Giving Lunches are a key tool for warming prospective pledgers up before asking them to take the pledge.

At its most basic form, a Giving Lunch is an interactive presentation and discussion for a small group of 4-6 leads. Throughout the presentation, everyone who attends can ask questions, learn about OFTW and effective giving, and see a demonstration of how to take the pledge. Then, they fill out a form to send $10 to a charity of their choice.

Find guidance and key resources for making your Giving Lunch a success below.

Watch: How to Deliver a Giving Lunch

Contents:

1. Three Tips for Giving Lunches:
2. Before the Giving Lunch
3. During the Giving Lunch
4. After the Giving Lunch

Three Tips for Giving Lunches:

1. Everyone who turns up gets $10 to any charity of their choice (paid for by OFTW HQ). To get this, they need to complete this post-event form to tell us where the money goes. This form will also prompt them to answer whether they'd like to take the pledge. After the event, be sure to check the Giving Lunch Attendance page on the Raw Data Dashboard to see which of your attendees would like to pledge, and follow up with them as soon as possible.
2. It's a conversation, not a lecture. These lunches work so well because they are interactive - people talk about their current giving, their approach to philanthropy, they take part in the quiz on effective interventions - it all gets people talking and engaged and leads to real human connections between you and them. This will then allow you to follow up and ask them directly to take the pledge. 
3. Practice, practice, practice. Even though it's a great chance to be informal, the Giving Lunch presentation contains a lot of content. Just like your pitch, your Giving Lunch will be more effective with practice. Be sure to run through your slides at least twice before running a Giving Lunch for the first time.

Before the Giving Lunch:

• When do you have a Giving Lunch? Usually towards the end of the semester. Some chapters host them as part of Pledge Week. Others host them the week before pledge week. Whatever the case, they ideally take place after your leads have heard of OFTW.
• Aim for 5-10 external attendees per Giving Lunch. A smaller group is easier to engage in discussion. 
• Try to drive warm prospective pledgers (those who have already engaged with OFTW programming) to Giving Lunches, and try to ensure that your chapter members know all the attendees. Followup after the Giving Lunch will be much more successful if the attendee is contacted by someone they know.
• Make a copy of your preferred Giving Lunch deck. Modify the deck as you see fit -- feel free to replace sides, add additional slides, change the order, change speaker notes, etc. 

During the Giving Lunch:

• • • Use our updated deck with our new branding here!
  • Try to have someone from the chapter attend, so that they can help spark discussion if the attendees are quiet.
  • Encourage as much participation as possible. The decks include multiple opportunities for group participation -- take advantage of these to get people involved.

• Save time for the Donational walkthrough at the end. This may help make people more willing to take the pledge right there or later.
• Share the post-Giving Lunch form toward the end of the presentation to ensure that people fill it out. On this form, people will indicate their interest in taking the pledge, and it also allows them to tell us where to allocate their $10 donation.

After the Giving Lunch:

• Check the Giving Lunch Attendees page of the dashboard to see who said they’re interested in taking the pledge.
• Have whoever at the chapter knows the attendees reach out for a followup conversation. If the member isn’t comfortable giving the pitch, that’s okay! Just ask them to set up a conversation with one of the CLs and the attendee who said they’d like to pledge.
• Be persistent -- if folks don’t respond when you first reach out, follow up every 48 hours or so.