Background
After switching to Boost My School for all of their fundraising initiatives, Cushing Academy launched their first initiative with Boost: their 2024 Cushing Day of Giving. In the end, their giving day broke several records, including their participation and giving records.
Key Results:
- 43% of page visitors made a gift
- 1m 30s average time on engagement pages
- 90% of donors covered transaction fees
Cushing's Challenge
Improve on-page engagement for alumni donors who tend to be more connected with their college.
K-12 institutions face a unique fundraising hurdle: cultivating alumni donations when graduates often feel a stronger connection to their college alma maters.
College alumni offices typically benefit from more recent connections and greater resources, allowing them to maintain robust alumni communities. This reality compels K-12 schools to innovate and differentiate their approaches to increase alumni participation and stand out in a crowded fundraising landscape.
Recognizing this challenge, Cushing Academy determined that a complete overhaul of their Giving Day donor experience was necessary. They aimed to shift focus towards fostering engagement and tapping into their alumni's collaborative and competitive spirit.
This realization prompted Cushing to seek a new giving platform tailored to their specific needs as a K-12 institution. So, Cushing began searching for a new fundraising platform that would:
- Cater specifically to K-12 schools
- Allow for the creation of engaging fundraising challenges
- Display custom leaderboards to track alumni participation
Cushing needed to transition away from a transactional Giving Day model that lacked donor visibility into fundraising progress and posed management challenges for their growing team. They sought a solution that would not only streamline operations but also provide a more engaging and transparent experience for their alumni donors.
"We found Boost very easy to navigate and adjust to our needs. The team at Boost was also extremely responsive to our questions and needs."
Greg Pollard, Director of Advancement
Cushing's Solution
Utilize school specific engagement tools on their Boost Giving Day page.
For Cushing Academy, finding a platform that could address their specific fundraising challenges as a 9-12 boarding school was crucial, that's when they found Boost My School, the only fundraising platform built for K-12 schools.
Boost offered several key features that aligned with Cushing's needs:
- Custom challenges tailored to Cushing's unique community
- Engagement tools to drive alumni participation
- Custom leaderboards to track and display progress in real-time
Using Boost, Cushing created challenges that were displayed directly on their giving day page that appealed to their alumni and encouraged competitive and collaborative giving. Cushing's team also used Boost's leaderboards to track alumni participation by decade and current family involvement. This new approach was designed to transform Cushing's Giving Day from a simple, transactional, event into an engaging experience that brought their donor community together.
The Tools Cushing Used:
- Custom Challenges
- Premium Design
- Custom Leaderboards
- Boost Text Marketing
- Boost Pay
Cushing's Results
Increased donor time on page, conversions, and broke giving and participation records for their Giving Day.
Cushing Academy's new approach with Boost My School led to impressive outcomes:
- 15% increase in alumni participation
- 62% jump in overall giving compared to the previous year's Giving Day
Greg Pollard, Director of Advancement, noted: "Many alumni and parents enjoyed repeat visits to see their class ranking. This spurred more engagement and gifts." The success has Cushing eager to expand their use of Boost. "We're excited to leverage everything Boost offers, like daily giving pages and event registration," Greg added. This strategy not only met immediate goals but also set the stage for stronger alumni relationships going forward.
"Boost My School's seamless support made switching platforms simple, and their powerful engagement tools helped Cushing increase our giving day participation by 15% and overall giving by 62%."
Greg Pollard, Director of Advancement
