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How the University of Michigan Raised $3-Million Online in a Day

By  Rebecca Koenig
March 1, 2015

Sustaining interest in a multiyear fundraising drive is a challenge.

At the University of Michigan, which is three years into an eight-year, $4-billion capital campaign, that task is amplified by two other difficult tasks: broadening the university’s donor base and involving students in fundraising efforts.

Michigan’s development team devised Giving Blueday to address all three aims.

A school-spirit-themed take on the annual nationwide Giving Tuesday event, the campaign plugged into donors’ passions, performed well on social media, rallied the student body, and raised more than $3-million.

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Sustaining interest in a multiyear fundraising drive is a challenge.

At the University of Michigan, which is three years into an eight-year, $4-billion capital campaign, that task is amplified by two other difficult tasks: broadening the university’s donor base and involving students in fundraising efforts.

Michigan’s development team devised Giving Blueday to address all three aims.

A school-spirit-themed take on the annual nationwide Giving Tuesday event, the campaign plugged into donors’ passions, performed well on social media, rallied the student body, and raised more than $3-million.

Here’s how the university pulled it off.

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Making It Easy to Give

The success of the endeavor depended on the university’s newly redesigned online giving platform, created in-house. The team looked at a variety of e-commerce websites for inspiration, says Tom Szczepanski, assistant vice president of development.

“We looked at some of the world-class shopping carts that existed and said, ‘What can we do to translate that?’” he says.

The new platform had to take into account a trend the team had noticed: Donors often want to give to several different university funds during one transaction.

“Imagine you went to Lands’ End and you wanted a sweater, and had to cash out, then wanted a pair of boots, and had to cash out,” Mr. Szczepanski says. Rather than put users through that tedious process, he explains, the site had to “allow for as many donations as you want in a single transaction.”

The team’s guiding philosophy, Mr. Szczepanski says, was to minimize the time it took to make a donation.

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Preparing for Everything

From the outset, the team focused on risk-management strategies to prepare for potential problems.

“One of the things that was a first for us was to create entire scenarios of ‘What if,’” says Judy Malcolm, senior director for executive communications in the university’s development department.

That list included contingency plans in case a snowstorm prevented staff members from commuting to campus on the day of the event, a national news story diverted attention from the campaign or made prescheduled email messages seem insensitive, or the Giving Blueday Twitter conversation was “hijacked” by people bringing negative attention to the event.

The team also did stress tests on the giving platform to ensure it could handle heavy Web traffic and tested a new email-management tool in advance to make sure it didn’t have glitches.

Recruiting Ambassadors

Signs on campus and postcard mailings from academic departments to alumni were some of the ways the university spread the word about Giving Blueday. But the advertising strategy relied most heavily on social media posts, according to Mr. Szczepanski.

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The campaign “exploded in the social sphere,” he said. “That’s where the awareness was really generated.”

That was no accident.

Melissa Cox, associate director of development services and strategic solutions, says the team recruited more than 300 people to serve as social-media ambassadors to spread the word about Giving Blueday. The university gave the volunteers pre-written content, which they could customize, to promote on Facebook and Twitter.

“We were able to engage folks early on to get them involved and spread the word about why it’s so important to give back,” Ms. Cox says.

Making It a Game

To provide an incentive for student organizations to get involved, the team devised a series of hourly social-media challenges. Because the university’s online-donation platform allows people to allocate their gifts among dozens of student groups, the team encouraged those organizations to use Facebook and Twitter to rally support for themselves.

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Whichever group won the donation challenge of the hour received a $1,000 bonus, which came from a $50,000 gift a donor provided specifically for that purpose.

“We had 70 different student organizations committed to participate that signed letters of agreement about the rules of engagement,” Mr. Szczepanski says. “That activation, just getting students that fired up about philanthropy, was positive. Sometimes students don’t understand the essence of philanthropy: It’s about connecting to personal passions.”

Tallying the Results

The team was impressed by the results from the 24-hour drive: 5,437 donors gave a total of $3,252,309.

“We far exceeded anything we were expecting,” Ms. Cox says. ”It was fantastic.”

She says the #givingblueday Twitter hashtag was viewed by 4.4 million different people, had a total of 11 million impressions, and was at one point trending in the metro Detroit area, the closest large city to campus.

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Mr. Szczepanski believes that the “participation gifts” made on Giving Blueday will translate into larger gifts from donors impressed by the passionate response to the campaign.

“That really creates a great sense of momentum that major-gift donors look at and say, ‘Wow, there’s something big I’m a part of, something to be really proud of,’” he says.

By the Numbers

Money raised: $3,252,309

Donors: 5,437

Student organizations involved: 70

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Impressions of Twitter hashtag: 11 million

Download
  • Hosting an Online Fundraising Event: The ‘What If’ Checklist
Read other items in this Online Fundraising 2015: Unleash the Future package.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Digital Fundraising
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SPONSORED, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

Related Content

  • Hosting an Online Fundraising Event: The ‘What If’ Checklist
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