Combine the power of Bloomerang’s constituent engagement and retention tools with Qgiv’s comprehensive online fundraising platform. Through Peer-to-Peer Fundraising, give your donors the tools they need to raise funds on your behalf, reach out to their networks, and help you make a difference. With peer-to-peer fundraising, you can raise more and grow your donor base online through races, bowl-a-thons, DIY fundraising, and other exciting events!
Diana: Today we’re talking about peer-to-peer fundraising and how you can use Qgiv and Bloomerang to set up peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. Our presenter today is Ashley Thibedeau from Qgiv. She is the lead customer onboarding specialist for Qgiv assisting all new clients through software training and implementation. She’s a recent graduate from LSU with her MS degree in Leadership and Human Resources Development with a focus area on e-Learning and Mentorship. In her free time, she loves to read, run and force her three kids (and one fur baby) to listen to Broadway showtunes. Hi, Ashley. Welcome to Bloomerang Academy.
Ashley: Hi. Yes. Thank you, Diana. So, as Diana said already, my name is Ashley Thibedeau and I am the lead customer onboarding specialist for Qgiv. So what that means is I manage our onboarding team. It’s an amazing team that works as the bridge between the sales and customer experience departments facilitating the journey for the customer through sign up, activation, training and, of course, implementation of our system.
And again, as Diana mentioned, I am a recent graduate from LSU. Go Tigers. And I have my Master’s in Leadership and Human Resource Development. I have a huge passion for e-Learning training, development, and, of course, a sweet spot in my soul for the nonprofit world. Now, outside of my Qgiv life, I do have three kids and an eight-month old puppy. So, needless to say, it’s pretty wild in this house most of the time, but we have fun. And honestly, until Hamilton came out on Disney Plus, I would have groans from my kids when I forced them to listen to show tunes. But now I’m pretty sure all three of them know all the words to every song in the show and I am a regular guest of the reenactments, which is truly a dream come true. So that’s a little bit about me. Let’s go ahead and talk on our agenda for today’s session.
So what’s on the menu for today? We are going to be talking through a lot of reasons why it’s an awesome idea to host a peer-to-peer fundraiser and why Qgiv is the platform to choose for hosting that fundraiser. I am going to be showing you a few different examples of events and campaigns created within the Qgiv system and some fun ideas that really transcend that normal concept of events and campaigns that we’ve seen amongst our very creative clients.
About halfway through our session, we’re going to transition into showcasing the backend of the Qgiv platform. While we’re in there, I’m going to show you how quick and easy it is to set up a peer-to-peer fundraising event using our system. And I’m going to focus specifically on the three most important functions to get your peer-to-peer up and running in less than 10 minutes. I’m also going to point out a few functions of our system that are unique and can help with setting your peer-to-peer campaign apart from other fundraising campaigns that are also on the market right now.
Now, you’re going to see firsthand how setting up a campaign in our platform can be fun. But once you do start to receive data in our system, it’s critical to ensure that your data is flowing into your Bloomerang account. So I’m going to give you a glimpse using that event that we’re going to create today to show you how to integrate your Qgiv system with Bloomerang, so this way you can feel confident that your data is going into the field areas that you use on a daily basis.
We’re going to highlight that basic setup just to illustrate, again, how easy it is to map your peer-to-peer campaign, but also to export continuously into Bloomerang so that it’s not only just set up correctly, but it’s also automated to save you more time.
Finally, we’re going to finish up our session with the essential details of the Qgiv pricing structure and the unlimited support options that are available to all Qgiv clients. And along the way, if you do have questions at all, please feel free to drop them in the chat. Jennifer from our Qgiv team will be monitoring this, and you may hear her voice chime in with your questions as we go through this session.
At the end, we’re going to transition into an interactive Q&A session with myself, Jennifer and the rest of our Qgiv team members that are on the call today. And just know that we’re here, we’re happy to help give you any clarity on the aspects of our products and the integration that we can. So don’t be shy. We want to hear you. Any and all questions are welcome.
And, if that wasn’t enough, you can’t get away from a little bit of Ashley fun in this session. So those that have worked with me before know that I like to throw a little excitement into any topic that we’re discussing. Today is no exception. So what I have done is I have planted a teeny surprise Easter egg. No. Literally, an Easter egg within this slide present. So keep an eye out. If you find the Qgiv Easter egg, email us your name and where you found it to [email protected] to be entered in to win a “This is my fundraising” shirt from us. They’re kind of a big deal.
All right, friends. Let’s go ahead and get started. So why peer-to-peer? Well, first of all, I want to challenge this question by asking you. Why not? Peer-to-peer is a great way to empower those who already support your organization to fundraise on your behalf. And guys, fundraising is tough. Prior to my years with Qgiv, I was actually one of you. I was on the frontlines working with a few larger nonprofit organizations specifically in fundraising events, so I know firsthand how hard it can be to raise money, to tell your story over and over, pulling on people’s hearts strings and encouraging them to give towards your mission. It’s not an easy thing to do.
