some kind of partner. So, you know, that’s obviously, uh, a, a, a great, a great coup for them, a great get to, to have that, that kind of name and, uh, notoriety with, with your conference. So, this thing is only growing. So, think about the bridge conference. You don’t need me to repeat where the, where the info and the registration are because, uh, we’re telling you 334 times already today, uh, but I’ll say it. Bridge CNF.org. So you didn’t need me to say it, but I said it anyway, because they’re a sponsor. We gotta be good to them. That is Tony’s take 2. Kate. So your audience is getting a little sneak peek into your book. They will. That’s correct, because the book doesn’t come out until September. But you can see me at, at the bridge, obviously, uh, July 31st. We’ve got Bu but loads more time. Here’s the rest of your fall gala strategy. I wanna go back to what you said in passing. Saturday night gala. You see a lot of weekend, you see weekend galas, Fridays and Saturdays? We do, um, because we serve, there’s a lot of them, but we do see a lot of Thursday nights as well. You know, so it doesn’t encroach on the weekend, but it’s almost the weekend, um, for sure. So Thursday is a big night for us, um, Friday, Saturday, no holidays like, so any of the holidays, like, you know, your July 4th, your, you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas, of nothing, it’s dead, um, and then we see big spikes in the spring. Um, so we just went through one, the tail end of that, usually Easter caps it, right? So that, that ends the spring push and then there is a huge fall push. Um, so we do see everyone tries to get that first weekend in September, but they don’t want to do it too, they want to give people enough time to buy their tickets too, so that like 3rd and 4th weekend in September are quite busy. Um, and yeah we do see a lot on Friday and Saturday night, equal parts though to a Thursday and a Wednesday. So, um, interesting, you do see Fridays and Saturdays, OK, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think as we like maybe not in bigger cities, but in smaller cities it is the thing to do, right? Like it’s not as there’s not as many things to do, right, like. You don’t have a massive, like you’re talking about, you know, downtown New York here and uh yeah, there’s lots of opportunities to do many different things, right? But you know I’m from a town of 150,000 people and like that the big hospital gala is a big thing, right? And that is on a Friday or Saturday because um that’s what you want to be doing. And uh you said Easter kind of caps the spring season. You don’t see a lot of May and June galas. We see May, uh, June, not so much. Interesting. OK. OK. So maybe June is an opportunity. I, I don’t, I don’t feel like June is so late in the, in the spring. I mean, it’s. Like early to mid-June. All right, yes, it’s after, it, look, it’s after Memorial Day in the state. You know, we’re talking about the states, right? We’re talking about the states. It’s after Memorial Day. So it’s, it’s the official summer. That’s true. I’m just wondering, you know, schools are not out, like elementary and high schools are not out yet. So you haven’t gone away for your summer vacation probably because elementary and high schools tend to end like mid to late June. So you haven’t gone away for your holiday week yet, I don’t think. I’m gene obviously, I’m generalizing, you know, but I’m wondering if early June is maybe not so bad. I would agree. No, there’s not much cause a lot of it, but what you see is, uh, if anything, it’s golf tournaments. They sneak the golf tournaments in on those, uh, to switch it up a lot of times. So it’s, it’s, do people want to be inside when it’s nicer. I do have a little Canadian element here, of course, right? June for us is a little bit warmer, so if you’re, you know, on the beach all the time like yourself, then maybe, uh, yeah, there’s an opportunity there for sure around the, the school, the school counc. Right, OK, yeah, OK, yeah, just spitballing a little bit. OK. No, well, and you’re trying to pull out some opportunities which, which I, I love, and I think the opportunity though maybe isn’t in the timing of your gala. Again, pick the best time for you and your, your nonprofit to execute the best event, but maybe do it instead of picking a different day, it’s maybe actually focus on what you’re doing a little bit differently. So I just, um, I just chatted with uh Keely who, she works at the Huntsman Mental Health. A nonprofit, and what she did is she had mission stops throughout her event. Instead of trying to get everyone to sit down the whole night, um, they just had a mission stops with food, and each mission stop talked about