Jenn Lejano & Jess Ray: Connect Small Donors To Your Major Donor Event
Jenn Lejano and Jess Ray show you how to connect folks who would never come to your expensive event, to your expensive event. They’ll help you broaden event support by engaging donors you’re probably leaving on the sidelines, with actionable strategies to engage your entire donor base. Jenn is from Fresh Eyes Digital and Jess is with The Adler Planetarium. This is part of our coverage of the 2025 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#25NTC).
Genie Gratto: Add Experiential Elements To Your Events
You can learn from big brands to create buzz and emotional connections around your events, without spending the money they do. You’ll engage your supporters emotionally as you incorporate experiential and interactive features into your events. Genie Gratto is at GWRITES. The resource she shared is here. This conversation is also from #25NTC.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Did you notice last week’s show was all AI? This week’s show also has a theme. I, I want you to know that this show is meticulously, scrupulously planned week after week. These things don’t just happen. It’s not random. It’s, it’s carefully plotted week after week. And I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the embarrassment of Catahora if you woke me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate with what’s going on. Hey Tony, we’re all about events today with two conversations from 25 NTC. First, Connect small donors to your major donor event. Jen Le Hanno and Jess Ray show you how to connect folks who would never come to your expensive event to your expensive event. They’ll help you broaden event support by engaging donors you’re probably leaving on the sidelines with actionable strategies to engage your entire donor base. Jen is from Fresh Eyes Digital, and Jess is with the Adler Planetarium. Then Add experiential elements to your events. You can learn from big brands to create buzz and emotional connections around your events without spending the money they do. You’ll engage your supporters emotionally as you incorporate experiential and interactive features into your events. Jenny Grotto is at Grs. On Tony’s take 2. The federal budget Here is connect small donors to your major donor event. inaugurating our coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference with this very interview right now that you are listening to. It’s our first one of the, of the, of the conference. We’re all together in Baltimore at the Baltimore Convention Center. Where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting software and services in technology for nonprofits. My guests now are Jen Lehano. Did I say your name right? I should have asked you off mic. Leno is good. All right. And Jess Ray. Jen is a partner and co-founder at Fresh Eyes Digital. Jess Ray is associate director of individual giving at the Adler Planetarium, which we all know is in Chicago, Illinois. Jen, Jess, I’m sure to get confused, uh, you’re not even you are sitting in alphabetical order if you get, but, uh, my first, my first and last name, right, Jen, Jess, welcome. Thank you, pleasure to have you. Thank you for kicking off our, our coverage of 25 MTC. Your session topic is connect small dollar donors to your major donor event. Uh, let’s start, uh, down the end of the panel of two. Jen, Jen, Jess, exactly. I did that on purpose. Just testing us. Uh, I wish I could, I wish that were true. Uh, OK, Jess, thank you. Um, yeah, uh, this is not even something that I would that I think is on the radar of a lot of event fundraising planners, uh, nonprofits, just like overview, we got plenty of time together, but overview, uh. Well, why did you think we should be doing this? Why did you feel this was a necessary topic? Well, um, first of all, the Adler is really inclusive, so we wanted to make sure that we were, um, bringing everyone into our space, and we also wanted to take advantage of our wonderful partner Tom Skilling who Chicagoans will know and he really connects with people so that was our thought is how do we um. Use him in a way that is both makes sense for him as well for us in taking advantage of our event that otherwise we would ignore. OK um and are you, are you both in Chicago or I am yeah OK and uh is the Adler Planetarium. Uh, a client of specialized digital. Oh, OK, so we have a client, uh, a client consultant relationship. All right, um, why don’t, why don’t you give us your overview. So I think, you know, one of the things when Jen. Really, are you sure? Are you sure it’s Jack? Damn. There’s only 2. I mean, I have 50 50% chances and I blow it every time. I’m not buying lottery tickets for that, Jen, that’s what I said, yeah, um, so you know, one of the things when we were working with the team at Adler, uh, you know, their celestial bash, which is their annual fundraising gala was coming up, and you know one of the things that they talked about was like, you know, how do we do more with our individual donors? We have this event. The ticket price for that. Event is not for individual donors, right? It’s a mid major more on the major side, um, in terms of the ticket price because it’s a fundraising event, it’s a large gala, um, you know, it’s, it’s not something that like your everyday $50 donor is gonna probably attend and our advice actually was ignore your gala. Right, so it was, uh, we shouldn’t actually be making this about the gala or about um the major donor event but we should engage people by using the celebrity Tom Skilling, um, uh, you know, using the gala uh timeline as a deadline for the campaign and we should build an individual giving campaign pre-event that helps drive momentum and drive interest as we’re getting up to that event. So the goal was really actually don’t try to. Great individual donors into your major donor event, but let’s give something for individual donors to get excited about that connects to your event so that was that