And honestly, it doesn’t matter if you are a large organization with plenty of resources to spend on marketing or if you are a smaller organization with a shoestring budget. Investing in something like peer-to-peer can offer you guys a way to create visually appealing campaigns, allow for your supporters to create their own fundraising pages that they will share with their friends and family, which let’s face it, is a much further reach than you’ll have on your own. And you’re able to present an event campaign or fundraising initiative that empowers your supporters to fundraise on your behalf. The best part is, it has proven results that can help you guys raise more money.
So we all know how precious money and resources are, especially in the wonderful world of nonprofit. So, if your organization engages in any type of fundraising through appeals, marketing campaigns, or even events, you’ll notice that many of the marketing avenues that you naturally want to take will help you obtain new donors, new attendees, or new participants, even. However, I’m sure that many of you have events or campaigns that happened on a recurring basis. And chances are, you probably have similar participants and attendees that come out to support you each and every single year.
So let’s take that thought and let’s transition it into imagining what it would be like to have a way for those returning participants to create their own fundraising page, that page that they will then in turn want to share with all of their friends, share on social media, and encourage people to join or even support their involvement.
Now, studies have found that returning peer-to-peer participants can raise three and a half times, three and a half times more contributions that a new participant raises, compared to one and a half times more than for any other type of event. So, if you think about that in the form of dollars, if a participant that raised $100 for your organization last year signs up again this year, it’s likely that that returning participant could bring in $350 this year. And that’s just with one participant. So, if you think of that on a grander scale, what would it be like with 100, 1,000 participants?
Plus peer-to-peer is fun. It allows for you to encourage friendly competition by incorporating gamification. Everyone loves getting that gold star, so why not include a way to reward your fundraisers with badges that they can display when they hit certain fundraising milestones?
Now we’ve seen and studies prove that gamification results in higher fundraising, and the more badges you have, results and the more money raised. In fact, as you can see on your screen, stats have shown that on average, a person who has acquired more than one badge has raised roughly $306 and change in comparison to someone with zero badges. So, if you set your goals for your participants, tie an award to those goals in the form of a really fancy graphic that all of their friends can see, you have a higher chance of people continuing to fundraise and continuing to acquire more of those badges.
So what is a badge? I keep saying that word. Well, let me show you. Take a look at this organization here. This is an actual real organization within Qgiv. And you can see that this is a page within their peer-to-peer showcasing all of their badges. Now they do have some default ones that they kept from Qgiv up at the top, but badges allow you to have the opportunity to get really creative. Flow with your same theme. And as you can see, these can all be awarded on different milestones and fundraising achievements and engagements. Now, remember badges because we’re going to talk about that again very, very soon, but I just wanted to give you a visual as we’re talking.
So what else? This is so important, guys. Your supporters are your most underutilized marketers. I’m going to say it again and I’m going to repeat it for those in the back. Your supporters are your most underutilized marketers. People who already support your organization and mission have some sort of affinity for who you are and what you do. They’re also going to be some of the first people to share news and updates from your organization with their friends.
So put yourself in their shoes. Think about it. If you’ve ever received an email or a Facebook message from your friend, are you more likely to open it than if you were, say, receiving an email or a targeted ad from a company or organization? I know I would.
So, with peer-to-peer, you can get ahead of the game. You can help your fundraisers by providing templates and example verbiage that they can send to their contacts. Research shows that participants who sent emails raised between 2 and 11 times more than participants who don’t send any at all, and that they’re increasingly driven from email appeals to appeals pushed out on social media. Organizations have the ability to add in default verbiage or fundraising pages. You can create templates for emails, social posts. You can even provide fundraising tips and tricks to help inspire your supporters to help them reach their fundraising potential.
So let’s do this. I’m curious. Let’s go ahead and take a poll. I know that we’re entering this wonderful world of fall event season. And based on the many conversations that I’ve been having lately with clients, I’m sure many of you are perhaps cautiously entering the market into needing to plan a virtual event in place of a normal physical event from years past. So let’s hear it. Answer the poll. It should have popped up on your screen. Who is planning a virtual event right now? Or, as I sometimes like to refer to it, who feels like they have been personally victimized by 2020?
So feel free to answer the poll, chime in in the chat, what you’re doing, how you’re transitioning, and any other fun facts about your process. We love hearing from you guys and knowing what you guys are doing, because let’s face it, this is a very interesting time we’re living in. With COVID concerns and lockdowns among us, it’s shifting the normal in-person event model into new slightly uncharted waters of virtual events and fundraising. So the good news is you’re not alone. We’re all in this together, friends. We’re all experiencing this opportunity to flex that creative muscle and think outside the box. And the best news is we can help.
Diana: Thanks, Ashley. It looks like so far we have 45% are currently planning a virtual event right now, 42% are exploring the possibility of doing a virtual event, and 13% are not currently planning a virtual event.
