30%
year-over-year increase in both registrants and attendees
9+
average Net Promoter Score response (out of 10) in post-event surveys
55%
consistent turnout rate from the company’s virtual events
We’re now known as one of the best producers of virtual education in the nonprofit tech space. But as flattering as that is, what matters is that it means we’re meeting the needs of our nonprofit clients, helping them better serve the causes they support. This success is not just about meeting technical needs; it’s also about aligning with our mission to create meaningful connections within the nonprofit community. None of this–certainly not at this scale–would have been possible without RingCentral Events.
Tim Sarrantonio
Director of Corporate Brand
Software to help nonprofits create generosity experiences
Because they devote so much of their focus to the causes they support, nonprofits and charities often need help identifying and implementing the right software tools to run their organizations efficiently and build trust with their communities. More than 7,000 such organizations have turned to Neon One–a leading provider of technology solutions for nonprofits.
Neon One’s platform includes industry-specific applications for many key areas of a nonprofit’s operations, including a CRM for supporter management, accounting software, website-building tools, fundraising software, and apps to manage event creation and ticketing. The company’s platform has helped its nonprofit clients raise more than $16 billion.
INDUSTRY
Nonprofit technology
HQ
Chicago, IL
YEAR FOUNDED
2018
EMPLOYEES
200+
An events platform they couldn’t give away quickly enough
In 2020, Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Corporate Brand for Neon One, produced the inaugural of what would become the company’s largest yearly virtual conference: Generosity Xchange. “The events software we used couldn’t handle our needs or the traffic we brought in, and the whole thing crashed during the closing keynote.”
Fortunately, Tim had just learned how to use YouTube Live, so he immediately shifted the event to YouTube and sent all attendees an email (because, thankfully, he had also downloaded the registrants’ email list) directing them to the conference’s new online location.
“Of course, we had a significant loss of live viewers in the transition to the other platform, which really couldn’t handle our complex event needs either. But it was a learning experience for me. I realized we needed a purpose-built events solution that could support everything–multiple sessions, live and pre-recorded content, panels, chats, one-on-one meetings, surveys, even music and other elements that would help us create high-quality events.”
After experimenting with several other disappointing platforms–including one tool that pulled its technical support for the event because it was acquired in the middle of the registration process–Tim conducted a formal RFP process and found RingCentral Events.
In addition to heading Corporate Brand for Neon One, I’m also a professional speaker myself, and over the years I’ve probably used every online conferencing and events application you can name. So, I can tell you with some authority that RingCentral Events creates the best experience for everyone involved: attendees, organizers, sponsors, and speakers. It’s truly the whole package.
Tim Sarrantonio
Director of Corporate Brand
A solution that feels like a gift
With RingCentral Events, Tim explains, his team can now reliably produce large-scale, multi-day online events that both create outstanding experiences and deliver true value for the company’s nonprofit clients.
“This platform has so much flexibility that we’re still finding new ways to improve our events. For example, we’ve started adding live music to transition from one session to the next, and we’re considering creating a Hollywood Squares-like session to gamify our content and make it more engaging. It’s these little elements that add so much professionalism and interactivity to our conferences, and we never had anything like them before RingCentral Events.”
In fact, Tim adds, RingCentral Events also helped Neon One solve the challenge of meeting the dual objectives of its online educational events: producing highly useful content for its nonprofit clients (which means paying event speakers for their time) while at the same time never charging attendees for tickets.
RingCentral Events helps us deliver such high-quality, professional content that we’ve attracted some of the biggest brands in the world as sponsors–including Intuit and Visa–which lets us fund these events and still keep them free to attendees. RingCentral Events is like magic for nonprofits.
Tim Sarrantonio
Director of Corporate Brand
An innovative way to learn from event chats
Tim notes that his team has gleaned invaluable learnings from both mid-event and post-event surveys they’ve generated through RingCentral Events.
“Our survey responses are always positive. For example, when we ask the key Net Promoter Score (NPS) question–How likely are you to recommend our virtual events to a friend or colleague?–the average 1-10 answer is 9 or above. That’s how we know these events deliver valuable education to the nonprofit space.”
As Tim also points out, some of the most useful insights from these events come from his own clever idea for using other data readily available in the platform.
I’ll pull the chat logs after an event, anonymize them for privacy, and run them through ChatGPT to uncover attendee sentiment. ‘ChatGPT, how many chats include complaints or tech issues?’ Answer: ‘Few.’ ‘ChatGPT, how often do people express gratitude for the event in their comments.’ Answer: ‘Many.’ Insights like these help us assess the reception of our events and identify areas for improvement.
Tim Sarrantonio
Director of Corporate Brand
A generous helping of platform integrations
Neon One has also extended the value of its RingCentral Events platform, Tim notes, by taking advantage of numerous app integrations to improve workflows and meet other strategic objectives.
“We’ve made our lives a lot easier, and our events so much better, with the RingCentral Events integrations. The Typeform integration is great for quickly generating surveys and polls. We use the Capsule integration to build that wall of attendee-generated videos and even to use some of those clips for our marketing. And with our interest in adding gamification to our virtual events, we’re also starting to use the Kahoot! integration to engage attendees with custom games.”
Tim’s favorite RingCentral Events feature, he adds, is StreamYard.. “I coach all our speakers to use StreamYard because it lets them create their own custom stage experiences, which helps both their presentation and the attendees’ experience. A simple adjustment to their screen, for example, lets them see comments in real-time. Those little enhancements can be invaluable.”
RingCentral Events even helps us increase the inclusivity of our conferences, thanks to the Ai-media integration, which lets us include live captioning. I’m now learning how to help speakers work with ASL and interpreters, to make their presentations more welcoming to hearing-impaired attendees.
Tim Sarrantonio
Director of Corporate Brand
A bright future with RingCentral Events
Tim notes that since moving the company’s large-scale conferences to RingCentral Events, Neon One has seen a continuous uptick in signups. “We’re experiencing a 30% year-over-year increase in registrants and attendees, which is just phenomenal. And we’re projecting our next Generosity Xchange will well exceed 2,100 attendees.”
All of which explains why Tim believes whatever new directions Neon One takes with its virtual educational events in the coming years, those plans will definitely center around RingCentral Events.
“From every standpoint that matters to us–platform capability and reliability, pricing, customer support, and a tech partner that listens to its customers–RingCentral has proven itself over and over as the best solution of its kind on the market. That’s why I know that whatever our future plans for virtual events, RingCentral Events will be a part of it.”
Virtual education is a major part of our overall marketing strategy and our mission to empower small and mid-sized nonprofits with the best tools for their needs. Our team is so dedicated to making these events as effective as possible, in fact, that I’ve written out a detailed manifesto on the subject: A Virtual Event Optimization Guide. And for literally every step of that process, I used RingCentral as the model.
Tim Sarrantonio
Director of Corporate Brand