was kind of how we were approaching it. OK um and and Jess, so connect to the event but not so you’re not inviting. Uh, when you say small dollar donors, which I, you know, I appreciate, you know, a lot of, a lot of folks in our community will say modest donors, like, like you’re insulting them if you say they’re small donors or small dollar donors, but you’re not commenting on their character. They’re not small people. They just make small gifts. I just call it what it is. So, so thank you for saying small dollar donors are not modest. I mean, I don’t mind modest, but small, they make small gifts. They’re not, they’re not small people. All right, so you’re, you’re connecting with the gala, but You’re not inviting the folks to the gala, is that right, Jess? Correct, OK, so explain the connection, but you don’t get an invitation. uh, say, say a little more Jess. So one of the things we also took advantage of was our theme for the gala and which was on Wonder and so Todd does just inspire wonder and all when you interact with him. So we created a special campaign and like Jen said, use the bash event date as the like ground. point to say oh we have a match in place we need to get it in by this date and that’s how we used it to circle around and taking advantage of also um the media that we had around the celestial event because we were honoring Tom to mention to the wider base like our WGN. Post about the campaigns, yeah. I’m sorry. OK. All right, get the word out about it too. So the small dollar donors. Uh, the campaign to the small dollar donors, does it mention the gala or it just says it just uses the gala, very little, so yeah, and that was intentional. So I think like one of the things as consultants that we’ve seen is um nonprofits tend to overemphasize the importance. I’m Jen yeah there we go. You got it you got it this time. Now you can get the lottery ticket, um, yeah, but we have. There’s plenty of time to spoil, um, but so many nonprofits come to us and say, oh, we’re having this event and the event really becomes the central focus for the organization and it is kind of exclusionary to most of their donors, right? And so you know we talked about like could we, how do we get individual donors kind of involved and finally it was like we don’t, right? Like we don’t try to get them involved in the gala but we use all of that energy and. The effort that the nonprofit themselves are putting into the gala to create a campaign that will work for individual donors and so we didn’t talk about the gala a lot in email communications or in social posts things like that um we did talk about how Tom Skilling was being honored at the upcoming gala so that it wasn’t like we were hiding it but um but really I think the advice is I mean we’re kind of flipping this on its head, right? The advice is not for you to like get your small dollar donors involved in your. Major donor event it’s actually to ignore the major donor event and get your small dollar donors uh involved ahead of time and there are things that I think you can do at an event right that could um I mean if we didn’t have time to pull this off this year right? but I think like you could have kind of uh uh you know a thank you wall or something at the event that’s thanking those individual donors the one thing that I think Tom did really beautifully at the event. Was he made sure to call out the campaign because he was really proud of the campaign we we branded it the Tom Skilling great space Challenge, right? And so it was, you know, help raise $35,000 and it’ll be matched dollar for dollar and he posted it on all of his social networks, things like that, right? And then when he was at the event he was like, I am blown away by how many people donated and how many people love Adler and this campaign was a. Amazing. And so at the major donor event he was talking about the individual giving campaign and his impact that he had by running that campaign with Adler was the yeah let’s let’s give a shout to this guy Tom Skilling the Adlers in Chicago I don’t know. It is if anyone is listening, if anyone is listening from Chicago, I’m sure that by right now there’s like screaming because he’s he’s just the most authentic genuine person you’ve ever met. He’s the weatherman from WGM. He’s a weatherman, yeah, he’s been a weatherman for 45 years but he recently retired. OK, so he’s he’s on. Just retired and so we also took advantage of him retiring yeah now he’s spending his time in Hawaii and Chicago, but yeah, so he fled Chicago. I’m sure Tom would not do that. um, so what, um, what did the campaign look like? So give us a little more detail on what, uh, so yeah, I mean, so we um we developed uh the. Campaign plan, uh, the number of emails we were gonna send, uh, recommendations on social posts, and then, um, our amazing designer Thelma Andre who’s here volunteering at NTC, um, she developed the graphics and so she did this kind of, um, cartoonish, uh, you know, because it’s a really fun campaign, uh, the Tom Scaling Great Space Challenge and all of Adler’s, uh, brand colors and guidelines, um, and you know, and again a lot of this really rested on. Tom’s own promotion because he has a very engaged active Facebook following and um and he’s definitely sometimes one of those all caps posters you know like he’s just so enthusiastic and so he promoted the campaign multiple times and was often ready before we were saying like just let me know when I need to put this on Facebook I’ll do it my followers will do anything I know they will um so you know so we developed kind of all of the assets for the uh for the digital campaign. Um, and worked with the Adler team on, on how, how long was the it was just 3 or 4 weeks before the, before the thing. We didn’t want it to be too long. We really wanted to have it in a condensed time frame, which is how we often run a lot of digital campaigns, but, um, and you know, and then with the goal of to meet the matching gift for the 35,000 dollars, yeah, yeah, and