How can you engage families, alumni and other donors year after year?
The annual fund is the lifeblood of your school, the essential bridge between the tuition students pay and the operating expenses needed to run the school and support your mission. Fundraising for it can be a challenge, though, because as important as it is, the annual fund may not generate the same level of excitement as special projects like a new gymnasium or scholarships for exceptional students. Urgent needs can lend themselves to more compelling storytelling. However, keeping your annual fund funded and growing is vital to keeping your school and its amazing work going. The key is to use creative marketing to brand the annual fund in a fresh and inviting light. The strategy, messaging, and design should express the mission of the school and all the ways the students, faculty and programs are currently bringing that mission alive across campus, for alumni, and even the community at large.
Creative Strategies for Educational Fundraising
Whether you have one annual fund drive a year or several different campaigns, begin planning each campaign early. This will allow time to conceptualize and design the messaging and the materials and, if using direct mail, plenty of time to get the materials printed.
Brainstorm fertile times to contact donors:
- Giving Tuesday
- Year-end (last chance of tax break)
- Reunion weekends
- School events like sports championships, holidays, and back-to-school night
Consider using events or holidays unique to your school: Founder’s Day, namesake days, or anniversaries of historical events.
You can also take advantage of in-person events like homecoming, performances, tournaments, or graduation. Appeals during this time can take advantage of these events to leverage their sense of progress and community.
Create an Annual Giving Day
As part of the annual fund, you could create a special Giving Day. It could be the primary focus of the campaign, or it could be an additional ask held at a different time of year. Your school’s Giving Day could have a separate theme, segmentation, and story from the main campaign, giving you another chance to engage donors.
Trillion used a Valentine’s Day theme for Newark Academy’s Day of Giving.
Develop a Unique Theme for Your Annual Fund Campaign
Raising money for the annual fund is a recurring event. To avoid the campaign feeling routine, your team needs to take an inventive approach that will attract attention and stir enthusiasm.
Build a distinctive theme expressing the school’s personality, recent challenges, or noteworthy achievements. Examples of a theme might be school spirit, weathering a storm, or new beginnings. This can give focus to your messaging and design, making it easier to spark engagement in your donors.
Choose a specific story to tell as a way to highlight all the school does. It could center around an outstanding faculty member, student achievement, or a new project or program the school has undertaken. A compelling story will connect the donors emotionally to the school.
A challenge or contest can create a lively sense of competition for donors. Their “scores” can be based on donor participation, gift amount, timing of giving, or some other meaningful metric. Use social media to post the progress and increase the feeling of urgency.
Include a matching gift component to the campaign to incentivize larger donations.
Classes grouped by their ending year numbers (1993, 2003, 2013) competed in this appeal and raised nearly $100,000 for the annual fund.
Strengthen Your Campaign With Innovative Design
All of your creative choices will inform your design. Mix the recognized branding of the school – colors, logos, and fonts – with new elements to create a strong visual identity relevant to the year’s campaign.
Trillion designed an attention-getting oversized mailer for Cooke’s annual fund campaign.
Your materials could be as simple as an oversized self-mailer or, more elaborately, incorporate features like die-cuts and special finishes. Your outer envelope should have a striking design that compels the recipient to open it. Use infographics to transmit your success in easy-to-read numbers or charts. Beautiful photography of students will remind donors of who their gifts will impact the most.
Engage More Donors with Segmentation
Even simple segmenting of your outreach: parents, alumni and past donors, can allow you to tailor the message and make a stronger personal connection. For alumni or families, tapping into their school pride or nostalgia can help engage them. For past donors, showing how their gift made a measurable difference can make them feel enthusiastic about giving again.
For each group, show how the donation directly benefits the children and the school’s mission. Telling donors about the myriad of things the annual fund does can remind them how crucial their contributions are. Your reply card could also offer donors a choice of how their gift can be used: scholarships, faculty support, or the greatest need.
Create a giving society
Create a society that includes frequent or high-level donors and rewards them with some recognition: their name listed in the annual report, swag like a hat or car decals, or invitations to special events. This can build community and school pride among the donors. These groups can also be targeted as their own segment in campaign fundraisers throughout the year.
Maximize Your School’s Annual Fund Reach
A multichannel strategy will help you reach all donor groups and provide them with helpful reminders throughout the campaign.
- Direct mail – send letters, brochures or donation cards
- Emails – using a service like Mailchimp or Constant Contact will allow you to track the success of the emails
- Social media – use any appropriate platforms and consider incorporating real-time updates
- Phone and SMS
Because emotional connection is so important in fundraising, using personalization on all of these channels can increase engagement and donations. Addressing someone about their alumni class or past donor participation can help get their attention and make them feel seen and valued. A message that is tailored to their interests or references the impact of their giving can strengthen the relationship they feel to your school and hopefully will inspire them to continue or increase their support of your mission.
All communications should have prominent calls to action and clear, easy ways to donate: reply cards, QR codes, or active links to the school’s website donation page. If you are segmenting, you can adjust the suggested donation amounts appropriately to various donor groups.
Thank Your Annual Fund Donors
In all communications, make sure your donors know how much you appreciate them! If they are contributing, that means they understand the importance of the annual fund and are ensuring the school will continue to support students in their growth and education. Let them know how their gifts are transforming your school.
Elevate Your School’s Annual Fund with Trillion
A successful annual fund campaign takes creative marketing, storytelling, innovative design and digital strategies. Our team at Trillion brings all these elements together and has helped many schools meet or exceed their fundraising goals. We can help you do the same! Contact us on our website to plan your annual fund campaign or give us a call at 908.219.4703. We love helping our educational clients succeed.