what they were doing. What they were doing at their charity, so they had, you know, I don’t know how many, I’m gonna make it up, 5 core tenants let’s say, of what they could give to and what they were doing, and you walked through and it was an experience, instead of just going to your table and getting talked at, right, so they could see and there was like a doctor at one of them and you know, some piece of equipment that they raised for last year at another one, and you could actually see it and understand what the impact was you were doing. And they, um, that evening they had a $1 million unexpected gift because of it, and it was just like, you know, who knows if they were gonna do the $1 million anyways, but they had, you know, one of the biggest paddle raises ever because of it, because people just felt so connected, so, I would, I wouldn’t think so much about challenging the timing of the event, but more challenging, how are you communicating your mission differently, um, I went to an PCA one, they literally brought in puppies, right? Like it’s a, it’s a pet charity and they brought in the puppies and you could hang out with them the whole time and that was awesome, right? Really broke up the, the evening. So what is it that you can do that’s unique, uh, and really lean into that cause that’s why they’re there. So just for, for opportunities for people and they’re thinking about their next gala. Brilliant. Yeah, those are great. Uh, and yes, uh. Yeah, think through. I mean, what do you do and how do you want, how do you want people to feel about it? I mean, how can you help them experience like the mission, you call them a walkthrough. That’s, that’s the ideal. Like, you know, here, here’s the, like you said, here’s the five core things we do. Come, come hear the experts explain it. And I guess at each station you said there was food too. At each, at each spot there was different, different food. So that’s how, that’s the eating. All right. Animals, of course, you know, heartstring, outstanding. Yeah, yeah, and, and get that, and then get that ask immediately, right? So, you know, um, the one thing I wrote down here that I wanted to get to for your event is, you know, uh, when, when are you doing the ask, right? So a lot of people unfortunately do that big paddle raise ask like, hey, OK, who wants to donate $10,000 5000 dollars, $2000 they do that too late. Um, it’s really great to get that part at the start, right? You, you, you showcase your mission, you do mission stops, you have a great video, you have the puppies come out, whatever that is, right? Um, and then you do that, you do that ask, and I really want everyone to consider doing a paddle race or a, um, a fun to need, fun to cause, whatever they call it. Um, that’s specific and clear and is done. A lot of charities or nonprofits, they don’t do that part. They do the auction, they do the tickets, and that’s it. They don’t actually have people just saying, hey, I’ll just donate $1000 cause I care, and we’re gonna raise our hands and we’re gonna get excited because it’s intimidating because it could land flat like you said with the bids, right? Um, they didn’t get enough bids on the big items, so how are we gonna get people to just donate that much money? So why would I push this when it’s really scary? It’s because um you also mentioned something else which was a problem of your event, which is gross versus net. You said you only netted like 130,000, I think, Tony. 160, 160, apologies, 165. So with that, I mean, your auction items, sometimes they have costs. Your tickets have food costs, but when someone puts up a paddle and says they’re going to give you 1000 bucks, that’s just straight profit. There’s no other cost to that, right? So, that’s why those paddle raises are so important, because the margins on them, not to sound too businesslike, but the margins of them are great. This is a business, yeah, yeah, it’s a business, right? We’re, we’re just right there, we’re running nonprofit businesses. There’s no question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So as a business, OK, where am I gonna put my time? Am I gonna put my time into that auction where I have to go and track down all these items, or do I want to put in my time and say, well, should I make the first ask $10,000 or $5000? There’s no item attached to it. Right, there’s no worrying about the sponsorship, there’s no anything. It’s just, in the margins, the ease, it makes sense, but people are, are very nervous to do it if they haven’t because it is, it is a big ask for people. So some, some tips I have on that is make sure that mission is forward through mission stops, through um bringing out the people you can, but on top