uc santa barbara giving day success story...clearing the way for an impressive giving day that...

Giving Day Success With the ScaleFunder Giving Day EngineThe University of California Santa Barbara Success Story

© 2016 Ruffalo Noel Levitz, Fundraising Management | 2016 UCSB Giving Day 2

SM

The University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) launched its first comprehensive online giving day campaign on Friday, April 8, 2016. The “#UCSBGiveDay” campaign was nothing short of a complete success, with:

#UCSBGiveDay was a success in part because of the coordinated team effort of staff across the institution and their dedication to months of planning and preparation before the event.

UCSB conducted the giving day using a technology from ScaleFunder—a Ruffalo Noel Levitz digital platform—along with consulting services that guided the effort. The #UCSBGiveDay event provides a blueprint that any institution can use to drive enormous giving day results.

$3.72 million raised

Hundreds of social media posts reaching millions of people, including thousands of UCSB alumni and supporters

1,268 gifts


The UCSB team began work on their marketing and communications plan for their first giving day a year before the April date of the event.

Using #GivingTuesday and the ScaleFunder Crowdfunding module, the UCSB team conducted A/B testing with landing pages and email activity and determined the following:

• For driving traffic, the university should stay broad and experiential, sharing that content via social media as much as possible.

• For converting donors, give them specific academic messaging at the giving pages—especially on unit-specific departmental pages.

The team then used those findings to guide a marketing strategy that included consistent outreach, resources, and training for colleagues, including:

• A 46-page email strategy document

• A 41-page “giving day playbook”

• A training session introducing Give Day to the university's internal partners

• A training for the trustee development committee

The ScaleFunder team conducted a full-day, on-site workshop for more than 100 UCSB communicators, development professionals, and campus leaders. This helped to bring everyone together and ensured all the key players were aware of the available resources. This workshop also served as a rallying point for igniting enthusiasm for the #UCSBGiveDay effort across campus.

Experiment, plan, execute: Testing and teamwork are key

SM


Major gifts amplify donor excitement: Using matches and trigger gifts to build a giving frenzy

Intelligently formed and perfectly executed

Early on in the planning phase for #UCSBGiveDay, a clear priority was placed on securing substantial major donor support in the form of sponsoring matches and challenges.

According to researchers John List and Uri Gneezy in their book The Why Axis, donors are 20 percent more likely to give when they are offered a match. Recognizing this, the UCSB team worked with major donors interested in growing the culture of philanthropy for UCSB, raising approximately:

• $800,000 for matches and challenges.

• $600,000 as seed gifts to allow major donors to give large gifts offline before the event.

Many major donors and fundraisers prefer to incorporate offline giving as well because it allows donors to avoid credit card fees on generous gifts and lets the institution plan for better goal setting.

The #UCSBGiveDay major gifts strategy

From the associate vice chancellor on down, leadership at UCSB made it clear that the giving day was a priority

During the #UCSBGiveDay planning, Associate Vice Chancellor for Development Beverly Colgate took the lead for making the giving day a top priority for everyone on the UCSB team, from the major gifts program to the annual fund.

Under Ms. Colgate’s leadership, the giving day became a top focus for the entire organization and helped make it a giving day that UCSB alumni supported. Ms. Colgate communicated this importance to her team, clearing the way for an impressive giving day that increased pride in UCSB among the alumni base as well as donations.

This is the approach that ScaleFunder has taken with dozens of giving days, because leadership from the top is the key to a successful giving day.

SM


What institutions have accomplished with the Giving Day ModuleThe ScaleFunder Giving Day Module was launched in late February 2016. During the platform’s first six giving days, the results have been:

• Six of seven giving days posting more than 1,000 donors.

• Four of the six giving days posting more than 2,000 donors.

• More than $9 million total raised before and during the six giving days.

The conversion rates for those six giving days ranged from 10 to 25 percent from the landing page and better than 40 percent from the giving form. To put that in perspective, the national average for conversion rates from a landing page is 13 percent. That is why we can safely say ScaleFunder has some of the best conversion rates of any online fundraising platform.