Ashley: Awesome. Thank you, Diana. And see, this is amazing. And I’m so happy that you guys are here because as we start to talk a little bit more about peer-to-peer today, I’m going to show you some really cool examples of organizations who had to transition from that normal model of their peer-to-peer or their event that they normally have and make it something that’s virtual. So stay tuned. I think this is going to be really helpful for you guys.
Now, one of the facets that I love most about peer-to-peer fundraising is that it is incredibly versatile and can be used for all types of events or campaigns. So similar to what we were just talking about, many times when people are thinking of peer-to-peer, it’s thought of in the vein of a 5K run or a walking event, something physical. Someone registers, they pay a fee, but if they want, they can also have a fundraising page that they can customize to share on social, encouraging their friends and family to donate to their cause.
But there are so many other ways that peer-to-peer can be used. And I’m talking from board member campaigns to COVID response funds, to stock the food pantry, to even DIY fundraising where your supporters make a page for themselves for whatever they want, but all of it is going to benefit your organization in the end. And get this. They can all easily be shifted into a strictly virtual format, and we’re going to talk through some of those examples now. Don’t believe me? Just watch.
So, at a time like this, peer-to-peer allows organizations to expand their reach, raise more money, but also stretch the boundaries of the normal events they would host. This flexibility ranges from standard events like the 5K run that I mentioned to the campaigns, the DIY, fundraising, and just really creative campaigns that are completely outside the box. So, for the purpose of this presentation, I’m going to focus mainly on those virtual campaigns. But I wanted to showcase a few examples for you guys today that fall within those buckets, even though they shifted to a virtual format. So let’s check out some of those examples.
So, first, I want to show you this. This school took the concept of their annual 5K and Family Fun Day event and adopted the virtual element in a really effective way. So their students, parents, teachers and community members registered as virtual participants, and they were able to have their own fundraising page to help raise funds for the school.
Now, they took it a bit further. Not only do they have the fundraising pages, but they jazzed up their virtual component by launching what they called a 5K challenge. So they created a PDF with different mile markers. These were different milestones that all of their participants can hit with their fundraising. And they’ve made it really visually appealing by having it essentially look like a game board.
Now, they also had a virtual Family Fun Day. So, normally, their Family Fun Day would be very interactive, have virtual dunk or have dunk tanks, have games, and so forth, but they took that and turned it into a virtual component. So, as you can see, this is the organization utilizing our store component of peer-to-peer where they were actually selling water balloons in a virtual dunk tank. So, people could actually purchase water balloons to have thrown up their favorite school community members. And then what made this even more fun, in the wonderful age of virtual shame, all of these dunks were recorded via Facebook Live for their audience viewing pleasure.
So you can see here on Facebook this organization, their videos. Not only did they post videos with just reminders about the virtual event, but those dunk tanks, they’re hilarious. I highly recommend you guys to check them out. But a really, really unique way that they utilize your 5K and turned it into a virtual event.
Now, if 5Ks aren’t your typical go-to for fundraising events, check out this organization. So this organization has a take on a virtual gala. Bill’s Bash was advertised as the liveliest gala now in your own home. All of the participants were registered as virtual fundraisers. The fundraisers were given their own fundraising page to share with their friends and family. And they were even encouraged to have their own mini-bash in their own homes.
Now, one of the things I love about this organization is they really took the visual aesthetics to a whole new level, by branding their own Shakesbear. So every time I see this, I just think, “Wow. That’s me. That’s literally what I’ve looked, like, for the past several months in sweats and a hoodie.” And I know you guys can definitely relate. So you can see how they took this bear and they really used it in a multitude of ways across this peer-to-peer, including by adding badges. So they use that bear in a way to gamify different recognition levels with the badges that they’ve created.
Now, speaking of badges, we took a look just a few minutes ago at a campaign, this one right here. So this organization had a Be a Hero Challenge. So it wasn’t a normal event. It was a campaign. Now, if your organization wanted to expand beyond events, you could use this as an example. They have encouraged their supporters to fundraise by labeling them as a hero. All of their heroes, given a fundraising page, and they were also encouraged to take pictures of themselves posing like a hero to share on social media that, in turn, was then re-shared on the organization social media pages.
Now, if you don’t necessarily have a theme, that’s okay. You don’t have to have a theme. You could do something like this. This organization is using DIY fundraising. DIY fundraising is increasingly becoming more and more popular in the age of COVID as it gives your supporters the opportunity to create their own fundraising page or, essentially, whatever they want. You give them the tools, allow them to be creative with their page, and the fundraising dollars all go back to you. Now, this is a model called the celebration campaign model. It’s extremely popular. And it allows for people to create a page in honor of any of their life celebrations.
Now, friends, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I do want to show you just a few other out-of-the-box ideas that are just fun. I am personally a sucker for games and trivia. And trivia nights and bingo have really become all the rage during quarantine. So using systems just like this, with Zoom, you’re able to maintain that element of trivia by allowing people to join in on a night of questions to win prizes. But leading up to that event, you can encourage your supporters to have a fundraising page where you can see how many people think you will reign as that trivia champion.
