Don’t let the technology frighten you: donor webinars and teleconferences

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Jonathon Grapsas

You may have seen this recent post from Rebecca Davies at Médecins sans Frontières about lessons learned from her first ever donor webinar.

It’s a candid look at what worked and what didn’t. Worth a read.

I’m often surprised at how little we’re doing in the way of webinars or teleconferences with donors. We quite happily attend webinars on a whole lot of professional development areas, but when it comes to using them to update people on our work, they are few and far between.

We’re running one with a client now. Purely and simply as a thank you/update exercise. This organisation is in the middle of a major capital campaign and is using this as a way to thank those people who have reached into their pocket, and providing them with a first hand account of where the campaign/building are up to.

The best part is it is really easy to make happen.

We’ve chosen to run it as a teleconference, meaning all people need to dial in is a phone and login. No need to be near a computer.

There are loads of service providers out there who offer these types of services, and many provide a months free trial to begin with. Even better.

We send an invitation and ask for registrations. We’ll follow up those who don’t respond to our initial invite, and of course are using a mixture of dm, online and phone to reach as many supporters as we can.

In the session we’ll have someone moderating, the CEO as the main lead/providing an update for supporters and a special guest, the parent of a child whose life will be changed once the new building is fully functional. That’s it. 20-30 minutes of content, answering some pre-prepared questions.

You can get more sophisticated than this. Run it as a webinar and like Rebecca did host it live from the field, giving people the chance to see real faces. Very powerful. You can also share visual content if you run a webinar.

For the purpose of what we’re doing it’s simply an easy way to say thank you. And here’s how you’re helping. Thanks again.

Rebecca mentioned that they received two bequest confirmation following their session. Certainly paid for itself.

Whilst the session we’re running has no financial objectives, I have no doubt it will increase the likelihood some of the folks (whether those who were invited and turned up or those who were invited but didn’t attend) give to the campaign again. And yes we’ll be monitoring this.

Here’s a few ways you might consider using teleconferences/webinars:

• In the lead up to an appeal. Warm people up, get them excited. Alert them in the session to the fact the appeal is about to land.
• During a big campaign. Like the capital appeal referred to above. As an update, further appeal or simple thank you.
• On the back of, or during an emergency. Check out Rebecca’s post if you haven’t already.
• When you have something really important, and special to share. A good enough reason in my view.

Don’t let the technology frighten you. Embrace it. Not as a replacement of real conversations, but in support of.

Jonathon

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