The Largest Fundraising Conference Brings Together 20,000 Professionals
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The largest fundraising conference of 2022 brought together 21,000 nonprofit professionals! As a society, our access to technology has increased so rapidly that our accessibility to it has turned into an obsession, making effective digital strategies essential to the success of nonprofits in the digital space.
The nonprofits of today must move faster, and become more adaptable than ever with their digital strategies to capture attention + ultimately drive more donations.
Luckily nonprofits are given a free avenue to take when it comes to discovering speed and adaptability as it relates to their digital strategies, and it is through Community Boost’s nonprofit fundraising conference: Fundraise to the Future. This free, 3-day virtual event, allowed our attendees to prepare to maximize their impact on the future.
The Largest Nonprofit Marketing Conference
This fundraising conference became the largest Nonprofit Marketing Summit ever, bringing together 20,000 like-minded nonprofit marketers for 62 high-impact sessions delivered by the best nonprofit marketing leaders providing the most value to those in attendance!
Our incredible attendees got to learn the latest digital strategies that will help maximize their impact. Leaders from the top nonprofit tech organizations like TikTok, Twitter, Meta, charity: water, and so many more. In all, there were over 100 speakers and 6,114 live attendees!
The average attendee spent almost 5 hours in the event about 5,000 were highly engaged in the chat, answering polls, and networking in the lounges with speakers and other nonprofits. Can you imagine the impact they are making as I type this?
And…drumroll please! The top session of all three days at the nonprofit fundraising conference was Cameron Ripley’s keynote The Future Of Your Nonprofit Starts Now: 10 Strategies Skyrocketing Year-End Fundraising Results In 2022 with 2,043 live attendees in that session!
Now, let’s see what other sessions our attendees loved!
Fundraising Conference Top-rated Speakers
These speakers blew attendees out of the park with their sessions. Whether that was because of the high-energy session, intense learnings and takeaways, or just pure fun, these speakers were loved by everyone! Check them out.
#1 Erica Waasdorp
Session Title: How can you make your monthly giving program ROAR
This session centered around the importance of a dedicated stewardship strategy for recurring givers and looked at the best practices for recognizing monthly donors, cultivating and stewarding monthly donors during the year, and how to retain these donors at risk of dropping off.
Erica made clear that keeping donors is a process. Teaching hard and soft cancels, email and letter sequencing tracking the value of reactivation, and other techniques to retain donors.
By the end of the session, participants developed a better understanding of cultivating and stewarding monthly donors so that their program can grow to the highest level.
Some attendees who ranked the Nonprofit Marketing Summit a 9/10 found Erica to be the highlight of their experience.
“Erica Walsdorf was great!”
#2 Cameron Ripley
This session was dedicated to teaching the top-performing digital marketing strategies that Community Boost has been implementing in 2022, to help drive over $40M in revenue for over 400 of the fastest-growing nonprofits.
By the conclusion of the session attendees had 10 new strategies their organizations could use to drive the best results possible this year.
#3 Floyd Jones
This session was one of our favorites as well as our attendee’s favorites! Floyd’s energy gave us the push to get through the rest of the summit! No need for coffee
Session Title: How to mobilize your supporters and soar to fundraising success this Giving Tuesday
Nearly $3 billion is raised on Giving Tuesday alone! However, many nonprofits miss out on this opportunity due to lack of capacity, poor planning and general feelings of overwhelm.
In this session, attendees were taught how to find fundraising success this Giving Tuesday, through “The 3’s”
- How to craft a compelling Story
- How to mobilize and strengthen your Supporters
- How to effectively Spread the word
By the end of the session, attendees were prepared to take their next Giving Tuesday campaign to the next level!
Attendees ranked this session as one of their favorites! One attendee said,
“Givebutter’s speaker, Floyd Jones, was fabulous.”
When asked which speakers this attendee would like to see next fundraising conference, they said “Bring back Floyd Jones! Floyd was great and super engaging”
#4 Scott Harrison
Session Title: The Thirst For Impact: A Fireside Chat With Scott Harrison, Founder & CEO @ charity: water
In 2006, charity: water was founded with the mission of ending the global water crisis. Since then they’ve reached over 1 million donors to serve nearly 15 million people
This discussion between Cameron Ripley, CEO of Community Boost and charity: water CEO Scott Harrison, gave viewers an exclusive inside look at the story of charity: water and the ways they’ve grown by leaning on storytelling, communicating impact, and engaging their donors.
By the session’s conclusion, attendees learned how a successful non-profit started, where they are in the present day and where they’re headed in the future, hopefully inspiring them and their journey to success.
