Planning Your University Or School Giving Day During COVID? Take A Look At Our Lessons Learned From Last Year!

Planning your University or School Giving Day during COVID? Take a look at our lessons learned from last year

Are you a university or school that is just getting started with your 2021 annual giving day planning? It can be overwhelming to know where to start especially after last year’s date shifting, strategy pivoting and unprecedented waives of the unknown crashing at our doors right around your usual giving day season.

Not much of this ferris wheeling journey that the virus has sent us on has changed today. Some schools are back in their day to day lives, steaming ahead with the extra precautions put in place, where other schools are still navigating the great seas of online learning. How may this impact your 2021 giving day you might wonder; don’t worry we have your back!

From working with a large number of schools and universities in 2020, our findings have been that giving days more than ever, enabled alumni, faculty, staff, parents and supporters to rally together in a common voice to showcase their unity, their sense of pride, belonging and strong dedication to their alma mater.

Let’s take a peek into the trends we saw during last year’s spring giving days:

1. Highlighted relief fund: More donations were channeled to general funds last year than to specific initiatives or departments. Most schools or universities we worked with, highlighted a general appeal campaign specific to target current COVID-19 relief efforts.
2. Extending giving days to multiple days of giving seemed to be a real trend last year. We saw people were extremely happy to give, with the last-minute giving day shifts and changes, allowing supporters time to donate was a valuable lesson learnt.
3. Be transparent! During times like this we spoke to a lot of organizations that were nervous of making the ask for donations, but transparency is key. Talk about the impact the funds will have on your school and how the funds are especially important during this time of crisis.
4. Speak about your pupils and students. How is COVID-19 impacting them? How have things changed and how can donations help your students and pupils grow during this time.
5. Buy-in! Ask your president to kick-off your giving day with a video speech that you can embed into your Giving Day site.
6. Use relevant pictures: Ensure your imagery is appealing to your supporters today. Don’t use imagery showing people playing soccer together during times they need to be apart, use imagery that speaks to what is happening today not yesterday.
7. Call to action through texting. With less students on campus, many universities had to result to less phone outreach. Less phone outreach and more texting call to actions actually is something we have been monitoring for a while. In fact, our research shows that there has been a 50 percent decline in donor participation rates in phone programs. More and more people are ditching their landlines and won’t pick up calls from numbers they don’t recognize. One of the most significant contributors to the declining phone program is lower phone effectiveness among middle-aged prospects. Use texting solutions to bridge this gap and ask your supporters to give to your Giving Day site (don’t forget to include your site link).
8. Matching gifts: Ask your major donors for help to let schools build incentives of matching gifs throughout the day.
9. Spark FOMO: Let ambassadors’ pre-gift their donation to the school and with this let them receive branded t-shirts that they can post on social media with. You’ll see this will increase brand and giving day recognition. Spark the FOMO during times where people can’t be together to generate a virtual super magnet.

Additional spring giving day tips:

1. Build out copy and design for direct mail, website, social media and emails that don’t only inform, but excite your supporters. Last year’s social distancing might have left your students and pupils feel far away from one another, a giving day can ignite a virtual community of togetherness. Build excitement for your day through your assets shared in the days running up to the event.

Tips:
a) Add a countdown or giving day pop-up to your website
b) Make your multi-channel messaging fun and stand out more



2. Ask your school departments to get your students involved to make the day special and bring the community tighter together. In fact, most schools and universities we worked with this year let us know that last year's spring giving day was the year they received the most engagement from departments across their school/ university.
The proof is in the pudding, there is an incredibly long list of amazing videos and virtual experiences that schools and universities launched. High Point University was one of the front runners with truly making the day into a virtual experience by launching a new video every 30 minutes throughout the day. Here are some of my all-time favorites:
a) A HPU Community Orchestra performance release
b) Virtual concert of 40 students, faculty, and alumni voices from 40 locations!
c) Holding a Virtual tour of the Culp Planetarium
d) A Chemistry Professor learning the Ukulele and writing a song about the university
e) A special virtual chapel service for the giving day.


3. Encourage your alumni to take part in your virtual celebration
Get alumni to shine and become part of your student body fabric by asking them to lead live classes.

Ideas:
a) Host a zoom fitness class
b) Host inspirational coffee sessions
c) Host a zoom cookie baking class



d.Building togetherness can be easy. Encourage your community to pull together through posting photos of themselves on their social media and highlighting your giving day hashtag:

If you have more fun ideas to add or want to brainstorm about your next giving day with one of our strategic peer-to-peer fundraising advisers leave us a comment below.