How one Parochial School Quickly Reached 80% of it’s $18m Goal Before Launching Publicly
Impact:
The school has engaged its existing donors around their highest levels of support, including four 7-figure commitments to the campaign. New programs and spaces have been born out of the campaign that is supported by alums all over the country and abroad.
Summary of work:
Campaign Execution over 20-months following a 6-month campaign planning assessment to help organize the school to: develop and implement internal campaign tracking systems, build and manage a campaign steering committee who helped to drive activity consistently, offer strategy on all major gift prospects monthly with gift officers considering current levels and allocation of giving, make recommendations on campaign programming relative to constituents’ capacity and interests, and consistently assess and advise on the strategy and timeline for the silent and public phases of the campaign.
Our firm’s campaign execution work with a private parochial school in Buffalo, NY was a result of our campaign planning work with this organization, which culminated with a comprehensive report with actionable next steps for campaign strategy and success. GPG utilized the information gathered from interviews to make clear recommendations around the formation of a campaign steering committee and began the campaign work by holding a kick-off meeting with this group.
We familiarized this core group with the final report from the campaign planning assessment to set the stage for our intended vision and strategy. The internal development team adopted a campaign tracking system that GPG recommended, and we worked with each gift officer to set monthly activity metrics and develop strategies for the highest capacity relationships from their portfolios -- taking into account the support this school relied on from these constituents to the annual fund and their annual events. Aside from assisting gift officers with a detailed strategy around solicitation amounts and allocation, we helped assign volunteers at campaign committee meetings to parents and alumni prospects who were not yet engaged with the school and campaign.
Simultaneously, we offered support on the execution of the campaign marketing materials, offering our advice on what would resonate with sophisticated philanthropists and newly engaged alums alike. This school has a uniquely situated alumni base of devoted, proud, and loyal constituents and GPG leveraged this to help match and challenge strategies amongst groups of professionals, classmates, and parents to motivate and inspire more giving. With an international donor base, we made recommendations around programmatic aspects that could engage people globally, connecting the experiences back to benefit the students.
The campaign went public with a goal of $18M and at the public launch, about 80% of funds were committed; we developed a plan to ask for the broader community’s help to cross the goal-line while continuing to build momentum around growing capacity in leadership, major and principal gifts.