crossing the streams: creating a strategy to bring a college together for a successful giving day
TRANSCRIPT
Crossing the Streams:
Creating a Strategy to Bring a College Together for a Successful Giving Day
Presenters
Rob de la FuenteDirector of the IC Annual Fund
Twitter: @ICAF_Rob
Michael O’NeillSocial Media StrategistTwitter: @mikeoneill76
Christopher PollockDirector of Advancement Communications
Twitter: @ICchris
By the End, You Will Have . . .
A basic understanding of how to create an audience-centric giving day strategy
A deeper knowledge of the role social media and communications play in a giving day —and how to incorporate into your own event
An idea of how IC’s Giving Day affected donor acquisition and retention
An elevated appreciation of Ghostbusters
About Ithaca College
Residential, comprehensive college located in Upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region
6,400 students (mostly undergraduate)
Five schools:
– Business
– Communications
– Humanities & Sciences
– Health Sciences & Human Performance
– Music
You Want to Do Giving Day . . . When?!
Big Decisions Ahead
Core planning team
Strategic goals and outcomes desired
Target audiences
Vendor and platform
Finding an “ambassador”
Leaderboards, prizes, and hourly challenges
Communications collateral
Planning Teams
Core planning team: 4 people
Larger cross-functional group: approx. 15
– Representing Institutional Advancement, Marketing Communications, and other units
Setting Strategic Goals
What did the college want?
– Focus on participation, not dollars
– Engagement in advance of campaign launch
What did our audience want?
– Have donors feel like part of a larger community -> emphasis on small gifts adding up to big impact
– Set playful goals using familiar numbers
Could We Handle Capacity?
Finding the Right Platform
Needed a platform that could:
– Handle front-end website and giving form PLUS gift processing and reporting
– Handle an extremely heavy traffic load
– Provide robust features
Setting Goals
Internal goal (not publicized): 1,000 new donors
Series of tiered public goals:
607 (area code)
953 (street number)
1,485.0 (ZIP code)
Tagline and Visual Identity
Give Back toMove IC Forward
#ICGivingDay
Communications Vehicles
Website
Email marketing
Merchandise / souvenirs
Social media (#ICGivingDay hashtag)
Videos
– Animated promo video
– Fun video featuring college’s president
– Personalized thank-you videos for donors
– Follow-up video featuring students
Website
For weeks, building the website was our top priority
Planned to launch about a week before
Content included:
• The animated “Why Give” video plus additional case for support
• Suggested messaging for social media
• Leaderboards and prize challenge details
• Social media feed
Website Examples
Testing Is Critical
IC Giving Day Promo Video
Volunteers
Volunteer strategy…
–HAVE ONE!
Volunteers
Think broadly about who and what:
– Ambassadors and challenge donors
–Groups who can get the word out
– Speaking of our ambassadors, ours was an Angel . . .
Volunteer Ambassador
David Boreanaz '91Actor, Director, Producer (Bones)
Volunteer Ambassador
A well-known name will draw attention to your efforts and be a social media champion
Volunteer Ambassador
Challenge Donor Volunteers
Challenge donors
–Challengers for the overall goals
–Donors for other challenges
–New donors that day
Recruitment and Timing
Volunteer groups
– Existing volunteers
– Donors
– Student groups
– Social media “influencers”
Timing of emails
Timing and hourly challenges
Hourly Challenges
Gifts by Hour
Spreading the Word
Campus Volunteers
Campus HQ and partnering with another event
Command center
Phonathon
Giving Day is Coming!!
Crafting the Message
Create a sense of community
Crafting the Message
Make it about the students
Crafting the Message
Provide passive giving messages in early social media posts
– Show how gifts affect students lives
– Tell why some alumni feel it’s important to give back
Crafting the Message
Crafting the Message
Planning the Schedule of Posts
Planning the Schedule of Posts
Creating a calendar of posts
Planning the Schedule of Posts
Creating a calendar of posts
Giving Day
Giving Day
Real-time Thank You Videos
Keep up the energy for 24 hours
Quick and consumable
Personal, not cookie cutter
Real-time Thank You Videos
#REIGifts
Real-time Thank You Videos
We had a room of ~15 people to create these
Stalked Giving Day donors on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram
Threshold of at least 500 Twitter followers
Cranked out 153 videos between 10am and 10pm
Real-time Thank You Videos
Real-time Thank You Videos
Results
6,737 engagements on posts using #ICGivingDay
Reached more than 1.75 million people on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram combined
Results
41,000 views of all of our videos
– Real-time Thank You videos had almost 5,000 views among them
Results
Results
Email: $123,373
Direct Traffic: $73,790
Social Media: $7,558
– Facebook: $5,764
– Twitter: $1,477
– Instagram: $167
– LinkedIn: $100
– Google+: $50
Dollars and Donors
Over 2,300 gifts from more than 2,600 donors
Over $310,000 raised and almost half a million dollars leveraged
Donor Breakdown
Focused on alumni participation
1,500 of the 2,600 alumni
30% young alumni
Almost 1,000 new to the fiscal year
20% new or reacquired long-lapsed donors
23% parents
18% employees
Jumped 1% in alumni participation
Retention and Stewardship
Retention key
New or long-lapsed donors 9.2%
New to fiscal year 11.5%
Repeat donors 52.3%
Overall 25.7%
Stewardship
– Thank you video
– Special opportunities
– Segmentation
Will know more at the end of the fiscal year
Priority: Unrestricted
Dollar priority or you get what you ask for…
– IC Annual Fund
–Donor centricity
– 89% of all new dollars went to an Annual Fund allocation
– 47% purely unrestricted
Priority: Unrestricted
YES!
Participation Leaderboard
Post-Event Coverage
ICView magazine,Spring 2015
Moving Forward
Hard decisions about IC Giving Day Part II
– Campus events during fall 2015
– Gratitude Day: February 18, 2016
Opportunities during upcoming milestones
– Ithaca College’s 125th anniversary
– Upcoming campaign launch
Don’t Just Repeat — Reinvent
Thanks!
Rob de la [email protected]
Twitter: @ICAF_Rob
Michael O’[email protected]
Twitter: @mikeoneill76
Christopher [email protected]
Twitter: @ICchris