SM

How the Giving Day Module evolved out of the ScaleFunder platformScaleFunder is a subscription-based digital fundraising platform to manage your entire online giving ecosystem—from crowdfunding to giving day.

The Giving Day Module reflects a decade of experience in designing the premier software for launching a high-energy, donor-friendly, online giving event. The module is also paired with experienced consulting so that institutions like UCSB also have the strategies to ensure big success with new donor acquisition, retention, and major gift program integration.

Why UCSB chose the Giving Day ModuleBefore creating their Give Day, UCSB did not have a robust digital fundraising strategy. This led to some initial reluctance on the university's part to dive into a giving day that would rely heavily on digital fundraising.

But after reviewing the ScaleFunder technology and especially the track record with other institutions, UCSB decided to move forward with their Give Day using the Giving Day Module.


SM

With the commitment of leadership and a strong strategy in place, UCSB also added a robust platform that could create a customized, seamless giving day experience for its alumni. The university chose the Giving Day Module, part of the ScaleFunder platform, to create a foundation and focal point to drive its giving day.

The landing page included customized branding, incentives, calls to action, and content to excite the donor base and drive giving. Five very important features included:

1) Branding UCSB provided uniquely branded pages

to departments, units, student and alumni groups, and others to allow targeted giving opportunities to donors.

2) Floating “Give Now” buttonA floating “Give Now” button followed the users everywhere on the site, mobile or desktop, as they viewed the site’s supporting content. (This is a best practice pulled from leading e-commerce sites such as Zappos and Amazon.)

3) Matches and challengesDynamic matches and challenges drove small-gift giving.

4) Online tracking of ambassadors (not pictured)

UCSB used a built-in ambassador dashboard to deploy and track online ambassdors.

5) Uniquely branded pages for internal groups (not pictured)

In addition to the main UCSB giving day page, the university had branded pages for its departments, student groups, and alumni groups to provided more targeted giving opportunities.

1

2

3

Here is an anatomy of what made the #UCSBGiveDay page work:

Anatomy of a great giving experience for UCSBHow a strong technology platform converted online traffic to donations


SM

The ScaleFunder technology—combined with an amazing strategic effort on the UCSB team’s part—helped #UCSBGiveDay raise $3.72 million from nearly 1,300 donors. It produced a world-class giving day the entire campus community could take pride in producing and supporting.

The result: Nearly $4 million from 1,300 donors


SM

© 2016 Ruffalo Noel Levitz, Fundraising Management | 2016 UCSB Giving Day 0816 P-059 1.0

FREE Demo Visit ScaleFunder.com Email [email protected]

What makes for a great giving day? Talk to us today to find out.To get started on your best ever giving day, and learn more about Ruffalo Noel Levitz’s and ScaleFunder’s digital offerings, contact us today for a free consultation with our digital giving experts. We have worked with public and private colleges and universities to build giving days that:

• Excite donors.

• Turn traffic into donations.

• Provide a seamless, customized, and branded experience.

• Create a spark that turns a giving day into a giving year.

Email [email protected], or visit ScaleFunder.com for a free demo.

About Ruffalo Noel LevitzTechnology-enabled services, software, and analytics, that foster productive, lifelong engagement

Ruffalo Noel Levitz partners with more than 1,800 colleges and universities and hundreds of nonprofit clients worldwide each year. We empower our clients to aggressively rethink the status quo and reach their mission even as they face a complex and ever-shifting environment.

Our work in higher education fundraising ranges from partnering with 81 out of the top 100 U.S. News & World Report institutions to working with hundreds of colleges and universities of every size and mission.

We can assist with:

• Developing optimal fundraising strategies.

• Creating multichannel programs and campaigns across digital, phone, mail, and email channels.

• Building a pipeline for major gifts.

• Engaging young donors and cultivating lifelong support.

uc santa barbara giving day success story...clearing the way for an impressive giving day that...

Documents