Inside Monmouth’s High-Impact Outreach Strategy and the Pivot That Sealed Their Success
Jan 2026 - READ IN 6 MINUTES
Founded in 1853, Monmouth College is a private Presbyterian liberal arts institution in Monmouth, Illinois, where tradition is treasured. That history comes into sharp focus each spring during Scots Day of Giving, held on or around Founders’ Day, when the campus and its extended community rally around a shared commitment to the College’s future.
There’s something profoundly satisfying about watching a team take a familiar Giving Day playbook, flip it over, shake out the loose bits, and rebuild it into something sharper, smarter, and far more scalable. That’s exactly what Monmouth College did, and they did it with the kind of focus and fearlessness that makes them a perfect fit for our second entry in the Master Class series.
If Master Class #1 gave us a behind-the-curtain look at launching a first-ever Giving Day, this installment takes us straight into the beating heart of execution: outreach. Outreach is the stuff that actually moves donors from “Oh hey, that’s happening” to “Sure, I’ll tap twice and give.”
Monmouth decided to rewire their entire communications system ahead of their annual Giving Day—and they had good reason. With nearly a decade of “Scots Days” under their belt and a tradition-rich campus to rally, the challenge wasn’t awareness, it was precision. How do you reach more people, but with fewer irrelevant messages? How do you restore trust after years of campus-wide emails coming from one catch-all address? And how do you bring a modern Giving Day to life when your systems are politely whispering, “Please stop sending so many emails”?
Enter GC Outreach.
Monmouth used this Giving Day as an opportunity to not only raise money, but to rebuild their communication strategy from the ground up. They segmented like strategists, texted with purpose, and emailed with style and precision. They also brought video into the mix to give everything that warm-and-fuzzy spark that even the best CTA buttons can’t replicate.
The result? Their highest-performing Scots Day of Giving in history. And, more importantly, a blueprint that other institutions can copy, customize, and claim as their own.
This Master Class takes you step by step through how they did it:
- What triggered the shift to GC Outreach
- How the three-person team divided and conquered
- The cadence, creativity, and segmentation behind their communications
- And the metrics that earned everyone a well-deserved victory lap
If you’ve ever wondered what a high-functioning Giving Day outreach engine looks like—or if you’re working with a communications ecosystem that could generously be described as “held together with hope”—you’ve come to the right place.
Welcome to Master Class #2. Let’s dive into Monmouth’s outreach reboot.
Why Monmouth Knew It Was Time for a Change
Before Scots Day even entered the planning phase, the team faced a sobering reality: they were missing nearly one-third of their reachable base due to the legacy “one-unsubscribe-rules-them-all” setup. Every time someone opted out of an alumni newsletter, a Giving Day appeal vanished with it. Every birthday message, every event invitation—gone.
In other words, their communications were not only inefficient, they were structurally working against them.
GC Outreach offered something radically different:
- Topic-level unsubscribe options (instead of a nuclear “unsubscribe all” button)
- Customizable sender identities that look and feel familiar
- Flexible segmentation matched to the way modern fundraisers operate
- A cleaner, more intuitive template builder that even interns quickly mastered
So the Monmouth team set an ambitious goal: leverage GC Outreach to fully reimagine their constituent comms, and be ready to roll by Scots Day.
Designing a Strategy That Could Flex Across Four Major Appeals
Every great Giving Day blends institution-wide messaging with project-specific storytelling, and Monmouth executed this balancing act beautifully.
Their theme—This Is Monmouth’s Moment—set a unifying tone. But under that umbrella, they structured four distinct giving opportunities.
1. The Monmouth Fund
This appeal had no dollar goal (the annual fund had already surpassed its target) but it carried a major participation mandate. Because Monmouth Fund donors represent the College’s widest audience, the team used GC Outreach to personalize messaging at scale, segment intelligently, and reach constituents who might otherwise have been overlooked.
2. Dahl Chapel (A/V System Upgrade)
Dahl Chapel is one of Monmouth’s most iconic, multi-generational spaces, making it ideal for emotion-forward storytelling. Outreach highlighted the memories anchored in the building: weddings, concerts, convocations, award ceremonies, and decades of campus traditions. By focusing on the Chapel’s significance across generations, the team inspired alumni and families with a compelling reason to give.