The Nonprofit Marketing Summit Sponsors
Thank you so much to all of our sponsors! Were you wondering how this 3-day event filled with the best nonprofit resources and content was free? It’s all because of these sponsors who want you and all your fellow nonprofits to accelerate and continue with your missions!
Network for Good
Network for Good offers nonprofits an all-in-one fundraising tool with built-in templates and best practices makes each year the easiest possible!
Fundraise Up
Fundraise Up helps digital fundraising for nonprofits all over the world, using AI and e-commerce principles, which allows for a frictionless donation experience that has helped organizations double their digital revenue and triple their recurring donors.
Tatango
Since 2007, Tatango has provided easy-to-use SMS marketing software and industry expertise to nonprofit organizations looking to achieve their fundraising goals. Through the billions of messages sent through their marketing software, Tatango has proven to deliver positive fundraising results for nonprofits.
Do Uncommon Good
UncommonGood is a cloud-based software solutions that helps nonprofits maximize their impact by eliminating any inefficiencies and provides nonprofits with modern technology. UncommonGood was founded on the idea that nonprofits should have the ability to access the same high-quality tools and resources as for-profit companies, without having to spend half their budget on them.
Funraise
Funraise is a collection of online fundraising tools and a platform that manages organizations’ fundraising data. It was founded by members of a nonprofit organization who realized their organization was spending too much on multiple platforms used to raise online funds. To make their fundraising process more efficient, by integrating all the tools any organization needs to make their fundraising process easier and more effective.
Make your fundraising process more efficient: https://www.funraise.org/
HiveBrite
Hivebrite’s industry-leading platform empowers organizations to launch, manage, and grow fully branded private communities. Over 800 organizations around the world have used Hivebrite to build and strengthen relationships with supporters, improve campaign management, and manage donor relations.
Other Sponsors
Here is the full list of sponsors. Again, thank you for all your help in making this the best fundraising conference yet! Next time you see them around, show some love, and think about using their services or even booking a demo!
Key takeaways
1. Year-end fundraising
Great Campaigns Need to Start Planning Now: It is clear that winning campaigns start planning earlier. Also, consider investing in helping to accelerate results.
Balance Your Time between Creative & Traction: Most year-end campaigns that fail, don’t fail because of poor creativity, they fail because of not enough traction. To avoid this, review all the traction channel sessions covered in the summit: social media, email, meta ads, google ad grants, YouTube ads, SMS, direct mail, and more!
2. Nonprofit tech
Make your Tech Decisions Based on Hope and Not Fear. When making a tech decision, think about how many more donors it will help convert and how much time it will save your team. Time is our most precious resource.
Prioritize user experience over tech costs and watch long-term revenue grow. A great giving experience paired with an effective CRM is critical in today’s digital world. There is so much great nonprofit tech today, that it is unacceptable to have a poor donor experience.
The Largest Benefits Go to the Early Adopters
No one understands how anything works. The real opportunity goes to those who learn first.
3. Creative
Great Nonprofit Marketing Requires Great Story-Telling: Nonprofit marketing is hard. However, it gives us the ability for powerful storytelling – storytelling that people are more hungry for than ever. Donors are motivated by LOVE, so keep this in mind when it comes to nonprofit marketing.
It is All About Short Form Video: Short form video is the way in 2022, no matter what the medium or channel – video wins. Just show up. Be present and be real, because this is what people want to see.
3T’s – Transparent, Tangible, Take Action
- Transparent (what the funds do)
- Tangible (quantify and or emotional feel the impact)
- Take Action (One, clear Call to Action)
4. Channel
Consistently Optimize the Foundational Channels of SEO, Social Media and Email
- SEO is often underestimated and under-optimized.
- 20 mins a day on social media can go a long way
- There is so much opportunity to further improve email
Test, Invest and Scale Digital Ads
- Leverage all the free ad spend of Google Ad Grants ($10K/mo) & the future Microsoft Ad Grant ($3K/mo)
- Test, invest and scale paid digital ads: Meta ads, paid Google Search Ads, YouTube Ads, Google Display ads, etc.
- SMS has a lot of opportunities to engage donors.
Learn How to Scale Digital Ads
5. Leadership
- You Can’t Pour From an Empty Cup
- Take care of yourself so you can serve your team and beneficiaries
- Being busy often distracts from what is most important
- Create a Plan with Measurable Goals
- Failing to plan is planning to fail. Create a clear plan, define clear goals and check in consistently to persevere or pivot.
- Fight the Nonprofit Marketing Gap
- The demands of what is now required for nonprofit growth has changed. Our biggest challenges are often marketing problems – not development problems, so keep pushing.