of that, Tony, what I would recommend is, is planting gifts. So what I mean by that is, you know, Tony, I, I come to your, your client’s charity 3 months before and I say, hey, I love what you’re doing, I, I, I wanna give you a significant gift, right? Maybe it’s 20,000, maybe it’s 500, maybe it’s 1000, it really depends. And then you say, Justin, hold up for a second, can we actually announce this at the event? Because it would really help us create some buzz to then get a lot more donations and we’re gonna turn your, you know, $10,000 into 20,000 30,000 $4000 and usually they say yes, right? So then what you have is 5 to 10 people planted that are already going to give the gift, so that if you’re trying to raise $100,000 in that funding need or that paddle race, you have $50,000 in the room already. A good rule of thumb is having at least 50% of your funding need goal already raised. And then there’s software that can do this or you can just do it on your own, just the auctioneer knows that they’re going to announce these 5 names throughout the evening to keep the excitement going and the momentum. And then other people will be, will feel almost, I don’t know if obligated is the right word, but they’ll feel very excited to give more because they’re seeing it hit the goal and break the goal and go past that goal. Because, and, and then the organizers are very confident as well because they know they have 50, 60% of the goal covered before they start. That, that’s a, that’s a variation. That’s a, that’s a more sophisticated way of doing something that, uh, that we’ve, we’ve already talked about and that I’ve advocated, which is just to have people planted in the audience, willing to do $5000 10,000 dollars, but you’re taking it to a, to the next level, folks that were gonna make a major gift anyway. Within a couple of months of the gala. Could we, could we hold that, could we hold off your gift to announce it at the gala, because that’s gonna leverage more giving. It’ll be more, it’ll, it’ll be an excitement moment versus your, you know, you’re just, you’re, you’re very generous gift now, which we will, of course, acknowledge, but it’s, it’s not gonna be announced in front of an audience of 300 people or, you know, whatever our gala attendance is. So, Yeah, you’re, you’re taking it, you’re taking that to the next level, um. Right. And then, and then your, your auction leader parses those out through the night. Here’s, I mean, through the, through the, through the auction night, not the, not the entire night, through the auction period, whatever, 2030 minutes of auctioning. Here’s another, we got another $10,000 gift. This is from Justin, who, you know, and, and so when there’s a lull, perhaps we inject one of these pre-planned gifts. Yeah. Yeah, and they’re just so that it, it, the, the impact is huge, um, and having them, you know, having their names show up on a screen or something really adds that, that factor to it right after, um, yeah, so again there’s, there’s softwares that can do that. You can also just get an AV company at whoever to do that or just have a PowerPoint. I’ve seen people like it’s pretty simple, uh, especially if you know the pre-plan, you can just have that all pre-prepped. Absolutely, yes, yes, yeah, and I appreciate, I appreciate you’re working with the, the non-trellis alternatives too. Thank you. Oh yeah, yeah, I, I, it, we’re not a fit for everyone. You, you mentioned it, right? Like, and so there’s, there’s like check out Gift Smart, check out one Cause, they integrate with other systems. They’re, they’re competitors of ours. They do things differently. You wanna have the right fit, right? We really don’t want to get in the way of anyone’s fundraising. So, uh, thank you. All right, Gift Smart and one cause. Yeah, alternatives. OK, alternatives there. Yeah. All right. And the last thing on your, oh, no, go ahead, sorry. Yeah, let me, let me put something out. Um, we’ll see, we’ll see how you react to it because this is what I’ve advocated for this client’s gala and this is what actually what we’re gonna be doing. But we’re, uh, we’re, we’re not having, well, we’re having only 2 live auction items. Two of our best either bundles or our best live auction items that we’re, you know, we’re currently soliciting right now for this June Gala. Uh, we’re gonna have a silent auction as, as usual, but only gonna be two live auction items because the main event of the auction, the main event of the night is. Give to the cause with a goal that represents the June expenditure on medical expenses. This is an animal welfare agency. Uh, and they spend about $7 million a year on charitable care for animals that nobody pays for. We, we pay for. So if you