Advancement

If you work in advancement or annual giving, you already know this feeling: you’ve put together a compelling giving day campaign, your emails are well-crafted and well-timed, and you’re tracking every open rate and click-through. And still, the vast majority of your alumni will not give. That isn’t a failure of effort. It is a structural challenge. The average alumni giving rate at U.S. colleges and universities sits around 7.8%, down from roughly 20% in the 1980s. Meanwhile, 72% of alumni report experiencing solicitation fatigue, meaning every message from their

It’s not every day that a fast-food chain becomes the largest sock seller in the world. But that is exactly what happened when McDonald’s launched The Grinch Meal in partnership with Dr. Seuss Enterprises. The limited-time meal included a pair of boldly designed socks covered in handwritten-style messages from the Grinch. The socks came in four unexpected colors and were playful enough to double as a holiday stocking. Within days of the promotion’s launch, franchisees across the country were running out of socks. McDonald’s went on to record its best

This article builds on Magellan’s early learnings from choice store programs across higher education. While our initial article focused on student-facing campaigns, many of the same principles around choice, participation, and engagement apply to advancement and fundraising efforts.     As colleges look for ways to make donor stewardship more personal and intentional, choice stores are emerging as a flexible tool to support those goals. Over the past two years, Magellan has partnered with institutions to test and refine how choice stores can be used in give-to-get campaigns, offering donors

Holiday College Fundraising Merch Pop-Ups The holidays are a perfect opportunity for colleges to implement a branded merch pop up shop as a fundraising opportunity.  Pop up shops are a way to connect with your donors, allow them to show their affinity and buy uniquely curated products. It is a warm pair of cozy branded wool socks with a snow covered depiction of campus or a fuzzy embroidered blanket for them to sit next to their fireplace while they drink cocoa from their ceramic spirited mug.  While the college is

Annual Giving collectable merch strategy Building a successful donor campaign takes time, creativity, and coordination. Annual Giving often feels like reinventing the wheel with new themes, new merch, and new assets. So, what if your most effective campaign didn’t need to be reimagined every year? What if you could just refresh it and give your donors something to look forward to year after year? That’s exactly what happens when you treat your branded merch strategy as a collector series. By creating a set of limited-edition items that build off each

To date, modern CRM’s have done a great job of creating powerful electronic communication flows with emails and texts. The CRM’s allow users to set it and have it automatically run. We believe the next step is to have this functionality with mailing merch. Merch is the only form of marketing that recipients are truly excited to receive. It builds positive affinity and is memorable and influential. Having merch mailings integrating into CRM campaign comm flows is a powerful combination. To date, we have been working with the CRM Slate,