And then the last example I want to show you today is this one right here. It’s so fun. And it really is a way that you can utilize your staff or board as a means of fundraising or maybe even a teeny bit of embarrassment. So what this organization did was they took a comedy night to a new level, they created fundraising pages for their team members. They were encouraging people to donate to their staff members by saying that you hope they don’t end up getting pied in the face. So you can see how they had pictures of all of their staff that had pages with different pies and they were essentially saying, “If you don’t want them to be tied and pied in the face, go ahead and donate to them. But if you do want to see them get pied in the face, go ahead and donate to someone else’s instead.”
So, as you can see, there are so many more. I could literally spend hours talking about all of the really awesome ways that we’ve seen organizations adapt to a virtual fundraising plan. But for today, I want to take some time with you guys. I want to jump into the backend of the Qgiv portal. I want to show you the basics behind Qgiv, peer-to-peer, and how to use it in really cool ways just like we just saw.
So are you ready? Chat in through those ideas. Let’s go ahead and transition into talking about how some of those ideas were created within peer-to-peer. But first, a poll. Before we get started, I’m curious. How many of you guys on the call are using the Bloomerang integration with your Qgiv account? Now I know there are some of you on this call who aren’t Qgiv users yet, some that are, some that are just curious. So feel free to just go ahead and respond in the poll. And we’ll chat more about the Bloomerang integration in just a few moments.
Now, our peer-to-peer platform was designed with the nonprofit in mind. Oh, Diana, do we have some results already?
Diana: Yes, we do. It looks like we have about 20% who are using Qgiv and 80% who aren’t using it yet.
Ashley: Yes. Okay. That’s wonderful. So welcome, new friends who are not using Qgiv yet. We’re really excited to show you what this all looks like on the backend. And those of you who do use Qgiv, hey again, we are so happy that you guys are part of the Qgiv family and I’m hoping that you guys learned a little bit more about our system through this session.
So let’s jump in here. Keep in mind our peer-to-peer platform was designed with a nonprofit in mind. So, within the peer-to-peer platform, your supporters have options to register and make donations. Registrants can have a fundraising page that they manage and customize with their own fundraising thermometer that feeds into an overarching thermometer for the overall event. Donors can select who they want their gift to be directed to and can choose for their gift to be a one-time or recurring donation.
Gamifying, can you tell I love that, is really something fun that you can do in our system with using badges. And you have tools within peer-to-peer to showcase fundraising champions in a leaderboard right there on the main event homepage.
Social sharing and email communications are really a breeze. There are auto-generated responses, post-donation, and registration that you guys have the opportunity to customize. And you can also provide templates for your participants to use to communicate with friends and family.
And not to mention, our newest is something called Facebook Fundraisers. It’s a tool that’s going to allow for fundraisers to use Facebook to raise donations. And what’s really awesome is that data from Facebook can then flow into your Qgiv peer-to-peer and update on the participants’ fundraising thermometer.
Selling items, merchandise, sponsorships online, no problem. Our system has a storefront similar to what we saw with the virtual dunk tank. You can list products for sale. You can make them available in the storefront and if you choose even in the registration process. You also have the ability to manage those listings and inventory data on the backend of the Qgiv system.
And, of course, the cherry on top today, you can save time on reporting and data entry with our powerful Bloomerang integration. There’s no more downloading, manipulating reports, uploading into Bloomerang, hoping and crossing your fingers it works properly. You can essentially set up the integration in Qgiv how you’d like, set the frequency of importing data to continuous and it will just work like magic all on its own.
So let’s go ahead and hop in there and take a look at the backend of Qgiv. So welcome. As you can see on your screen now, this is the backend of our peer-to-peer platform within Qgiv. So I’m going to show you how quick and easy it is to set up a peer-to-peer fundraiser in real-time right here on our call. One thing that I tell our peer-to-peer clients often is that your peer-to-peer can be as simple or as complex as you’d like it to be. There isn’t really a format that you have to abide by. You can flexibly use the system to fit your needs.
But in the essence of time-saving today, let’s talk about what is absolutely necessary to set up in our system to be able to have a functioning peer-to-peer, or, as I like to refer to it, the three most important functions to get your event off the ground in less than 10 minutes. It makes me feel like an infomercial. But really, that’s how easy it is. So no matter how simple or complex you’d like your event or campaign to be, these three areas that I’m going to show you today are the main components that you have to have in order for your system to allow people to register and to make gifts.
So, as you can see on your screen, I am currently in what’s called the peer-to-peer dashboard. So this is the backend of setting up a peer-to-peer event within our system. So let’s go ahead and just brainstorm. I’ve created something just called the Bloomerang Academy Peer-to-Peer. But let’s imagine that we actually have a 5K run every fall, but because of the circumstances we’re in, we need to transition that into a virtual run. So where do we start? How do we do this? And how can we do it in less than 10 minutes?
