Kansas State University fundraisers were feeling pressure to jump on the giving-day bandwagon. “We knew we were ready to take that on. We just wanted to make sure that we made it our own, not just doing it to check a box,” says Sara Prince, senior director of strategic solicitations at the university’s foundation.
After months of planning and research, the university came up with a new twist on the giving-day model: selecting a single problem on campus and directing an all-hands-on-deck fundraising marathon toward solving it.
On March 27, the inaugural All In for K-State event raised $320,560 from more than 1,400 donors — 115 of them new to the university — to tackle food insecurity among students. The amount raised dazzled the university foundation’s fundraisers and opened the door to new sources of support. “It’s had all sorts of ancillary benefits,” Prince says.
The money will support Cats’ Cupboard, an on-campus food pantry that opened in new, larger quarters last September. The money will help keep the pantry open after a four-year grant from the university’s Student Government Association runs out in a couple of years, according to Erin Bishop, coordinator for Cat’s Cupboard. A separate pantry for university staff opened April 1, thanks to a $25,000 grant from the Kansas Health Foundation.
‘A New Everest Every Year’
All In for K-State’s single-issue concept grew from research conducted last summer by a pair of interns from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, says Eric Holderness, associate vice president for development at the university’s foundation. The interns, Megan McReynolds and Devyn Maugel, conducted hours of interviews with the organizers of other giving days.
The foundation accepted some of the interns’ suggestions based on their research, he says, such as running an event on a Wednesday in the spring to get maximum attention. But it rejected the “shotgun approach” other giving days have taken, letting donors give to “everything and anything,” says Holderness.
“We wanted to tell a story of impact from All In, not necessarily have this be a stopgap in the decrease in donor count that everyone seems to be trying to address in these giving days,” says Holderness. “We wanted to get something done, and for donors to feel like they had a part in it.”
So the fundraisers decided that All In for K-State would choose a new “fundable idea” every year, based on proposals from the university community. Its donors would scale “a new Everest every year,” Holderness says.
Educating Donors
The giving day’s cause was chosen on December 12, and planning began in earnest in January, Holderness says.
Food insecurity popped to the top of the list of proposed ideas in the wake of campus surveys conducted last year, which prompted a Cat’s Cupboard’s expansion. One survey found that about 40 percent of students who experience financial hardship also said they have difficulty affording food.
The problem, the data revealed, affects more than simply how many meals students can afford to eat per day, or their academic performance, but their lives, says Prince. “The survey found that students were entering into relationships or staying in relationships that were not necessarily healthy but doing it for stability purposes.”
The amount raised dazzled the university foundation’s fundraisers and opened the door to new sources of support.
Education about the issue, including through the stories of donors who supported the campaign, and through students who used the food pantry, was a big part of the campaign. “We spent all of March in education and solicitation mode,” Holderness says.
In addition to emails, a direct-mail appeal, and social-media video, Cats’ Cupboard held an open house on All In for K-State day. Student volunteers handed out stickers promoting the day at the student center.
Texting was also employed as a solicitation tactic, especially for some of the less-engaged alumni in the database, Holderness says; it even helped nudge some board members to give.
The issue resonated with former students as well as current ones. Prince recalls an conversation with an alumnae who got in touch after receiving an email for All In. The woman told a foundation fundraiser she remembered “an eight-week spate when she was a student and was living on sugar cubes.” That woman, Prince says, gave to All In.
One of the big benefits of All In for K-State, according to the fundraisers, was that it uncovered new sources of giving. For instance, Dillons Food Stores, a subsidiary of the supermarket chain Kroger’s, had never given to the university before. Inspired by All In, it contributed $50,000.
Another company, Continental Mills, a food manufacturer, has begun making product donations to Cat’s Cupboard in the wake of All In for K-State. Says Holderness, “They didn’t know we had a pantry, and now they do.”
In-Flight Fundraising
The giving day rallied the university foundation’s staff, Holderness says. Of 140 staff members, 120 were directly involved in the event on the day, many helping to work the “command center” that monitored All In’s giving and events.
“The ‘all in’ concept really caught on amongst our staff. We really pulled together as we never have before,” Holderness says.
Even fundraisers who were out of town chipped in. As an example, he mentions how a university major-gifts officer, en route to New York, had an announcement made on the plane that Kansas State was going “all in” to raise money that day to combat food insecurity. Data showed a giving surge from New York after the plane landed.
Data also showed that alumni in all 50 states gave. The fundraisers are moving into stewardship phase, says Holderness. “We will kind of let this money work for a little bit and release an impact report.”
The foundation is already fielding requests from faculty about when proposals for next year’s All In for K-State event will be accepted.
Says Prince, “I think institutions might be looking at this model as way to rejuvenate giving days that have lost their luster.”