take $7 million and you divide it by 12, you get $583,000 a month. So we are putting in front of the audience a $583,000 goal. To raise the June money. Now, before that, we’re gonna have a campaign that starts about 2 to 3 weeks before that. Where that, that’s gonna be, that’s gonna be web-based email, uh, probably not direct mail, but web and that’s gonna be web and email-based all to, all, all toward the same goal because we don’t want what, what you suggested, you know, we don’t want the thermometer at zero the, the night of. We want the thermometer at like 150 or maybe, you know, it’d be nice to have 50, you suggested 50%, that would be very good, but we want to be somewhere above 0. And so we’re putting in front of the audience an audacious goal of whatever the difference is between what we’ve raised that night, I mean, what we’ve raised so far, and 583,000. But you’re giving directly to the mission. There’s not an intermediary live auction gift except for the two that I mentioned. You’re giving to the right to the work. What do you think of that idea? I think it’s fantastic. And what I was gonna say when you started was, uh, be careful with live auction. You don’t really wanna do, do too many, um, because live auctions can give bidding fatigue, paddle fatigue. There’s only so many people in the room that are actually bidding, right? And a great fun in me, everybody else feels kind of bored. Yeah, and a great fun and eater paddle raise, everyone should be raising their paddle, even if it’s for a smaller amount. Everyone should be involved, right? So that’s what I would say it’s like those two packages, if they’re great, that’s fantastic. I think go for it, right? Right, um, I would do it. I would make sure it’s separate and less of a focus than this big, this big 583 number, and that’s the focus, right? If they scroll like I’m thinking of a, if I’m looking at an event on an event page. Like there should be the ticket button because I want to go and I want to buy tickets, and then it should be all about this 583K we’re trying to do, like that’s the main thing, right? And it’s, and it’s about what the, what the impact these expenses have because giving money for expenses isn’t too sexy, but the, what the expenses do and the impact it creates is probably pretty exciting to, to the benefactors that I really care about. Yeah, it’s the charitable care for the charitable care for the animals. Oh, so that, yeah, so this goes back to your point about upselling. At the, at the ticket sale, uh, on the ticket sale page, there should be donate to the, donate to the campaign for the night and, you know, an explanation of what it is we’re raising money for. Yeah, yeah, and you, and you can kind of tailor your like if you have, you know, you’re gonna have like 100 people just for easy math, OK, so then we need at least each person to donate 5830, right? So like let’s make apps that are around that or multiples or less of that, whatever, just so it’s, and, and they can, you can say, hey, we’re, you’re getting us this much closer when they’re, when they’re giving, um, and for sure, when I said to you like the 50. percent of your thermometer is filled, um, it’s filled in the background. You do start it at zero or in your case you’re gonna get 1500, let’s say, at the start, and you’re gonna build that excitement over the two weeks beforehand, which I love that idea. Any more, any longer than that is too long. Two weeks we find is, is really, is a really great way to keep the momentum and exciting. And again, the more you can plan those, the better. So if you, the day. You launch it, you know, get some kind of a bigger gift announced to kick it off, so it’s not anywhere close to zero, and then maybe have like one week in you have another bigger gift, and then like, you know, 3 days before, 2 days before, 1 day before, it’s like boom, boom, boom, and it just keeps going, and then during the night you, you know, you have another 150 that you can release, right? And then, so then you’re really only trying to get, you know, 250 to 300 during the evening. Um, which I think is, uh, is a great audacious goal, and it’s exciting and it’s the right focus, and it has the best margins, and that’s how you move the needle. So yeah, I love it. OK, I’ll let you know. Yes, I wanna follow up. When is it? You said June, June, early June, right, right. And then if we need to, hopefully we don’t, but if we need to, we’ll extend the. Campaign beyond the, the night of the gala. Yeah, and I think like if you are nervous at all, I mean, I’ve seen some people double their goals and it gets really exciting, right? So like you could say half of 583 as a consideration, knowing that you already have 2 whatever