So the first area that you always want to start with when building peer-to-peer is something called Event Settings. This lays the foundation of your event. So, if we wanted to change this to make the title say “Bloomerang Academy 5K,” we can go ahead and update that title right here and set a fundraising goal that we’re trying to achieve. You’ll also notice that you have the ability to set start and end dates, cutoff dates, and customize some of the close messaging if you choose. But we’re focusing on the most important things. So let’s go ahead and scroll down just a little bit beyond contact information, beyond notifications into an area called Registration Settings. This is what’s going to allow for registrants to have the ability to actually register in peer-to-peer.
So, based on these settings that you see here, I have opted to allow for my registrants to register as a fundraiser on their own, but they also could have the ability to create or join a team. There is something in peer-to-peer called non-fundraising participants. So what that means is if, say, you were going to have an actual 5K, you had people paying a $25 fee to register, but they have no desire to fundraise, they would fall into this bracket. But we’re not doing this go round. We’re actually transitioning to virtual.
So non-fundraising, not exactly something that we’re catering to this go-around. So we’re going to leave this option off. But I am going to turn on something called Additional Registrants, which is going to allow myself to register but I can also register my children or my spouse at the same time.
As long as you have your registrations in place, you can go ahead and finish scrolling through your Events Settings section to customize just a little bit further, add in default goals. You can also customize Donation Settings to allow for minimums and maximums for donations. But if you work on just those first areas that we talked about going through your registration settings, setting a title and a goal, you can actually go ahead and scroll down to the very bottom here and hit Save, because that’s going to lay the foundation of your event, including changing the name, setting a goal, and of course laying the foundation for us to be able to have registration in action.
So check one. Check two. What’s the second most important thing? We have to have an option for people to be able to register because right now if we go to our event, which looks a little sad and plain like this, if we go to register, we’re not going to be able to. So we need to add something called Categories in order for people to be able to register. Categories is essentially what your registrants are going to register as or register for. So, if this were a normal in-person 5K, I might want to have age groups, 25 to 29, 30 to 34, to be able to categorize all of my registrants into different groups. But not this go-round. We’re making this virtual.
So let’s go ahead and add a category and we’re going to call it Virtual Participant. You could also call it Virtual Fundraiser if that’s what you choose. You can add in a description. You also get to choose who to display this category to and enable it for. Now, these settings should look pretty familiar. The only one that we need to turn off is this guy right here for non-fundraising. You’ll also have the ability to set a registration fee. So, if you do want to charge, go for it. For our use case today, we’re going to leave that fee off. In fact, we’re going to hide that registration fee so this way it doesn’t get confusing when people see .0.00. Now, I’m going to add that category. Now that we have one category in place, if we jump back and look at our registration page and refresh, ta-da, your registration is now open.
Now, on the backend of Qgiv. We talked about event settings and categories, two of the three most important things, but there are a ton of other settings that you can work through to build out and customize. Now, this is a 5K. Typically, 5Ks you get a t-shirt. So let’s go ahead just for fun and add in something called a custom field. Qgiv is going to do a good job of asking the basic questions that you need from your registrants like name, email address, address, but you may need to create custom questions to collect things like t-shirt size.
So we’re going to add a field very quickly called, “What is your t-shirt size?” We’re also going to add a label for reporting purposes that lets us know that that column is going to have all of the t-shirt sizes in it. Field type is the type of answer area. For a t-shirt size, maybe giving them options in a dropdown menu would work best. Small, medium, large. And then I get to choose who to display that question to. Well, registrants are the ones that are going to get a t-shirt. So I want to make sure I turn on my settings for my registrants to see that question. By adding this field, this question is now going to appear in the registration process.
Now, the last and third most important thing that you’re going to need is going to be to jazz up the look and feel because, oh, my goodness, I wouldn’t want to send this out to my friends and family, much less, supporters that support my organization. So how can we jazz this up to make it look nice? That’s going to be found in an area called the Event Builder. Event Builder is where you get to get creative, jazz up the look and feel, add some nice colors, add a banner, and tie everything all together into something that looks really nice.
Now, I will admit, you do have your dimensions here to add a nice banner at the top. I cheated just a little bit and I created a banner for this area before we actually had this call. But you’ll see, you can actually change your banner image and upload any sort of image or banner that you create just by clicking that button. I’m going to add in my banner that was already created right in here. And you’ll see how it populates and already it looks pretty awesome.
Now, everything within Event Builder is designed to be very straightforward and for any level of tech savviness. So everything is pretty much drag and drop. All of these sections that you find on that home page are icons that you can find under a section called Widgets. You have your Facebook page feed, Twitter feed, your thermometer like you see here. You just want to grab that button, drag it on in and it will highlight where it will land and give you some settings that you can customize. You’ll also have gear icons that allow you to customize the sections that are already there. So if you want to tell your story and tell people a little bit more about your event and how it’s going virtual, you can do so right here.
Colors are not a problem. You have a theme section. Thankfully, our green color actually matches our banner pretty nicely. But you can actually change your color to be anything you choose. You can even match your branding of your organization or any images that you upload.
