The Annual Giving Exchange

The Library System at Penn State has been an important part of the University community for years.  Unlike other academic departments and units, however, the Library System does not have a natural constituency of alumni and parents to help support their fundraising needs.  But last year, the annual giving staff found a creative way to address this challenge without cannibalizing the important fundraising activities already taking place across its campuses.

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Library System, the annual giving department sent an e-mail to anyone on their database who 1) had a good e-mail address on file and 2) had not made a gift to any part of the University in the past five years – over 100,000 records.  While the e-mail was not a solicitation, the annual giving department was able to use its reporting tools to identify more than 15,000 people who opened the e-mail, half of which (nearly 7,000) already had a good phone number on file.  The outcome was a new annual fund prospect pool for the University’s Library System.

Over the course of the next several months, the phonathon program called into this prospect pool to solicit a donation to the Library System.  The results exceeded expectations with $18,000 in new support and more than 10% of the alumni contacted making a pledge – twice the average pledge rate for someone with no giving history to the University.

Affinity isn’t always obvious.  Sometimes you need to look at things from a different angle to see it.