4 Strategies for Boosting Annual Giving at Your School

For many universities, annual giving provides the financial support they need to maintain day-to-day operations. Annual giving campaigns help schools fundraise and cultivate long-term donor relationships.

In this guide, we’ll explore strategies for increasing your school’s annual giving campaign revenue.

1. Audit past campaigns and communication strategies.

To improve your annual fundraising efforts, look at past campaign data. Audit the results of comparable campaigns you’ve hosted, identifying what went well and what could use improvement.

For example, let’s say your school leveraged a direct mail campaign to make annual appeals last year. At first glance, it appears that direct mail led many of your supporters to donate. However, closer inspection reveals that a large percentage of young recipients did not engage with your mailed appeals, and this gap was obfuscated by stronger returns from older segments of your audience.

Based on these findings, you might reassess your approach to audience communication and segmentation. In the case of direct mail, you would adjust your strategy by sending appeals to older donor segments. By sending messages to the right audience through the communication channels they engage with, you will improve your campaign’s ROI and maximize your budget.

2. Properly plan your annual giving campaign.

Every campaign needs a roadmap and adequate preparation.

For example, capital campaigns leverage feasibility studies, which measure an organization’s preparedness to launch a major campaign. While annual campaigns do not require formal feasibility studies, they still need adequate planning to succeed. 

Rather than interviewing stakeholders and prospects in a lengthy study, your annual campaign planning process should include these steps: 

• Review past campaign performance. Study data from previous annual campaigns and look for insights. Did these campaigns meet their goals? Which segments of your audience were most or least receptive to outreach? Which strategies and channels did you use to reach them?

• Clarify messaging. Finalize the overarching messaging strategy for your campaign. Make sure everyone on your team is on the same page, and consider creating a campaign-specific mission statement or messaging style guide your outreach team can refer to. 

• Set an annual fund goal. With a set goal, you can accurately track your progress and adjust outreach efforts based on how close you are to meeting that goal.

• Make a plan of action. Lay out a campaign timeline that includes when specific activities, such as events, will occur. Be mindful of overlapping campaigns; for example, an ongoing capital campaign might impact your annual campaign. 

Planning is essential, but remember to stay flexible. For instance, you might block out extra days in your campaign timeline for a project you’re concerned may require additional preparation time. In this situation, if you need the extra time, you have it, and if not, you can devote those days to the next activity. 

3. Emphasize recurring giving options and matching gifts.

If your institution struggles with stagnant annual giving rates, diversifying annual donor engagement opportunities can help you increase funding. Recurring giving and matching gifts are two easy ways to accomplish this. 

Recurring giving programs allow donors to automatically contribute a specific amount to your institution on a monthly basis. Recurring donors tend to have higher lifetime values than one-time supporters, and their commitment to your school can lead to powerful long-term relationships. By promoting this giving option in your appeals, you will build a steady stream of year-round, unrestricted revenue.

Donors can also give more without reaching back into their pockets through matching gifts. According to Double the Donation, matching gifts are “a type of philanthropy in which companies financially match donations that their employees make to nonprofit organizations.” 

Many matching gifts programs have higher match ratios or giving limits for educational institutions. The key to accessing this funding is educating your donors about these opportunities. Incorporate awareness about matching gifts into your annual campaign messaging strategy.

4. Look for major gift opportunities.

Annual campaigns and development opportunities, like major gifts, are not mutually exclusive. While major donations are usually given to specific initiatives rather than your annual fund, they still influence your annual fundraising strategy. After all, if you know a program is fully funded by a major gift, you can then devote your annual funding to other projects. 

You likely won’t devote much time to soliciting major gifts as part of your annual campaign. However, there’s no reason why your school shouldn’t use its campaign as an opportunity to source new major gift leads. 

Use your annual campaign as an opportunity to connect with major giving prospects by:

• Creating a development pipeline. For some donors, annual gifts may be the first step on the ladder to making a major gift. By treating these campaigns as a pipeline to major giving, you can discover valuable prospects hiding among your broader donor base. After receiving a large or special gift in your annual campaign, direct your major gift officers to research the donor’s major giving potential. 

• Building relationships with donors throughout the year. Once you identify prospects among your annual donors, start cultivating relationships with them. Gather data to create personalized outreach materials and develop individualized engagement strategies. 

• Sharing your case for support. Graham-Pelton explains that a case for support is “your core fundraising message, distilled into various printed or digital materials, that shows prospective donors what your organization will accomplish with the donations it raises and how their support will drive that impact.” A compelling case for support can set the tone of your donor relationships going forward. Ensure your annual campaign case for support also speaks to the greater importance of supporting your university. This creates a cohesive donation experience when you later reach out to major giving prospects. 

Although their purpose is not to secure major gifts, annual campaigns are still valuable opportunities to refresh your development pipeline. These campaigns are wide-reaching and engage large swathes of your donor base, which gives you the chance to touch base with donors who are willing and able to give larger gifts but haven’t yet been identified as such.

Despite how integral annual fundraising is to your school’s daily operations, it can be one of the toughest forms of fundraising to plan for and promote. With strategies like using matching gift programs or strengthening donor relationships with stewardship, your institution can build an annual fund calendar poised for success to accomplish its goals for the coming year.