3. Fighting Scots Society (Softball Field Project)
The Fighting Scots Society drives nationwide enthusiasm and financial support for Monmouth’s 22 athletic programs. This project was fully affinity-driven. Softball alumni, former players, coaches, and parents received a coordinated mix of tailored emails, a mailed appeal, and phone calls from familiar athletic staff—ensuring every outreach touchpoint felt personal and connected to their team.
4. Senior Class Gift (Outdoor Basketball Court)
The Senior Class Gift is a rite of passage that leaves a lasting legacy for future Scots. While the project centered on students, parents were the primary donors. To reach them, the team combined tried-and-true tactics: letters mailed to all current parents, with modern, real-time engagement through on-campus activations and targeted text reminders.
This structure—one theme, four missions—allowed Monmouth to tailor messaging while keeping the entire community aligned.
Segmentation: The Not-So-Secret Ingredient
If you dig into Monmouth’s approach, you’ll see a pattern: they didn’t overengineer their segments. They simply built them based on two factors:
- Affinity
- Recency of engagement
That’s it. And the simplicity made the segmentation stronger.
Monmouth Fund donors were pulled from the past 10 years. Fighting Scots donors? The past seven. Softball parents, music majors, younger alumni, Golden Scots, current students, faculty and staff—they all got tailored messaging that made sense.
The magic wasn’t in creating dozens of micro-segments. The magic was in giving each audience exactly what they needed, and nothing they didn’t.
How a Three-Person Team Pulled It All Off
Monmouth’s Giving Day communications weren’t executed by a big advancment shop—they were powered by three people who knew exactly how to divide and conquer: Jennifer Armstrong, Director of Alumni Engagement and Annual Fund; Troy Stuart Hippen, Assistant Director of the Monmouth Fund; and Emily Henson, Assistant Director of Alumni Engagement.
Jennifer shaped the communication strategy. She defined the audience segments, built the schedule, wrote every email, and handled the sends, essentially serving as the voice and narrative architect of Scots Day.
Troy handled the data-heavy lift: uploading lists, matching constituent IDs, managing CRM exports, and handling the YouTube uploads for every video used in their emails. If it needed to be clean, accurate, or integrated, Troy made it happen.
Emily built the templates and constructed the lists, translating Monmouth’s branding into outreach and recreating the features the team relied on in Constant Contact. She ensured every message looked polished, consistent, and unmistakably Monmouth.
And all three of them benefitted from the speed and clarity of GiveCampus support—quick responses, hands-on guidance, and a platform intuitive enough that even their summer intern, brand-new to email marketing, was confidently designing and scheduling messages in no time.
Together, the trio executed an outreach operation that looked and felt far larger than the team behind it—and that efficiency became one of the quiet superpowers of their Giving Day success.
The GC Outreach Cadence That Carried the Day
The team mapped out a communication plan built for consistency and momentum:
- One week out: A high-energy general hype video
- The day before: A “Tomorrow is the day!” message featuring the Senior Class Gift
- Day-of schedule:
- 5:30 AM – Kickoff email with a bagpiper video (arguably the most on-brand content possible)
- 7:00 AM – Coffee incentive + early donor update
- 11:53 AM – Midday push at the 12-hour mark
- 2:30 PM – Dahl Chapel spotlight
- 7:53 PM – The “four hours to go” rally
- 11:53 PM – “That’s a wrap!” (thank-you video)
This drumbeat of communication kept donors oriented throughout the day without overwhelming them. Each email had a purpose and was well-timed. And each send created a measurable uptick in giving, especially the video emails.
The team used outreach to build a Giving Day narrative in real time.
Email That Actually Feels Personal
One of the instant wins with GC Outreach was the leap in design quality and personalization.
Monmouth’s emails used:
- Consistently branded headers that matched their brochure design
- Text formatting that highlighted key takeaways
- Clear, concise copy keyed to busy alumni
- Custom merge tags to make messages feel incredibly personal
- Subject lines that led with clarity (and video teasers when relevant)
The impact was immediate and unmistakable: 42%+ open rates and click-through rates that doubled what they used to see using their previous email solution.
