Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/535050
26 BizEd JULY | AUGUST 2015 The 24-Hour Campaign How can a school raise a large amount of money in a relative- ly short period of time, while engaging alumni and develop- ing a fun, competitive spirit among donors? Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, decid- ed to launch a hypercampaign in June 2013 when it realized there was a chance it wouldn't make its annual fundraising goal by the end of its fiscal year. Ad- ministrators hoped the hypercampaign would raise about US$100,000 from roughly 500 donors—in 24 hours. They set that dollar amount as their goal because, just six months previously, the university had received a $100,000 gift that it hadn't yet announced. "We decided to make that a challenge grant, telling donors that we would get that $100,000 if we could raise the same amount from them," says Mike Haggas, director of development for the Wake Forest School of Business. Adminis- trators also decided that anyone who donated to the annual fund during this period would be counted in the hyper- campaign totals. The entire campaign was run online, with three exceptions: Wake Forest students conducted a telethon during the fundraising period; the school mailed out a postcard designed to hit mailboxes the Friday before the campaign started; and the school asked members of the advisory com- mittee to talk about the campaign in advance. Everything else happened electronically. The school sent alum- ni a series of six timed emails, letting them know the campaign was coming up, reminding them when it started, and—during the actual day—keeping them apprised of how much money had been raised as the hours progressed. In keeping with the nontraditional format of the campaign, the university took a nontraditional approach to mar- keting it. "Instead of using the school colors in our materials, we used fun images and unexpected analogies," says Haggas. "To help people understand why they should donate to the unrestricted fund, we created a short video to explain how the money would be used. It was called, 'What do zombies have to do with Wake Forest?'" (The video answered that question in its opening lines: "With the tenacity of a zombie and more mys- tery than a convenience store hotdog, the Wake Forest fund is much more than the postcards you can't escape and the phone call you didn't ask for.") Haggas says, "The video was embed- ded in the second email. It explained where the money goes—to things like salaries, technology, and toilet paper." The video cost $15,000 to make, but it was so much fun that alumni quickly shared it over social media, and it re- ceived more than 10,000 page views. In fact, social media became an important driver of donor engage- ment throughout the day, says Katie Neal, executive director of news and communication at the university. Because the event had been dubbed Wake500, a Twitter campaign sprang up around the hashtag #Wake500. Over the 24 hours of the campaign, says Neal, there were 298 tweets with that hashtag from 150 contributors who had a reach of 49,020 followers. As excitement started to build, the school was able to roll out incentives. At noon, a donor said he would give $25,000 if the campaign netted 1,000 donors. Once that milestone was reached, the Alumni Council promised $25,000 if the school hit 1,500 donors. What's in a Name? Wake Forest University tried something a little dierent for its 2015 fundraising eort, launching a campaign called "Naming Rights for the Rest of Us." Designed to engage people who don't typically give to the annual fund—especially young alums—the campaign oered naming rights for "idiosyncratic objects or locations" that everyone in the Wake Forest community would rec- ognize. These included a very loud leaf blower, a mysteriously flat speed bump, a seemingly useless metal rivet tucked in between cobblestones on the quad, and the directory for the bewilderingly laid out humanities building known as Tribble Hall. According to the campaign website, "Students have graduated in less time than it takes to find your way out of the Tribble maze, and from this day forward, wayward hallway travelers can thank Jenny Hutcherson as they stare blankly into a directory that oers no help." The directory and other campus objects now sport plaques thanking the donors. More important, gifts by all alumni to the Wake Forest Fund in February 2015 were 99 percent greater than in February 2014, according to Katie Neal. And because of the naming rights campaign, the fund took in more money from young alumni in February 2015 than in February 2014 and February 2013 combined.•