Salt Lake Community College doubled their alumni donors on giving day with a seamless engagement & fundraising techstack
Key stats
$237,452
raised
$237,452 raised on giving day
93%
of gifts
93% of all giving day gifts raised through Gravyty platform
2,000
responses
2,000 responses to alumni survey via text outreach post-giving day
95%
open rate
95% open rate and 63% watch rate for personalized video messages
About Salt Lake Community College
Salt Lake Community College serves nearly 50,000 students across 8 campuses and with online classes, and hosts the most diverse student body in the state of Utah. SLCC serves all ages with many interests and offers flexible scheduling, with an exceptional range of academic and career-oriented options.
The challenge: Build a culture of engagement amongst alumni to fuel sustainable giving
With three prior giving days under its belt, the development team at Salt Lake Community College had big goals for their spring campaign with just two months of lead time to prepare. With one of their strategic priorities being engaging new alumni donors, the team knew they needed to rethink their fundraising strategy and techstack. But their goal wasn’t only to raise more money – though that was a key initiative. They also wanted to build authentic relationships with their alumni base, knowing these bonds result in a sustainable donor pipeline.
So SLCC’s challenge was a daunting one: find a platform that would power an engagement and giving strategy that was measurable, cross-channel, and easy for alumni to not only give but also spread the word through ambassadorship.
The solution: Use a multi-touch strategy to engage alumni and create frictionless, fun giving experiences
The SLCC team turned to Gravyty’s digital fundraising platform. They created a fully branded, intuitively designed giving day website, equipped with custom links for ambassadors to share out with their networks and track success. The digital giving strategy saw immediate improvements in giving day performance – most of the dollars raised came from challenges and matching gifts, both of which are features built into the platform.
Another critical element to their campaign success was the integrated video messaging tool. The team tapped key campus leaders of various programs like the food pantry, child care program, and scholarship fund — as well as students — to record personal thank-yous to each donor who gave on giving day, segmented by the cause they gave to. The student body president also recorded a personal thank-you message that they added to the video thank-yous.
Bob Whittaker,
Executive Director of the SLCC Foundation
Watch video now
A third key component of their holistic approach to engagement and giving was soliciting feedback from alumni themselves. The team was mindful of not making their first text outreach a monetary solicitation, so they leveraged Gravyty’s texting platform to send an Alumni Survey after their giving day and saw an incredible response. They plan on broadening their usage of texting to better engage certain affinity groups and segments of their alumni population, so that they see even greater results on their next giving day.
The outcome
SLCC took their giving day strategy to the next level with a holistic approach to engagement and fundraising. By harnessing the potential of authentic relationships with their alumni, they were able to more than double their number of alumni donors from the prior year on a single giving day. Driving gifts from 386 donors – a 91% increase over the previous high of 202 donors – the SLCC development team used staff and alumni ambassadors, meaningful funds and challenges and a multi-channel outreach strategy to rally their community and make an impact.
Solution spotlight
Gravyty’s end-to-end donor engagement solution empowers organizations to deliver best-in-class digital giving strategies, build thriving online communities and fundraise more effectively. Our digital fundraising platform lets you create fully customizable giving sites and crowdfunding campaigns, amplified by recurring gifts options, mobile wallets, gamification, DAF payments, and video stewardship tools. Our texting tool powers mass yet personal engagement with easy contact management, P2P texting, a smart messaging center and more.
