On January 23 GiveGab’s Senior Project Manager Vanessa Lloyd-Zammett and Project Coordinator Victoria Fiordalis traveled to Gainesville Florida to attend The Amazing Give’s annual Boot Camp.

The Amazing Give is a 24-hour Giving Day that raises money for local nonprofits in north central Florida, through a single online donation platform. It was created by the Community Foundation of North Central Florida (CFNCF) to help area nonprofits support their critical missions. This year The Amazing Give will take place on March 20 from 6 pm to March 21 at 6 pm.

The Boot Camp is a day of rigorous training designed to help the organizations, who will be participating in The Amazing Give, learn fundraising and marketing strategies, foster peer learning and collaboration, and learn about the services that the CFNCF can provide to them year round.

Facebook post from CFNCF with images from the Boot Camp

GiveGab’s Presentation

GiveGab’s Senior Project Manager, Vanessa, delivered a presentation on the importance of storytelling and marketing, leading up to and during The Amazing Give. She stressed that messaging must be consistent across channels of communication to be most effective. Vanessa and Project Coordinator Victoria also answered questions from participating organizations during breaks throughout the day.

“Storytelling and how an organization markets their campaign is closely knit. Telling a consistent story across all channels of communication ensures that donors are getting clear information about the organizations they want to support. Once an organization has their story nailed down, they can propagate it throughout their marketing channels, using various strategies, which makes the story easy for their team to manage and donors to follow.”

– Vanessa Lloyd-Zammett

Office Hours

Vanessa and Victoria also held office hours the following day at CFNCF headquarters. They met with around 25 organizations to discuss their Giving Day profiles and strategy. Some organizations had specific questions while others came to brainstorm campaign strategy and get input on their profiles for The Amazing Give. The sessions effectively helped organizations come up with the next steps in their planning process, introduced them to new strategies to engage donors, and provided tips on how to increase the impact of their story in the community.

From the Project Manager

Having been a part of The Amazing Give for three years now, I really enjoy the relationships that I have developed with some of the organizations. I also really love spending time with Lesley and her team, they are so welcoming and always find something fun for us to do. This year we watched the bats fly out of the bat houses at the University of Florida. What a cool (and stinky) experience that was!

Office hours provide organizations with thirty minutes to leverage however they need and can be very helpful. For organizations that don’t know where to start, it’s an opportunity to streamline their thoughts and get a plan formulated. It often results in organizations feeling more confident about their campaign, how to leverage the capacity they have available, and how to execute their plans. It’s so rewarding to see someone go from overwhelmed to confident and ready to take the next steps in their Giving Day prep.

Thank you so much to Lesley, Barzella, and The Amazing Give team for having GiveGab down for the third year in a row. It’s an event we look forward to, not only as an escape from the cold Ithaca weather, but to be a part of so many organizations’ campaigns during The Amazing Give. We are grateful to have such exceptional partners and organizations to work with!

Video of Boot Camp participants playing Human Foosball

More About Giving Days