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