But for our purposes now, I’m going to go ahead and save. I’m going to exit that Event Builder and I’m going to click on View Event, which populates that event right here in my browser. So, as you can see, just like that, we now have a functioning virtual 5K run that we could share the link with our supporters, have them register and make donations. While we’re there, let’s go ahead and try it out ourselves. If we click Register and register as a fundraising participant, it’s going to allow us to put in our email address to be able to log in and complete the registration process.
I’m going to go ahead and create a new account which is just going to prompt me to put in my name. For fun, I’m just going to put in a fake name here and create a password. Once I create my account, it’s then going to allow me to work through this portal to be able to register. So, if I wanted to create a team like Billy’s Team and set a fundraising goal, I’m able to do so, as well as complete my personal information, as you can see here. I’m just going to plug in some information in this section just to fill it out for us, which is going to be helpful once we do have this integration with Bloomerang and choose my t-shirt size.
Now, finally, once I continue through, I’m going to see a button that allows me to complete my registration. Once I complete, you’re going to get this beautiful message that says my registration is complete. Your data is going to be in the backend of your Qgiv system, which is going to allow for you to very easily be able to integrate with the Bloomerang system as well. It’s that simple. So remember this process, remember this registration. We’re going to come back to this very, very soon.
So that is how you can set up a peer-to-peer in less than 10 minutes, which is crazy fast. But while we are here, I do want to showcase just a few other little nuggets within our system that can really help you amplify your event or campaign. We talked a lot about gamifying. So badges. I even see in our chat here some of the questions on how to set up badges. I would love to show you.
So we’ve seen that the data, participants that earned badges actually raise more money than those who don’t. So let’s go ahead and create a badge. So, within our system, if you go into the Content section, you’re going to see an area called Badges. Now, badges, we have a few in here by default by Qgiv. So, if you wanted to use these, go for it, you certainly can. But what makes it more fun is you can actually add badges of your own. So, by adding a badge, I’m able to choose a color. I can even choose fun icon that Qgive offers. But if I really wanted to get creative, I could actually upload a badge of my own. We do provide templates that you can download, but just by clicking Choose Image, it’s going to allow for you to upload your own image from your computer right here within this screen. You can also then choose who can earn this badge and on whatever achievements or engagement within the Qgiv system.
Now, something else that we talked about was the online store, how you can have different items or sponsorships for sale. Within Qgiv on the backend, we have a section that’s devoted to the store. Now, there are some basic store settings that you can put in place such as offering shipping or charging tax. But once you’re in here and you want to add products that are available in the store, by clicking on Products itself, you can go ahead and add that product right in here. Maybe it’s something like t-shirt, maybe you want to describe that t-shirt. You can also choose if that product is shown in the storefront, in registration, or both.
By adjusting your prices and a purchase quantity and stock, you’re able to track all right here within Qgiv, the different inventory levels. Make sure that you’re not overselling based on what you have. And if you have anything like sponsorships, you can actually offer sponsorship levels for sale and have a max quantity and stock that are available so that way if you just have one presenting sponsor, you’re only offering one of those for sale.
Now, on the frontend, there is a storefront that will autofill with all of the products that you add. You can add the store as one of the buttons up here in your top menu.
Now, the last thing I do want to show you on the backend here of Qgiv is your social sharing. So sharing as we’ve talked about is so important, especially in this wonderful world of virtual events. So we actually have an entire section called Share Your Event. There’s this funny little thing called Facebook. I’m not sure if you guys have heard of it. But we have a couple of controls in here under Social Settings that allow for you to put in your URLs on the respective social media platforms so this way people can actually find you guys very easy. You also have the ability to customize the content that’s shared with your link on Facebook. And then we talked a little bit earlier about Facebook fundraisers. This section down here at the bottom allows for you to have that enabled.
Templates and posts. You can actually design templates that your constituents can use on Twitter. So, if you have a large Twitter following, a lot of supporters that use Twitter, you can go ahead and generate templates that say, “Hey, guys, I reached my goal. I am 50% of the way there to my goal. Hey, my fundraising page and event is happening in a week.” And your participants can actually choose if they want that to automatically post on their Twitter feed just by using your template.
System emails and email campaigns are ways that you can communicate and have your users communicate all by using emails right here within peer-to-peer. So, for instance, system emails, these are auto-generated responses from different elements within your peer-to-peer. So, if someone is registering, they’re going to get a registration confirmation email automatically. You also have badges earned, team actions, donations, all of these automated emails that are going to go out to your constituents. And you can see there are quite a few of them.
Now, the good news is they’re already pre-made so you don’t have to actually customize them at all if you don’t want to, but you do have that ability to if you’d like. So you can actually jump in here, jazz them up with nice images, verbiage that makes it sound like it’s coming more from your organization than just a standard computerized response.
And then finally, email campaigns. This is how you can email specific groups of participants on your own, not something that’s just auto-generated. So, if you wanted to send a targeted email to, say, any donor who donated to the event, if you wanted to send an email to participants who raise maybe greater than $1,000, you can actually create an email from scratch right here in this section to let them know, “Hey, guys, great job. Hey, did you know by raising over $1,000, you got this really cool badge?” It’s a great way to help keep up the communication throughout the event. And the good news is, you can do it all right here within Qgiv.