the math is, 270-ish, um, already committed, so you’re gonna blow through that goal and then, and then you already know you’re planning on doubling the goal. Right? So just some, just some considerations for you, um, versus extending it and then people leaving like we didn’t hit the goal and not feeling good. I don’t follow you. So, like, you’re, you said we could extend it if we don’t hit the goal, right? You, you really wanna hit that goal, sure, right? Like you really wanna hit the goal. So, so I think hitting the goal is more important than, than how big the number is because you don’t want people leaving feeling like they didn’t succeed. They want, you want it feeling excited, right? Uh, so what we’ve seen people do is say, OK, we wanna like our goal, which you should set is audacious, is 583. Um, but we’re publicly actually half of 583, let’s say. And internally you know you’re gonna crush it and you’ve already pre-planned for it. Your auctioneer is prepped, right? And then you have a slide that’s like, oh wow, like we didn’t think this is gonna happen, but like let’s just, let’s see if we can double it, and then right when you say doubled it, you have two people that are planted gifts that hit that. And now everyone’s really excited, right? Like, I know, I’m thinking like movie production here, which is easier said than done as my armchair quarterbacking, but um I do see again the most, the events that are most successful, they always don’t just hit their goal, they exceed it by um anywhere from 20 to 50%, I see, um, the ones that do really well, and then this is just from me observing how these nonprofits use our system. OK, thank you. I, I got you. All right. Like I said, I’ll let you know. Um, avoiding distractions. Maybe we already talked some about this, but let’s put a fine point on it. You, what’s your advice around avoiding distractions? Yeah, uh, great. So it’s raffle tickets, drink tickets, all this other stuff, these small little purchases, these little tiny cuts that take me away from talking to my friends and having to do this $10 raffle and then have to do the draw when you’re trying to raise $58,300 like that’s what matters, you know. So let’s get two live auction items, let’s get $200. 5 curated silent auction items and then let’s do everything about this fun of me that you’re doing right and not any more distractions around that like you can if you need to they can their drink tickets are included if you have to have the alcohol being bought for and but yeah, you know what I mean just like less because we, we have, we see charities that have like 17 different things people could buy and the paradox of choice. It’s real, too much choice and you’re just like, uh, and then you leave and the night’s over. So, um, really, uh, they love being like, OK, I wanna be a superstar donor, a champion donor, or this based on my budget, and I just walk into those shoes, and it’s really easy, you know, so for, I’m gonna donate um 5830 because that is uh 1, 1% of what we need. OK. Excellent. Yeah, I, I’ve been to those events where the, the people coming, people are coming around with a roll of tickets, you know, for the raffle and things like that. And, right. It is, it’s, it’s small dollar. Um, a lot of work and let’s just, yeah, and let’s start, yeah, you gotta have a lot of labor going around. You gotta, now you got paper tickets to deal with and, and you have to have the, well, I mean, you can get the raffle drawing bin or something, but it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of small. It’s called, I don’t know, it seems like kind of small-minded thinking. Yes. All right, $10 drink tickets. You know, what are we doing for $10? What are, what are you, yeah, really? And if, if you’re the event planner, you’re like, OK, I could ask my team to go and try and get some really good gifts to hit this big goal, or I could ask my team to run this raffle that’s gonna make $3000 you know, and it’s just, and they’re, and they’re gonna get frustrated by it, you know. So, uh, and then, and then instead of at the evening saying, Hey Tony, do you want a ticket? Do you want a ticket? It’s like, Tony, how’s it going? How’s life? How’s your family? Yeah, so, and, and by the way, did you bid on the, did you bid on the cause, on the, on the, on the, on the funding need? Yeah, yeah, are you doing, are you doing 5000 or 10,000? What do you think? Yeah, yeah. All right, you saved the best for last. This is essential in all our work. It transcends galas and transcends events. It even transcends fundraising. It, it, it putting the cause first. Remind us, remind us how important this is. Yeah, Tony, I mean, you know, starting this, starting any, any organization, it’s