Feed The Spark: How to keep your supporters fired up in a virtual world

Multiple Dates: August 18 - September 23, 2020

Organizations across our region have been forced to cancel their in-person event programming as states grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic. These events help connect people around important work, and generate a significant amount of revenue that organizations depend on to do their work. We’ve all scrambled to reimagine our events as virtual gatherings—experimenting with different platforms and formats—but capturing the spark and magic of an in-person event with physical, face-to-face interaction can be challenging in a virtual environment.

With support from the Bush Foundation, Pollen and Events by Lady K have teamed up to offer a series of presentations on hosting virtual events that are purposeful, engaging, inclusive, and financially sound.

Join us for a general overview session designed to help you reframe the purpose, goals, and objectives for your event; compare different platform features, security, and accessibility; choose the right format for your event that engages your audience and keeps them connected to your mission.

For those looking for a deeper dive on specific components of hosting successful virtual events, we’ll also be offering five, hour-long sessions on the following topics:

1. Making it Flow: fresh content that tells a story, the right format to convey that story, and art + design that brings it all to life

2. Inclusion & Accessibility: the tenets of radical hospitality to make everyone feel welcome and supported

3. Not Another Boring Zoom: how to keep your audience engaged, connected to your mission, and connected to one another

4. Practice Makes Perfect: behind the scenes testing, scenario planning, support roles, and speaker preparation to ensure everything runs smoothly

5. Virtual Giving: how to create compelling online fundraising campaigns, amplify your message across platforms, and cultivate donors online

And, to make sure we have ample time to answer all your questions, you can also attend a 90-minute Q&A session with the presenters at the close of the series.

Accessibility

Live captioning is available, and ASL interpreters are available upon request.

Series Schedule:

All times are Central.

General Overview Session | August 18, 10:30AM-12PM

Not Another Boring Zoom Meeting | August 25, 2-3PM

Inclusion & Accessibility | August 26, 2-3PM

Making It Flow | September 10, 10-11AM

Practice Makes Perfect | September 15, 10-11AM

Virtual Giving| September 17, 10-11AM

Q&A Session | September 23, 10:30AM-12PM

Workshop Presenters:

• Julie Cohen, Pollen
• Ryan Kroening, Events by Lady K
• Tom Loftus, Pollen
• Additional presenters to be announced