This story is part of a series on America’s Emerging Donors, the topic of The Chronicle’s second annual Philanthropy Next conference in September. Get more details and register at philnext.com.
Dartmouth alumna Catherine Briggs is a business professional, not a fundraiser. But after years as a volunteer with the college’s annual fund, she knows one challenge facing development offices everywhere: how to tap the power of women as philanthropists. At Dartmouth, men’s giving outpaces women’s by wide margins during the milestone reunion years.
This harsh fact moved front of mind as Ms. Briggs walked her dog one day and considered how Dartmouth could mark the centennial of its annual-giving fund. Why not, she wondered, put women at the center of that celebration? Her idea: a campaign to persuade 100 women to give $100,000.
Dartmouth officials were skeptical, but such a campaign had historical symmetry. The college’s annual fund had launched following a fire that destroyed the first building on campus. Students and alumni had come together to raise the money to rebuild, starting the tradition of an annual-giving campaign.
At the time, Dartmouth was an all-male college. The fund’s centennial, Ms. Briggs thought, was an ideal time for the thousands of women enrolled since 1972 to rally around the school in similar fashion.
She rounded up about 20 fellow alumnae and began planning. The campaign launched in 2014 and within three months raised nearly $15 million from 114 women. Volunteers did the bulk of the cultivation and solicitation of donors.
“Very often, it took more than one coffee, one golf game, one dinner to make it happen,” Ms. Briggs says.
The campaign is an unusual example of “peer to peer” fundraising, which is at the heart of many charity walks and social-media campaigns like the ice-bucket challenge. Those are typically small-gift efforts, netting droves of $25 and $100 donations. Dartmouth, however, struck big-gift gold with the approach.
College officials were surprised at the success. “It was one of the best grass-roots efforts I have ever seen,” says Patricia Jackson, a Dartmouth development executive who also has worked at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. “In many cases, the women who gave weren’t even on our radar.”
Here’s an outline of the campaign — and its lessons:
Harness the power of positivity: From the outset, Ms. Briggs wanted to offer women uplifting reasons to give. They would not respond, she says, if simply challenged to give as much as men do. “Women want to be part of something bigger than they are,” she says.
Some donors hoped the campaign would counter the long-held notion that Dartmouth — the last Ivy League college to go coed — is not a good place for women. “Vestiges of old perceptions just don’t die, and they wanted to show that Dartmouth is a great place for women.”
Make the gift about more than giving: The ask was part of an invitation to join the newly created Centennial Circle of Giving, a group of female donors who’ve pledged $100,000 or more. Ms. Briggs says it was important to signal that the campaign was the start of an ongoing giving group that would meet regularly and become a community through which alumnae could connect with each other and mentor students. There are now 157 members who’ve given nearly $22 million.
Because the college will continually invite women to join, “the circle will never close,” Ms. Briggs says.
Think broadly about who can make a big gift. When the university initially invited about 500 women to join the Centennial Circle, it reached beyond the pool of women who prospect research indicated could make a big gift. Women were added to the list who showed commitment and loyalty to the institution, often through attendance at reunions and Dartmouth events. A few had never even made a gift to the university.
Find connections: When Ms. Briggs and her fellow leaders assigned prospective donors to the volunteer fundraisers, they tried to find common interests upon which to build a relationship. That paid off, Ms. Jackson says, and taught Dartmouth a lesson about its reliance on class year and region to assign gift officers to prospects.
“We use class year and region because it’s easy and economical,” she says. “But people connect in all different kinds of ways.”
Balance the old and the new: When development-office staff designed the solicitation material, Ms. Briggs and others asked for something wholly different from traditional mailings. They all but forbade the use of green, the dominant school color, and manila envelopes.
Designers came up with a sophisticated solicitation mailed in a black, off-size envelope. The dominant text color was a shade of copper. “It looked like it came out of some amazing design house in New York City,” Ms. Briggs.
The logo made a nod to tradition with a series of circles drawn “almost like a spirograph,” Ms. Briggs says. The circles echoed a homecoming ritual: a bonfire in which alumni stand in a circle outside first-year students as they run around the blaze.
Be personal: Each campaign leader included a few handwritten lines in the solicitations. Often they dug into the prospect’s history at the school to personalize the note.
What’s next: Ms. Briggs would like to see the women fund a Centennial Circle building, with names of each group member on a plaque, whether they gave $100,000 or $1 million. “This is the start of something that will only get bigger,” she says.