a labor of love, right? And so for me starting Trellis just to get a little personal, um, I struggled a little bit with some of the, the galas we were powering. They were very focused only on the donor. Um, on the who’s who in the room, on things that weren’t actually the cause, and I was like, I talked to my team about it and they felt the same thing, so. It’s how do we make sure through our software that we can put the cause forward, and it’s storytelling, right? So that, that funding need we talked about, it’s like the screens that you can use in Trellis to showcase who you’re giving to, right? Every time you make a purchase, we’re gonna hit you with a, hey, you wanna just give more of high margin opportunities like just straight donations or donating your bid. And, and we’re going, oh you wanna come in at the end of the auction item and just take the auction item, oh we’ll, we’ll just extend it, so that everyone else can, can raise more. So that’s how we kind of make sure that the cause is first, in, in the, the way we can as a software company. But I, I just want to challenge people that like the, the true donors, the ones that are gonna stick with you forever, the ones that really love your cause and the beneficiaries, they love it because of the people you’re helping, the the benefit factors of the gala. So, putting that first will help you get more of the people you need and less of the people you don’t. Cause the people that oh we had to listen to this thing about the benefits and da da da da, great, they don’t need to come next year. Cause the people that love it and are, that are gonna give consistently year over year, they love that. So how can you be creative like Keeley with the mission stops. Um, how can you really, um, you know, use your cause, whatever that is uniquely at this gala, and maybe it’s not a rubber chicken dinner because your, your impact happens in this other venue that you could actually get people to all go to and do it there, right? You know, like, um, there’s a, we have a college in town, the Culinary Arts, and they wanted to To raise some money for, to teach um underprivileged youth around uh cooking and so they cooked meals for everyone to show the, the end result, right? Like it’s just, it’s, it was beautiful, right? So like, I just, if you can be authentic and put your cause first, you’re gonna get the right people to come and that’s really why everyone’s there. So the more you can do that, the more people are gonna have a great time. Justin Goodhue. Co-founder, CEO of Trellis.org. You should connect with Justin on LinkedIn. You’ll find Trellis.org, uh, uh, at the aptly named URL Trellis.org. All right, Justin, thank you very much for sharing, uh, your wisdom, your, your generosity of thinking too. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thanks, Tony. You didn’t hear my child yelling half the time, did you? Not at all, but we’re good. That’s right. We’re, uh, we’ve had dogs barking, uh, pets appear. This is a, this is an audio podcast, by the way. That’s why I was explaining to people what’s behind you. Uh, because only, only a little reels, uh, a couple of reels are gonna be made from the, from the video. But, uh, so we’ve had cats walk on, you know, it’s, it makes no difference. We’re, we’re not, we’re not only family-friendly, we’re family embracing, embracing. So if I had heard, if I had heard your child, I would have invited them on to, uh, bring them on mic. Let’s, let’s talk to them. Let’s talk to them. Or let’s, let’s listen to them cry for a second. That’s fine too. Thank you, Justin. Thank you very much. Next week, confessions of nonprofit social media managers and convert your member website into a thriving community. I, I know we have promised this a couple of times now. You, you know that you’re working with a lackluster host. I, I just, I had to get this Justin Goodhue interview in because it’s been sitting, and, um, I don’t like to wait, make people wait as long as I made Justin wait like 3 months. Uh, so I had to get it in. And So, why didn’t I think of that last week? Uh, I don’t know. Sorry, sorry. Uh, that’s a very good question. It’s a very, very relevant question. I don’t know. This, this is the best answer I have, so. Next week, definitely, social media manager confessions and your member website in a thriving commun into a thriving community. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you, find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by the Bridge Conference. As you know, Tony will be with more than 2400 nonprofit professionals at Bridge, July 29 to 31 in National Harbor, Maryland. Info and registration at bridgecf.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.