3,612 donors in 23 days

We just wrapped up a project for Spelman College around their Founders Day challenge. Spelman secured an anonymous donor who would give $300,000 if Spelman could achieve 5,000 donors by the College's Founders Day. MainSpring developed a micro-site for Spelman to boost awareness and participation for the final 23 days of the challenge. Based on a concept developed for young alumni by the Rice Annual Fund, the micro-site was designed to be interactive - alumnae could go to the site to respond to a questionnaire and upload photos, post comments to other questionnaires, learn more about the challenge, see the current donor totals and see a list of donors. On the backend, Spelman had the ability to log into a secure, administrative module to review and approved submitted questionnaires, photos and comments before they could be posted to the site. Emails, calls, mailers, tweets and Facebook posts sent by Spelman staff, alumnae and friends drove alumnae to the site during the final 23 days. Over the 23 day period, Spelman secured 3,612 donors and surpassed the 5,000 donor goal.

The takeaway lesson? The combination of an integrated solicitation strategy using mail, phone, email, Twitter, and Facebook and an interactive micro-site to serve as the "campaign headquarters" facilitated Spelman's successful execution of this campaign. For Spelman, alumnae participation through dialogue was critical to their success. The high number of questionnaires filled out (56 and still going even after the challenge ended!) indicates that Spelman alumnae were eager to participate by sharing their thoughts and feelings. It is important to note that the last question of the questionnaire was: “How will you inspire other sisters to participate in the Challenge?” This prompted alumnae to continue the conversation and almost every single questionnaire response indicated the intention to reach out to others via Facebook and Twitter. This type of grass roots word of mouth is priceless and the micro-site was the platform to prompt and encourage alumnae to be the voice of Spelman.

To check out the site, go to: everywomaneveryyear.org