Susquehanna University had great success on their Giving Day—One SU Day—in early March 2020. They met 101% of their donor goal and raised over $200,000. They also had 61 advocates helping spread the word about the campaign and leveraging challenges and matches to bring in more than 100 additional alumni donors compared to their previous Giving Day without GiveCampus.
Perhaps most importantly, it also kicked off a whole year of successful fundraising—at a time when educational philanthropy couldn’t be more critical. Building on the momentum of One SU Day, they were able to spin up a dedicated campaign for the Student Care Fund, which helped students transition to online learning, supported students with food insecurity at home, covered travel costs, and maintained a campus pantry. Lauren Redfern, Director of the SU Annual Fund, shared that they typically raise $1,000 per year for the Student Emergency Fund. In 2020, they raised over $30,000, including over $20,000 online through the GiveCampus Social Fundraising Platform.
The Social Fundraising Platform also positioned SU to run multiple campaigns that highlighted impact for the SU community against the backdrop of COVID-19. Two of their most successful campaigns to date have been the SU Athletics Mask Campaign, which raised money to support their Athletics program and used GiveCampus’s incentives feature to reward donors with an SU branded face mask. The campaign hit 500% of their donor goal, with 255 donors participating.
The Advancement team also ran a broader SU Mask Campaign, where making a $25 gift to any area of the university would grant the donor an SU branded mask. This campaign also dramatically exceeded its 100 donor goal by 422%.
Ultimately, Redfern shared that GiveCampus was such a strong all-around fit for their Giving Day and subsequent campaigns because of the donor experience and the ease for her Advancement services colleagues.
Donors have highlighted how helpful it is to have mobile-friendly forms, and that Apple Pay and Google Pay make it even easier for them to give with just a few clicks.
She also shared that the process of mass-importing gifts and easily tracking incentives has been invaluable for their data team. Knowing that the data is easy to report on and reconcile on the back-end has allowed the SU Advancement team to be more creative with incentives, tournaments, and other forms of friendly competition and motivation. They also appreciate that the process for sending official receipts to donors for their tax-deductible gifts is seamless.
Kristen Ritzman, Director of Advancement Data at SU, shared that the GiveCampus reports required very little training for the Finance team, and that that GiveCampus made it easy to send batch imports to Ellucian Colleague.
Lastly, we love how SU’s donors also reflect back the passion and care that the SU Advancement team puts into these campaigns, highlighting the GiveCampus-specific advocacy features that make such a difference.
“One thing we hear all the time, and love hearing, is that the matches and challenges features really appeal to our alumni,” Redfern explained.
“Sometimes it’s hard for people to feel like their single gift makes a difference—but when they feel like their gift is inspiring others to give back, that changes the game.”