you had a donor who was, uh, stepped up to do that we did that match, OK yeah. Um, I mean, what else are you gonna, I know you haven’t done your session yet because the sessions haven’t started. We’re, we’re in the midst of the opening keynote right now. That’s what you’re in the background. Um, what else are you gonna share? We still have time together. What else are you gonna share with your audience? I mean, we actually, we have two sessions that we’re presenting and they’re in the it’s both about the same campaign but from a different angle so we have connecting the small dollar donors um and then also like utilizing a celebrity influencer right? like so how do you make the most out of working with somebody like a Tom Skilling, um, how do you make the right asks, um, how do you prioritize your asks when they have limited time. Um, and so we’re doing two sessions actually kind of related to that campaign. Alright, let’s focus on the dollar donor side, um, and what else, what else is there on the, the small, you know, like actionable strategies is what I’m just reading from your, your session description, actionable strategies for engaging your entire donor base. What, what did you do? This is, is this the first year you did this? Small dollar donor campaign for before I gave up a major event, OK, yeah, yeah. What we really focused on. Was capturing the right tone and messaging so that it related to everyone and donors are donors, but you do speak a little bit differently to your average everyday small dollar donor than you do maybe a major donor or an institutional donor, so making sure that it came through an Adler’s authentic language and audience um. Voice, but as well as it made it made sense that it was coming from Tom Skilling so that was really important to when he’s talking through his Facebook to make sure that it sounded like him, even though it was wrote by the Adler so that was a really big part was to make sure that you’re speaking at the right way to your donors that make them feel like they’re part of it even though they are not attending the event that we had minimize, they know that it’s still happening but they don’t feel left out. When you were uh defining who’s gonna be part of the campaign, what what kind of criteria did you use in querying was it any size gift or what kind of period of time, what what what what were your parameters? We did have a special page that any gifts given towards that, so we ranged from I think $5 to somebody gave a $3000 gift into that campaign. um, so that all counted and then I think yeah Jen said. 23 weeks during that period also counted I means be invited to join the queries uh yeah so it was it was the full file it was the full file minus um the folks that they had already identified as invitees to the to the the everybody right, right, and I think I don’t in years past you had you had done an invite. Kind of out to everybody, right? And and that was the thing that they didn’t want to repeat, right? Because it was like uh it’s very tone deaf. Yeah, like nobody’s gonna buy those tickets, right, they were all digital, so we didn’t do any, we don’t do at this time. But actually when we look at when we crunch the numbers, a lot of them were first time donors that we had garnered through Tom. he has great outreach and engagement. OK, so you, you were able to acquire some new donors. And uh what about the, the overall revenue the arbuilding since 2020 and this was a 35,000 dollars, right? OK. And then didn’t we get you got that one we did we um we also had an anonymous donor reach out that was so um inspired by this campaign to say that they want to make sure we meet that match no matter what and we responded back, well, we’ve actually already met it. Thank you so much. We do still have a gap on our event uh goal and they’re like, how much is it? and said oh it’s about $45 like no problem, and they just sent us a check for $5000 yeah, outstanding. There’s something about planetariums. What is it? How come I love? I grew up with the um uh in New York City, the Hayden’s because we have the sky above us and so can look up s looking up to the sky. It’s a universal thing that brings us all together. Yeah, very well. So you didn’t think much of that movie Don’t look upon. I actually didn’t see that one. Do you know? Do you know? Oh no, it’s a big, it’s a great satire of our current politics and There’s this, there’s this earth threatening asteroid or major outer space object headed to Earth, and there are a lot of people who who don’t want you to know about it, so they just say don’t look up. satire. It’s it’s pure satire. Leonardo DiCaprio is very good. Um, is Amy Adams, I think too. I’m not sure about Amy Adams, but Leonardo DiCaprio is very good. You’ll love it’s a good satire. I’ll have to check it out. Thank you. Don’t look up. Um, alright, anything else that we we still have some time if uh if you do, is there anything more you’re gonna say that uh you haven’t shared don’t hold out on nonprofit radio listeners on the side. I just, you know, I just think it’s, um, I think again it’s like a little bit about approach and just thinking, you know, instead of starting with the question of like how do we bring these people into this big event. Of thinking a little bit more kind of audience first or donor first, right? Like so we know these folks are not gonna buy tickets to this, right? And even though I mean it was an awesome event I got the chance to go and you know you’re walking around the planetarium blah blah blah but yeah, I mean donors just don’t think of right they don’t have the resources or they don’t believe that they have the capacity or they just don’t or they. but don’t have interest, you’re not you’re you’re not one of the top charities. So yeah, they don’t, they love you, but not that, not just not that much. So there’s just, there’s, I mean you were not in that way, yeah, but, but you were realistic about that. These are folks that are not gonna come. Like