So, as you can see, there is all of this and more. But how does it connect into Bloomerang? I am so happy you asked. So, as you can see here on the backend of Qgiv, you have all of these controls within peer-to-peer. But if you look over to the far left, you have some main navigation controls including a section called reporting with service integrations. Now, service integrations like Bloomerang are all offered in this section. Now, we’ve already created our Bloomerang integration. But if we click this gear icon, you’re able to see some of the default values that allow for you to have information from Qgiv map into the Bloomerang system. So, for instance, if I just needed all of my information from Qgive to go into this particular fund, this campaign, and this appeal, it’s going to do so just because I have it all set up right here in this area.
Well, we just created a new Bloomerang 5K. If I wanted to, I don’t have to have it go into the default values. I can actually use this icon next to Bloomerang to drop down something called Optional Mappings. By adding an export type I can choose for my peer-to-peer event, for the Bloomerang 5K that we just created to be mapped into a specific area within my Bloomerang account.
Now, you can see I have a lot in here. But I’m going to go ahead and have it mapped to the Bloomerang 5K fund. I’m also going to have it mapped into the Bloomerang 5K campaign. And I’ve even created a special appeal. That appeal is called 5K Participants 2020. So this is going to give me the confidence that all of my data from this Bloomerang 5K that I’ve created, is actually going to flow into these specific areas within my Bloomerang account.
Not only that, we also have custom mappings. So what this will allow for you to do is to create static fields like, say, something identifying that these transactions come from Qgiv. Standard fields, like, if you were joining a team or creating a team, it’s going to autofill in Bloomerang in a section called Qgiv Peer-to-Peer Team Name, the actual team name from Qgiv.
But we also created a custom field for t-shirts. So let’s go ahead and make sure that that flows over as well. So I’m going to select my constituent and my integration field. So I know that this is called t-shirt. So I’m going to choose T-Shirt Size, and on the backend of Qgiv we called it shirt_size. So just by selecting these icons here, I’m going to hit Save, so that way, those mappings are stored in my Bloomerang setup.
Now, for a real-time effect, I’m going to go ahead and run this export. But you could set this to continuous so that way you can set it up, forget about it, and it will continually export whenever transactions occur every single hour, 15 minutes past.
In my Bloomerang account here, I’m going to go ahead and search. So, if I wanted to pull up, say, Billy Joel, I’m going to search for that constituent here. I exported all of that data into Bloomerang from my Qgiv account. So, as I can see, Billy is listed here, it’s going to give me my giving summary and all of the fun engagement and so forth that I have on Billy. But if I click into the profile, not only am I going to get some of the details from his registration, I’m also going to get this standard and the custom field mappings that I had as well. So I know that he is on Billy’s team. I know that his t-shirt is medium, which is going to help me for the future to be able to make sure that I have that information just in case if I have another event later down the line. And we all did that right now together on this call, which is wild. So you can see how it’s all connected right here within Qgiv and Bloomerang.
Now, if you jump into our website, you’re going to see a lot of testimonials from organizations, including Joseph Maley Foundation and Bikes Not Bombs that talk about the Bloomerang integration. So I highly suggest checking those out, reading through so you can see actual real examples from clients that use this integration today.
So are you hooked? I’m sure you’re now wondering, “Okay. What does this cost?” So I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Our peer-to-peer service is set up on either a monthly or quarterly pricing structure, 229 a month or 597 a quarter. There are no long-term contracts in Qgiv. And you have the flexible of upgrading and downgrading your Qgiv account based on your organization’s fundraising initiatives. If you’re only having a campaign for Giving Tuesday, need peer-to-peer for a month, no problem. 5K registration for six months, cool, pay the monthly quarterly costs that are needed for your fundraising initiatives, and then you can downgrade afterward. There’s no questions asked. And to top it all off, you’ll receive all of the features of our start package along with your peer-to-peer features that we showcase today, which includes unlimited donation and standard event registration forms.
Data. Of course, having data is crucial because of the integration with Bloomerang. But what I’m so happy to tell you guys right now Qgiv is giving all of our clients the data package for free until 2021. So it’s just our way of making sure that you have the ability to export what you need, try it out, see if you like it. And you can actually have benefit not only to the CRM integration with Bloomerang, but it allows for email integrations, custom reporting, donor summaries, even an offline donation import, and some advanced peer-to-peer fundraising statistics that I think you guys will enjoy the longer that you are with Qgiv to see lapsed donors and additional stats on those constituents. But honestly, we offer so much more than peer-to-peer and data integrations. We actually have a comprehensive suite of really powerful online fundraising tools, including donation forms, event registration, text fundraising and messaging, of course, peer-to-peer, and our newest addition auctions with mobile bidding.
