Growing Day of Giving Success through Online Tools and Gamification

The Challenges

The Solution

CSUSM and CSP both turned to Anthology Encompass for ease of use, streamlined processes, and engaging gamification capabilities. The solution supports Day of Giving with online tools, including email marketing, gamification with leaderboards, challenges, donor rolls, analytics, and more.

Day of Giving

CSUSM’s primary Day of Giving is held in conjunction with Giving Tuesday, a global generosity movement unleashing the power of radical generosity. Anthology Encompass was implemented just in time for CSUSM’s Giving Day in November 2020.

CSP’s Day of Giving, referred to as CSPday, is typically the third week in March on a Thursday. The university adopted the Anthology Encompass solution a decade ago to build alumni engagement and giving—and began using Anthology Encompass for its Day of Giving in 2020.

Microsites and Scoreboards

For each campus, Anthology developed a custom microsite with separate project cards for participating groups. Every Day of Giving, general emails and social media posts drive donors to the landing page where they find campus causes to support and lists of challenges, matches, bonuses, and FAQs. “One of the things that drew us were the Scoreboards as well; we wanted all of that built out for us,” said Lori Brockett, associate vice president, alumni engagement & university events at CSUSM. This functionality inspires competition and excitement through visualization features, including leaderboards and maps that gamify online campaigns—particularly critical on a Day of Giving. “Part of the leaderboards project that we also love is the results page . . . we do use quite a few of the features,” said Sarah Glad, director of philanthropy and engagement at CSP. The university even incorporates an interactive mosaic of photos on the results page to encourage engagement following the successful event.

Campus partners

For CSUSM and CSP, campus partners play a key role in their Day of Giving success. Both institutions require campus partners interested in participating in Day of Giving to submit a nomination detailing their interest via a form, making it easy to capture the information in one place. Once approved, a page featuring the submitted videos, photos, and other content is created to encourage excitement from alumni and constituents. Each institution works with campus partners slightly differently, providing two perspectives on supporting partners and encouraging alumni participation.

CSUSM partners and promotion

The buy-in and participation of partners in promoting Days of Giving is critical for CSUSM. To build excitement, matches and challenges are announced to CSUSM’s 50-55 partners approximately three weeks before launch. This also gives them time to fine-tune their communications plan. Each project card has a unique URL, making it easy for partners to promote them through email and social media, track donation progress, and view who has made a gift using the donor roll (donors must opt in to enable this feature). “To see the results in real time obviously is important, not just to the donors we're trying to attract to make a gift, but to those working behind the scenes to promote in general,” said Sean Briner, director of annual programs at CSUSM.

This year, CSUSM added social media ad buys to their Anthology Encompass solution, amassing over 500,000 impressions. “They were targeted with specific reaches within our region. That was nice. We were able to code them and know if they clicked on them,” said Brockett.

The university holds other fundraisers throughout the year to support a long list of causes that also leverage Anthology Encompass, including One CSUSM General Scholarship Fund, ACE Scholars Services to assist students who have lived experience in foster care, ASI Cougar Pantry to provide food and supplies to CSUSM students, and more. “We're a state institution; our budgets are low. We don't have a lot, so we have to find solutions like Encompass and Anthology that could help us reach our goals that the big schools are reaching,” said Brockett.

CSP partners and promotion

CSP takes a different approach than CSUSM, supporting six designations through their Day of Giving, including their Opportunity Fund (the annual fund), Athletics, and four smaller projects entered by campus partners. For designation consideration, academic- and student-oriented programs submit applications to demonstrate how the funds will be used in the fiscal year. Similar to CSUSM, partners initiate efforts to drive donors to their specific pages—which at CSP often include student quotes as well as progress indicators.

To help drive traffic to the landing page, CSP uses a multi-channel approach—sending emails via Anthology Encompass and texts leading up to and throughout the Day of Giving. “We have built up a really great rapport with athletics and university marketing, so we have a cohesive overall strategy,” said Glad. The CSP team also sent messages thanking donors within an hour of receiving a gift. Those contributing $500 or more received a personal thank-you call from the university president or vice president of advancement on the Day of Giving.

CSP also calls on Champions to increase Day of Giving engagement. Approximately 50 Champions share content via social posts or email. “Many of our Champions are also donors, but it is a way for folks who can't donate to still give of their time to help contribute to CSPday,” said Glad.

For donors using credit cards, CSP recently began offering them the option of including credit card fees in their donations. Working with Anthology, CSP added that feature into Anthology Encompass. “We definitely encourage using that feature because I think philanthropic people want to max out their gift. Everyone understands that to use a credit card, there's a fee associated,” said Glad. Twenty-five percent of the credit card fees from donor contributions were covered. “Just over 40% of people covered the fees; individual donors. It was a huge value add for us,” said Staci Poole, director of donor relations at CSP.

The day after Day of Giving is just as busy as the day itself. Working with their marketing team, CSP developed a shell for their printed mailing piece in advance and filled in amounts by designations and other totals at the event's conclusion. This piece was delivered with an impact report and receipt. “Our goal is to have receipts in the mail by the following Wednesday, including a live signature from our president on every receipt,” said Poole.

Epilogue

CSUSM continues to take advantage of the newest features and upgrades to Anthology Encompass. “We're always looking for that next thing that we can add to it—the ability to have a more streamlined peer-to-peer fundraising platform that can grow our social media reach exponentially,” said Briner.

For greater process efficiency, CSP has recently transitioned to the new Email Editor for Anthology Encompass. “I think it's wonderful. It's so much more modern, intuitive, and flexible,” said Glad. Using this upgrade, CSP plans to build out shell templates for alumni and donor emails and then modify them based on a particular purpose.