When your email “from” line looks like it comes from a recognizable person—not a mysterious shared inbox—you’re already halfway to a better Giving Day.
Texting With Purpose, Not Noise
Rather than spray-and-pray with texts, the team used SMS selectively and therefore effectively. Who got texts?
- Millennials
- GOLD alumni
- Music majors
- Parents of current students
- And—in one brilliantly timed moment—the Golden Scots
The first wave of texting followed the plan: younger alumni and high-engagement segments who respond well to short, friendly nudges and the ease of digital wallet giving. But the real magic happened late in the afternoon, when donations slowed and the team needed a lift. Around 4 or 5 p.m., they huddled and asked the most important question of any Giving Day: “Who haven’t we talked to yet?”
That question led them to the Golden Scots: alumni celebrating their 45th, 50th, 55th, and 60th reunions. This group already had a June reunion on the horizon, and their Scots Day gifts would count toward their reunion totals. In other words, they were the perfect affinity segment hiding in plain sight.
Because GC Outreach made pivoting so easy, the three-person team felt confident enough to spin up a targeted text message on the fly. It reminded Golden Scots of their upcoming reunion and invited them to make their Scots Day gift right now, with a couple taps.
And it worked. The Golden Scots delivered exactly the late-day surge Monmouth needed to build momentum.
By using texting as a precision tool and not a megaphone—and by staying agile enough to create new segments in the moment—Monmouth demonstrated exactly how modern Giving Day outreach should work.
The Results: Monmouth’s Best Scots Day Yet
Let’s talk numbers, because they’re impressive:
- $350,761 raised
- 916 donors
- 105 new donors
- Most money raised in Scots Day history
- 5,700+ previously unreachable email addresses now back in the fold
- Only 127 unsubscribes on Scots Day
- And just 70 people (19.8%) opted out of all communications since April
For a team that previously lost 33% of its list to an all-or-nothing unsubscribe system, this was more than a glow-up, it was a full-on rebuild of their communication infrastructure.
More importantly, they devised an outreach approach that was sustainable.
Lessons Every School Can Apply Tomorrow
Monmouth’s biggest strengths were strategic. Here’s what made the difference:
- They built a coordinated workflow across the team.
Everyone had a role. No bottlenecks, no chaos. - They kept segmentation clear and doable.
No 500-line spreadsheets, no analysis paralysis. - They used video to elevate important messages.
If a video was included in the email, it showed in the results. - They embraced topic-based unsubscribes.
More trust for the donor, more reach for the institution. - They aligned every message to a moment.
No filler. No noise. Just purpose.
Perhaps the most important lesson learned was that a Giving Day is the perfect laboratory for innovation.
If you’re looking to adopt new solutions, try new messaging, or reimagine how you reach your donors, a Giving Day forces clarity, discipline, and creativity—all in a single 24-hour window. Actually, in Monmouth’s case the window was just 18 hours and 53 minutes!
Monmouth proved that with the right platform and a focused strategy, a Giving Day can do more than raise money. It can transform your entire communication ecosystem.
Closing: Monmouth’s Moment—And Yours
Beyond bringing in record dollars and donors, Scots Day of Giving ushered in a new era of outreach for Monmouth College, one built on personalization, precision, and respect for donor preferences.
And the best part? None of their tactics require a massive team, a giant budget, or a decade of institutional history.
What Monmouth did is replicable, adaptable, and ready for any school that wants to level-up the way they communicate before, during, and after their Giving Day.
This was Monmouth’s moment. Now it’s your turn.
If Monmouth’s approach sparked an idea—or five—for your own Giving Day, you don’t have to build it alone. Our team of fundraising experts is here to help you map out your strategy, refine your segmentation, and unlock the same kind of momentum Monmouth saw this year. If you’re ready to fine-tune your outreach and make your next Giving Day your strongest yet, let’s talk.
Watch Monmouth’s Popular GCPC Session On Demand
Want to hear the Monmouth team explain their approach in their own words? Watch the 30-minute session now for a deeper dive into their strategy, their pivots, and the tactics that made this their strongest Scots Day yet.