the odds of them buying a ticket are so small. So let’s, and so Jane, you had the idea of let’s try to do something else like that. How do we engage them and how do we meet them where they are and I think like especially when you’re in kind of and I know Jess can speak to this more right but when you’re in the chaos of um prepping for an event and when it takes up kind of all of the air in the room especially for the entire staff right like it’s it’s all hands on deck for that kind of an event and it’s so critically important in terms of fundraising. Um, that it can be really tough to step back and be like, oh but how are we engaging the folks who are not coming to the event, right? And so I think the planning started early. I mean we started talking about this spring, yeah, like in the in the spring and the event was in September, right? So we started just kind of percolating on like how are we gonna do this and what is a way we can do this it’ll be really effective um and help you with a fundraising goal. It’s not gonna bring in the million dollars of your major donor event right? um but. There is kind of a place for individual donors to be a part of it even if we’re not specifically saying like you know this is our annual gala campaign like we would never call it an annual gala campaign because also nobody gives a shit about that so like you know like it just right right so I think like um but you know the the team at Adler is just I mean first of all they all work incredibly well together and I think have really great lines of communication and I think that ability to kind of be like. You know we don’t wanna we don’t wanna just send out a blanket invite we don’t really know how to do this but we wanna do something and um because I do think like the mission is so inspiring and they’re I mean their assets, their um their voice, their tone. Um, it’s one of the most fun brands that we get to work with, um, because it’s, I mean if you you should follow them on social media, their social media is really fun and incredible, um, but you know they just, it, it’s all very heartfelt and everybody really loves being there and you can kind of see that and feel that in their communications and that’s what we wanted to make sure it came through in the campaign as well to engage those donors authentically is really important with us so we don’t wanna be talking down to anyone. And make them feel that they are welcome in our space even if they aren’t at the event. Yeah, you’re not ignore them for the whatever the two months that lead up to the campaign I mean the gala when when like you said um it’s all, it’s all hands on deck. Everybody’s devoted to it and we’re ignoring what I don’t know, 80% of our file or whatever right exactly that’s exactly what we don’t want to do, right. All right, yeah, and anything else you feel like we’ve I feel like, yeah, I think so. Alright, alright. You’re Jenjano, uh, and co-founder of Fresh Eyes Digital, Chicago-based, and Jess Ray, associate director of individual giving at the Adler Planetarium, also Chicago, of course. Um, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jen. And Jess, you got it right. Thank you, thank you for come back year after year and then like names or something. Thank you very much. Thanks for sharing and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC the 2025 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting. It’s time for Tony’s Take-Two. Thank you, Kate. We’re in the process now in Washington DC that the Trump regime’s uh proposed budget is under consideration and it has to be approved by the Senate and the House, which means it can be amended by the Senate and the House. I’m concerned that there are things in this budget that are very bad for the nonprofit community, including individual members of the nonprofit community. Uh, I wrote on LinkedIn, uh, about this extensively. Uh, by the time you hear this, it’ll be last week’s LinkedIn, uh, long post, about as long it’s like one extra character I could put in. So about the longest you can, it’s the longest you can put in LinkedIn, um, but I’m urging. All of us in the nonprofit community to stand together in support of the community at large, because we all know how important all the work is that all of us do. Throughout the community and standing for individual members, nonprofits that are being targeted, like. Harvard University and the public broadcasting system. My encouragement in that LinkedIn post is to contact your House Representative and your two senators and not just do it once but multiple times, even if you can take 5 minutes a day to call the 3 of them. One at a time, and then on the 4th day, go back to the top of the list and call the 3 of them in the next 3 days. We have to keep up the pressure. The nonprofit community is so much stronger when we stand together united. Again, for the whole community, but also for each of our individual members. Cause when they go after one, and they succeed, they go after a 2nd, they succeed, it’s like a row of dominoes. And you know what happens to the dominoes that are lined up right after the 1st 1 and the second one. If you want, you can take a look at the LinkedIn post from last week, or just Be calling your congress people. Repeatedly To keep up the pressure that the nonprofit community and it’s each of its, each of its members. not be targeted by this budget. That is Tony’s take 2. Kate I don’t have much to add other than everyone has the right to make sure that their voice is heard, and if you like can’t go to protests and you just wanna stay home, stay home and make a phone call. It’s all you gotta do. There are a lot of ways to be involved and, and the lots of different forms of activism. You’re right. We’ve got Boku but loads more time. Here is add experiential elements to your events. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 25 NTC, the 2025 nonprofit Technology Conference. We’re together in community at the Baltimore, Maryland Convention Center. Our coverage of 25 NTC is sponsored by Heller Consulting Technology services for nonprofits. With me now is Jeannie Grotto, communications strategist and consultant at GWrights. Jeannie, welcome to nonprofit radio. Well, thank you for having me. It’s good to be here. I’m glad you are. Thank you. Your session topic is add experiential elements to nonprofit events on a budget. And uh why don’t you give me an overview of what, uh, some sense of for our listeners in small and mid-size nonprofits, some sense of what uh what experiential events. Yeah, I mean, you know that’s anything where you can have sort of an interactive. Thing something that you’re doing like something that your audience members are doing that um allows them to really participate in the event in a different way so they’re not just passively engaged in the event they’re being part of it, being part of that event story. um. And we can do this without uh like affectation I mean we can we can weave it into the event. Absolutely. I mean I think um really what you’re trying to do anytime you have an event uh and you this doesn’t have to cost money is really think about the story that you want that event to tell so it’s almost like a three act structure. Right, it’s like act one is leading up to the event and kind of how are you preparing people to come into where you are. Act 2 is really at the event itself and then act 3, which is actually the hardest I think um is following up afterwards and how are you keeping people engaged in the mission. Um, and in the work that you were hoping they would get out of the event. OK. Oh, interesting. Alright, so good, we can weave this into our longer term goals for the event, which is longer term participation not just for an afternoon or exactly exactly and I think that’s the hardest, especially for small nonprofits, I think, um, and medium sized even large ones. I always talk about yeah yeah I mean I talk a lot about and and have been part of teams um where there’s a big event maybe a big annual event and the whole organization ends up in what we call this kind of whirlpool of the event itself um everybody gets sucked into this world. And then all of a sudden like there’s very little other work happening in the organization and so even people that are not used to working on events are working on it and being part of that process and so everybody gets sucked in then you have the event there’s all this adrenaline leading up to that and then you know you’re working really hard at the event. And then everybody hits the wall at the end of the event and everything stops and that is the part that I think is hardest for uh nonprofit staff if you know if you’re a corporation that has regular corporate events you have a whole events team and that’s all they’re doing so they’re used to that cycle of like following up afterward and getting people to. Participate in different ways um I think it’s harder for staffs that are either less experienced at events or just smaller staffs to really do that final push after the event and kind of carry it all the way through but that’s when you get the most bang for your buck with people connecting to your mission. Yeah, yeah, and you might try to unmute, um, see, see, see what happens, see what happens, uh, because since it’s just two of us, unmute our loudspeaker. We’ll see, um, you have some uh advice or strategies that we can learn from big brands in, in, uh, experiential events. Yeah, I mean I think that people, people really do look to big brands and think oh like they’re the ones that can do this so the the examples that I used in my session, um you know for example IKEA has an app that uses augmented reality you can pick out a piece of furniture. You can point your camera at your room, your living room or whatever, say you’ve picked a couch, it’ll put the couch in the middle of the room for you and you can really see what it looks like and um you know what they’re trying to do is engage you in feeling more confident about your purchase and feeling more comfortable with what the product’s really gonna look like um and that is a cool experience too like it’s really cool to be able to kind of place the couch that you haven’t purchased yet, right? Um, yeah, so it’s it’s like there’s a try on room for for furniture exactly and you know I mean it’s, it’s not cheap to develop that software that 3D software. My husband is a 3D software engineer. I know what it takes to get that stuff up and running. It’s hard and um and so that’s not the kind of thing that a nonprofit is gonna do, of course, but again it’s that that like you’re trying to engage people’s emotions and you can do that at kind of any scale. So another example I use. Um, you know, we’ve got to give love to Taylor Swift and so Taylor Swift had, um, worked with Spotify to do this installation right before the Tortured poets department was released and it was this library installation in LA. It was in Glendale somewhere, um, and it was just this thing you stood in line and then you could move through the library. There were little interactive elements. There were places where you could write things down, you could read little lyrics that weren’t released yet, so it was like a little puzzle, yeah, and you. Of course both Spotify and Taylor Swift have huge marketing budgets, but you know you can always have you could put out a set of journals for people to leave messages in at your event that costs the cost of the journals and the pens and you give people prompts to put in those journals and that doesn’t cost anything but it does allow people to have just a little bit of interactivity if it again you know like if that is an appropriate thing tied to your mission. In some way you get, you know, the prompts need to be tied in or whatever, it allows people to have that kind of tactile activity that then they can, you know, really. Feel part of the mission and part of the story. And then just to follow that thread, what what would you end