Our CRM integrations like Bloomerang will allow for organizations like you to be able to save time and easily export your donor data from Qgiv into more multiple third-party systems, including other email automation systems like MailChimp or Constant Contact and QuickBooks for accounting purposes. All of this is going to ensure that you have what you need when you need it without having to dance between many tabs and systems on your computer. You also have the ability to check out our new matching gift integrations with double the donation and have data which expands your reach even further into company-matching opportunities.
But most of all, we offer flexibility. I mean, you guys know it to be true. Flexibility is something that is so important in the nonprofit world. Nonprofit organizations need to be able to quickly adapt to the world around them, and they need to be able to use flexible tools to succeed. And to get real for a minute, guys, 2020 has thrown everyone, especially nonprofits, a serious curveball and forced you guys to be even more flexible than usual.
So, at Qgiv, our entire pricing structure is based on the idea of flexibility and growth. Every Qgiv account includes our $0 a month start package that you see at the top. And free doesn’t mean featureless as you can see by the list of standard features here. It all comes with unlimited users, training and support as well. As nonprofits grow and want to try new fundraising tools, you’re able to easily add or remove any of the packages that you see at any time without worrying about being locked into a long-term contract.
And of course, lastly, if you need more, if you ever need everything, we’ve got you covered. There is something called the everything package which offers everything, all of our digital fundraising tools in one plan ensuring nonprofits are providing a strong multi-channel approach with tools that can support year-round giving and point-in-time campaigns.
Now, I am so thankful that you guys are listening in today and I know we’re running very short on our time. We may have time for a couple of questions. So I’m going to go ahead and chime in with our fellow Qgivers on the call to talk through some of the questions that we have. So just introducing very quickly, Jennifer, who is our VP of Customer Experience, Dan, our Lead Data Engineer, who I often refer to as the Bloomerang guru, and Aaron, who is one of our account executives. Jennifer is going to be facilitating some of those questions. So go ahead. Take it away, Jennifer.
Jennifer: Thanks so much, Ashley. We have just a couple here. First and foremost, do we have any integration with an online auction? Aaron, can you speak to that? I know Ashley touched on at the end. You might be on mute, buddy. I can take it if he is not . . .
Aaron: Okay.
Jennifer: . . . going to . . . Oh, there he is.
Aaron: I was on mute there. Yeah. So we do have an auction platform that does integrate with Bloomerang directly as well. I wanted to get a little clarification from Madeline there and didn’t know she was asking more about integrating with the peer-to-peer campaign or just Bloomerang specifically. Oh, both.
Jennifer: Awesome.
Aaron: Yeah. So from what I understand, and correct me if I’m wrong, Jennifer, the auction platform does integrate with our fun hub which would bring the peer-to-peer and the auction packages together with one fundraising thermometer.
Jennifer: Yes, definitely. Perfect. Thank you. A couple of others before we wrap up. We got a question about Qgiv integrating into their webpage or is it a third-party page? It is a third-party page. I can take that one. But we have lots of customization options. So you can add a custom domain to that to mask the URL, you can redirect. We offer custom CSS so that you can add some additional customization as well.
There was also a question about Facebook Fundraisers. We do integrate with Facebook Fundraisers. Ashley touched on that. We have a direct integration where that information will flow to our system and back that you can download a report from Facebook that will include more donor information from your Facebook donors if they offer it and you can upload that into Qgiv so it all syncs properly back to Bloomerang. And we are running out of time, though. If we did not get to your questions, we can stick around or follow up via email as well to make sure that we answer anything. I’m going to hand it back to Ashley real quick to close up and then to Diana.
Ashley: Awesome. Thank you, Jennifer. And thank you, guys. And we will definitely get to all the questions that came in. So thank you and keep on sending them. But, really, I just wanted to end with thanking you all for joining us today to learn a little bit more about Qgiv’s peer-to-peer platform and the Bloomerang integration. We’re very thankful for the opportunity to work with amazing partners like Bloomerang and amazing clients just like you guys. You allow us the opportunity to be a teeny little part of you being able to see through your missions to make the world a better place. So thank you from really our core. Feel free to give us a call, send us an email, and visit our website at www.qgiv.com for more information about our team, our platform, and all of the services that we touched on today and more. And we look forward to working with you guys very soon.
Diana: Thank you so much, Ashley and everyone on the Qgiv team for joining us today. Before we go, we do have a last poll we want to ask everyone. If you are interested in any of Qgiv’s services, I’m going to go ahead and launch a poll, please let us know and please let us know what of their services you would be interested to hear more about if you would like someone to follow up regarding any of those services. If there’s anything we hadn’t mentioned that you’re curious about as well, please let us know in the chat so we can get that information to you. I’ll leave that poll up for about a minute.
Thank you, again, everyone, for joining us this afternoon and for spending part of your afternoon with us. Everyone is going to get a copy of the recording so you can always go back to it. Links and contact information will be included as well so that we can make sure to follow up. Any questions that were left unanswered, we’ll make sure that they are answered via email as well. Thank you again so much, Ashley and the Qgiv team. Thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. We hope to see you at another academy class soon. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
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