up or pull on the thread or mix my metaphors, um, what would you do with those, those journal prompts that people write no I’m sorry, you’re providing the prompts, I mean the journal entries, well, yeah, you could use them in a number of ways. I mean, obviously you wanna make sure people know how they’re gonna get used before you use them, um, and one of the other pieces that I always recommend is to sort of think through any kind of interactivity or experiential element. Um, in ways that fit different needs, so not everybody is gonna be able to write something down. You might have folks who either can’t see to do that, maybe they, you know, aren’t able to and so figuring out maybe an alternative thing, maybe they can leave some voice memos that you could use or maybe there’s some other way that they can interact with those prompts but again it’s just, you know, that’s the kind of thing where people can come up it’s kind of like. Little activity station they can be part of it if you wanted to use that as user user generated content on social or on websites or things like that that would be one way maybe it’s something where you are even in kind of real time bringing up copies of the journals and having people read pieces of them out loud you know I mean I think like really it’s it’s less about the details of the activity and more about. How can you sort of think very creatively about ways to engage people experientially at the moment in ways that are tied to your mission? So we’ve kind of segued into from big brands to what nonprofits can do. So, I love the journal entry, uh, journal idea not not expensive like you said, but experiential nonetheless. What what other strategies tactics? Yeah, I mean, so there’s kind of three principles that I like people to really think about so one of them is indeed that it needs to be really interactive and so there needs to be something participatory about it. Um, something else that I like people to think about is, um, making it sensory, you know, like not just thinking about sight, um, thinking about sound, thinking about taste, touch, you know, all of the think about all the senses and how to engage those in different ways and you don’t have to engage all of them in any of these things, but that also. Locks a little piece of this which is that you know it provides different things what’s the music you choose like you know if you’re gonna be choosing music to play you know as people are walking up on stage or something like that like how is that gonna fit in to whatever your mission is, whatever your theme is all of that um and you know again it’s um. It’s just part of thoughtful event design, but if you are really thinking about how to tie all of these pieces back to your mission, it can be really helpful. So for example, um, a music example is when we had the Grace Hopper celebration. I used to work for Anita B.org and they have the Grace Hopper celebration every year which is a big, big, big and well funded conference that serves women in tech from around the world and so we. We had to create a playlist of songs that could be used um you know it breaks and things like that and we had a lot of criteria we had to meet to be able to they needed to be empowering they needed to be clean like the lyrics needed to be clean we needed to think about the needs of audience members from all around the world and all different cultures and religious backgrounds and so we had to it took us a long time to make this list of songs. But that was again it was intentional and then you know you know did you Helen Reddy, I am by chance? I think we did. I think we did, although we were it was the International, it was a song of international women in it was it came out in 1977 or something like that. I know we were skewing a little more contemporary, but I think, you know, that one always shows up. So what are you gonna do, yes, Simon and Garfunkel, please. These are all my favorites too, not for the, not for the tech women’s uh women’s tech conference. Alright, um, OK, no, so music, yeah, music. What other like, alright, so I would not have thought of music. What, what other sensory, I mean, aside from we’re gonna get to some hopefully like some activities type things, but, but just general sensory. Uh, visuals, visuals, sounds, I mean we’re probably not thinking about, right? I mean, I think you know if so for example if you’re doing visuals, I mean you know of any kind, you wanna also think about what about the folks who can’t see it, you know, I mean, is there, are there gonna be ways for people to get audio description? Are there gonna be other ways for people to interact with something. Um, is there a tactile element? So one of the ideas that I put in or that we talked about in the session was, um, you know, letting people vote on something, um, with some sort of tactile object. So I think uh like I was talking specifically about, um, in Iowa City there’s a restaurant that like does this coffee bean voting thing during the primary and during the caucus season. And there is something really satisfying and a lot of people with a lot of different abilities can do it where you’re like picking up a coffee bean out of this bowl of coffee beans and then you’re dropping it into this glass jar for each for the candidate that you’re choosing and you’re hearing that and it’s like hitting that pool of coffee beans and you’re hearing it like maybe rattle against. The jar on the way down um and you know and then you’re able to stand there and look at kind of where the levels are on the different candidates and kind of get a sense of where the caucus might go in that part of Johnson County um and you know I think that nonprofits could use an idea like that maybe there’s you know maybe you’re asking folks for input on. You know, 3 policy priorities like what are the ones that you think are most important in the coming year or um you know any other thing like that you know something that where people can kind of give their input in a real tactile way and then also you’ve got. The opportunity to take pictures of that and you’ve got these kind of nice layered looks and you can use those pictures to sort of show that like what people are feeling who came to the event there’s all kinds of ways to sort of spool this out good visuals yeah OK OK. Um, Anything else uh you wanna transition well, the, the, the third thing that, um, that I did not say is sort of the third principle is that, um, is that storytelling aspect of it and like really helping folks feel like part of that story of your events. So what again this. It’s back to that sort of 3 act narrative that we were talking about like where do you want them to come in on that story line? How do you want them to feel part of it and the more emotional connection they have with that story and often these interactive activities can help them build that connection um. The more they have that connection they will again support your mission in so many ways they’ll take action on your policy issues they’ll be more likely to be donors they’ll be more likely to like come back and maybe volunteer they’ll open your emails you know I mean there’s just so many ways in which this stuff ends up paying off in the long haul. Um, how about, um, activities that we can, uh, I’d like to talk maybe some activities before or during and then post and how you can, uh, because the, the post engagement is so important. So maybe one or two that you know during that you’ve seen or recommend, I mean you you can’t recommend because it depends on your mission, your events give us some mind opening uh an example or two, um, so I’m gonna give you one. I’m gonna tell a story that I uh I told the group and I also had shared in one other thing so before I came to this conference the Saturday before I went to a writer’s conference in DC, um, just it was a one day conference it was sponsored, uh, or run by Barrel House magazine, which is their press and a literary magazine, um, they do also put out books and I had never been to the conference before. Um, it’s about 200 people, so it’s much smaller than NTC, and it’s a pretty low budget conference. It was $85 to register and so one of the elements that they have of this is they have editor speed dating, so they have editors from different genres you can print out a few pages of what you have. Everybody got one ticket for a speed date as part of their registration, but. Um, you could purchase more if there was time you could purchase more for $5 a ticket, which gave them a little bit more revenue, um, and so you stood in this line and then they would bring everybody into this auditorium and sign you out to an editor and then they read your piece really quickly and give you some feedback. Well, you know, though I was standing there with an essay that I have worked on a lot and I feel like it’s in pretty good shape, I knew that it needed more work feeling a little. Vulnerable and I know I was not alone in that and I look over on the wall next to the line and there is an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper and it doesn’t even have the barrel house logo on it. It just had conversations and connections practical advice for writers in their like brand color and it was like you know white text on the red brand color and then down below it just with black text on white it said you are doing great. And right there in that line I’m like, oh look, they see me and now I feel really kind of connected to this magazine. I’m gonna go home and subscribe probably you know and like um and it just it was this like little tiny moment. All it took was somebody thinking about that ahead of time thinking about what the audience was gonna need thinking about ways that we were gonna be interacting and recognizing that all of us standing in that line we’re feeling really vulnerable at that moment and we might need a little encouragement and just leaving it where we could see it. It didn’t take any work at all and almost no money. Incredible, but yeah, it took it took you need to be intentional. Alright, alright, uh, OK, before we leave the uh intro event to get to the post event. Any more advice about how to conceive of what works for you? I mean you, you, you hit it hard, you know, mission, obviously a mission related, maybe part of bigger goals for the um for the event as well as the organization. Anything else that. Yeah, I mean, I, no I mean I think it’s gotta have some sort of, it’s gotta give you an emotional connection yeah that’s like somebody’s got this is your responsibility to come up with correct something experiential for us. No, I mean I yeah this is something that I think any event staff like any team that’s putting together an event should just be thinking about like where are these places that you can kind of set these little intentional. Um, spots for people to engage and for people to be part of this conversation with the organization because that’s really what it is, right? It’s you’re, you’re trying to build a relationship and that’s what brands want the big brands wanna do they wanna build that relationship with you through emotion through connection so that you’ll buy their stuff in this case, you know, we can do the same thing in the nonprofit sector. But do that through different means, but it’s still the same effect. You wanna build emotion and then you wanna use that to leverage to get connection. OK, excellent emotion. Yeah, if you hit someone in the heart, you know, then I think the brain follows, uh, plus they’re saying the next day, oh my God, I went to this fun afternoon. I was, uh, you know, it was, I thought it was gonna be a typical charity lunch, but it turned out they had, you know, whatever and we were doing this all together and. So much fun when I got greeted this way or it could be something at the coat check, you know, whatever it is, right, so let’s go event are we continuing our experiential time? Sure, and the post event is the more challenging for sure because you’ve got people who dispersed. It’s not like you can just sort of set up a table. Um, but some of the ways that you can build that connection and keep that connection going is I know that like we’re moving as a sector away from just sort of sending people home with a bunch of random swag, right? Um, nobody needs little stuff that is just gonna sit around their house or that it’s gonna end up in their kids’ basket of junk, yeah, or more tote bags and things like that, um. But what I would say is that there might be a thoughtful piece of low lift swag that you can send home with people that will let people continue to engage. So for example, examples I talked about yesterday were um. If you’re a literacy organization like sending someone home with a bookmark with maybe some ideas for how they can stay involved on that bookmark maybe they’ll use it maybe they won’t but you know if they’re working with if they’re interested in a literacy organization they’re probably a reader and so you can probably um assume that they will be reading books and they might use it um I also suggested that like another low lift idea was if you’re an environmental organization. Send people out the door with a packet of seeds. It doesn’t have to be like a specially branded packet of seeds. Um, I know TechSoup is here. They’ve got these like beautiful little pots with little seed things embedded in them, yeah they do. It’s lovely, um, but I see, yeah, and seeds exactly grants, exactly, um, but you know it doesn’t even have to be that elaborate. It can just be go to your local hardware store, get a bunch of seed packets, print. Out some labels with your logo and you know sort of a thank you for being part of our our growth or something I don’t know um put that on the packets and hand those to people as they go. Some people will plant them some people will take them home and put them in that drawer, you know, the junk drawer that has the other seed packets like I have that I haven’t planted yet exactly, but at some point I’m gonna open that drawer and I’m gonna take out that seed packet as I’m cleaning out the drawer and be like, oh right. I need to re up my connection with this particular organization, you know, so it’s, it’s ways of sort of leaving things with people after the fact um the other idea that I shared yesterday is, uh, if you’ve got a big keynote speaker that might be, you know, that is of real interest to your audience which is hopefully what you’ve brought in um. Having them maybe do kind of like a behind the scenes or backstage message that’s beyond the keynote that’s sort of like thanks so much and here are ways that you can continue supporting this organization and then emailing that out to folks after the fact so they have or texting it to folks however you’re regularly communicating with people so that they have that too as a little takeaway and just a reminder that you know the organization was thinking beyond the end of the event and you should be too. OK, um, have you ever seen anything where you’re welcome to say no, this is a harebrained idea, like with a male, I mean, everybody was in one place at one time, but, uh, like ship a surprise or mail a surprise or anything like that after event. I have seen a little bit of that, but I actually also suggested to folks that one kind of during the event during the event you could absolutely. Have some sort of letter writing station where you are perhaps having people write letters to policy makers or to you know whatever you know whoever and then you’re mailing those after but you could also have people write letters to themselves that you mail like a month later that again you know by then they’ve forgotten that they wrote the thing and then it comes in and they’ll remember as soon as they see the envelope of course but it’s like this. Just this post touch point that’s like oh yeah get you back to that moment when you were writing that letter to yourself so maybe it’s about asking you, you know, maybe you’re asking people to make some sort of pledge of what they’re gonna do when they get back from the event or get home that evening or you know whatever and then they get it in the mail and they’re reminded to take the action and they’re reminded of the event and they’re reminded of your connection to them and then theirs to you OK. Anything else? What, what else, uh, what other topic, uh, did you cover in the session? I don’t want you to hold out on nonprofit radio listeners. I mean that was, that was the big, the big thing. There were tons and tons of ideas, um, and I did, uh, I did share this in in the collaborative notes, but I would also be happy to share that link to kind of a two-page handout that has all like all the ideas I shared in the, uh, entire session. Um, I’d be happy to or can you just say it now? Uh, it’s, it’s a Google doc. It’s like a PDF on Google, but yeah, but you could absolutely include that in your show notes if you wanted. I mean, I think that, um, I always believe that more ideas out in the sector is better than fewer, so I have no. Right of ownership to any of them and I’m happy to have people take them and use them as inspiration and you know really make their events engaging and exciting and emotionally connected. OK, yeah, we’ll get the link from you and we’ll put it in the show notes for the Google Drive. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you so much for having me. Oh my pleasure. Thank you, Jeannie, for sharing all your ideas. Jeannie Grotto, communication strategist and consultant at Gs. Thanks, Tony. My pleasure and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti Nonprofit radio coverage of the 25, 2025 nonprofit technology conference where our coverage is sponsored by Heller Consulting technology services for nonprofits. Next week, 225 NTC conversations that are random, disjointed, and unrelated. Wait. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. 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.
