How Christchurch School's 4-person development team doubled their Day of Giving goal using strategic matches, volunteer training, and real-time tracking.
How one boarding and day high school connected an entire community of supporters and raised $208K in one day.
When Michelle Schroeter became Chief Development Officer at Christchurch School, a sprawling 125-acre campus located on Virginia's Rappahannock River, she brought a mantra with her:
“You build friends before you build funds.”
And at Christchurch School, building friends isn’t hard. The school, an Episcopal boarding and day school for students in grades 9-12, is an outlier in many ways. It’s located right on a waterfront, with a national, mid-atlantic and state championship sailing program. Students hail from 17 states and 31 countries. Their Learning Skills program is lauded for its support of non-traditional learners, and Christchurch offers 21 college-level honors courses for motivated students.
The incredibly diverse environment and 105-year history both lend themselves to deep and lasting connections—both regionally and internationally.
Michelle’s goal: to tap into that passion and turn it into meaningful impact.
Now, the question she faced: how do you channel deep school pride into giving that actually moves the needle?
At the beginning of Michelle’s tenure, Christchurch raised over $1 million compared with $519,000 the previous year. With just four staff members, including one brand new to advancement, she knew they had to get creative.
She also knew: the school had a lot to be proud of. Last year, 253 domestic and international students attended Christchurch, their highest enrollment to date. 100 of those students were female, a big shift from their “boys only” history.
Like many schools, Christchurch School faced a familiar challenge: passionate constituents who did not always feel urgency about giving. Even highly engaged families would put annual gifts on the back-burner when they felt they had plenty of time to decide.
Michelle needed a way to channel existing community enthusiasm into focused action. Rather than competing with busy schedules across an entire year, she could create one strategic moment when students, alumni, parents, and faculty could all participate together.
That's when she decided to implement a “Day of Giving.”
This would be an opportunity to raise concentrated funds, but it would also create a defining moment for students, faculty, board members, and alumni: a shared opportunity to connect and reflect on the year’s progress.
“People assume community engagement happens by sending more messages. In reality, genuine engagement comes from creating moments where people feel personally invited, valued and connected to each other, not just the institution.”
In other words: friends, not funds.
As Chief Development Officer, she knew this concentrated method would be more effective than scattered appeals. There was no doubt the community would step forward for Christchurch School. The challenge was creating the right structure to channel that support effectively. Once Michelle committed to the idea, she needed a plan.
First, a goal. When Michelle reached out to Brandi, their success manager from Boost My School, she wanted to start with a $150,000 goal. But Brandi recommended a slightly more modest $100,000.
Why the adjustment? For any independent school considering a day of giving, setting the right goal matters more than setting the highest goal. Our Boost experts recommend utilizing past data and giving history to set your goal and give constituents the excitement of supporting a winning cause. After securing matching donations, Michelle and team were ready to go.
Next, a theme. For their day of giving, Michelle selected February 5th as their date, tied to when Bishop William Brown approved the school's opening in early February 1921. Students and alumni are well-educated on the school's history and original mission: to provide a comprehensive education at reasonable cost in a time when secondary education was not universally available to American children.
Michelle drew on this rich history to identify a day she knew would resonate. For advancement professionals, the history, and culture of their institutions are great starting points for brainstorming the “right day” to give.
“When people feel included and informed,” says Michelle, “they don’t just give, they help build the momentum themselves.”
Empowering students to participate requires careful planning. Student involvement can be powerful, but it demands significant coordination. Michelle held in-person trainings and created scripts for student volunteers.
This wasn't a casual "let students help" situation. Michelle's team spent hours training volunteers, creating talking points, and establishing supervision protocols. Student callers needed to understand the school's case for giving, handle questions professionally, and maintain enthusiasm throughout the day.
“The calls the students made were so effective,” recalls Michelle, “the donors were excited to hear their voices and ask about their experience.”
Michelle worked with the students to film video updates for goal milestones of 25%, 50%, 75% and goal reached in 2025. The following year, they adjusted the milestones to 33%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. They were shot by a talented alum in and around campus—a source of nostalgia for supporters. But again, this required staff coordination to ensure quality content and timely delivery.
Harnessing alumni connections. Class agents became crucial to Michelle's strategy, but managing these relationships required extensive preparation. Representatives from past alumni classes were encouraged to reach out to their former classmates and ask them to host challenges for the day of giving (i.e., give $1,000 once the class as a whole raises $1,000).
This type of peer-to-peer element can dramatically increase participation, but it requires clear communication about expectations, talking points for different types of asks, and ongoing support throughout the day. Michelle's team spent significant time before the event coaching class agents on how to create friendly competition without making anyone feel pressured.
The investment paid off: alumni responded more favorably to outreach from classmates than they would have to generic institutional appeals.
Utilizing fundraising platform ambassadors. Brandi from Boost was a crucial part of day of giving prep and execution for Christchurch. Representatives like Brandi can function as additional staff, helping structure matches and providing strategic guidance. “She wasn’t just an ambassador, she was our cheerleader,” says Michelle.
"If I have a question today, Brandi will reach out to me today, not in two weeks."
Donors want to be invited into the story. “They want to see how their involvement is strengthening the school community,” says Michelle. And that’s exactly what the tools from Boost My School were able to help Christchurch School achieve on their day of giving.
Michelle set up a command center in the school's boardroom with the Boost My School platform displayed on screens for real-time gift tracking.
Student callers see impact immediately. “The students were so excited,” Michelle recalls, “They could see in real-time through Boost how much they’d already raised.” It was thrilling to get a $250 gift and see it reflected on the platform. “By the time they left they could see how much more we’d raised, all due to their help.”
Alumni engage in friendly competition. With Boost leaderboards, alumni can see exactly how many people from their class have given. Michelle used these real-time numbers to stoke a bit of fun rivalry between classes. Who could raise more?
Groups get in on the challenge. “We had parents from the sailing program who wanted all the sailing parents to give—they handled that outreach.” Boost leaderboards can also reflect group or interest-specific giving.
Comments get lively. Nearly half of Christchurch’s day of giving donors made a comment or posted a photo on the Christchurch Boost page. “Alumni talked about their experience,” says Michelle, “parents posted comments about how amazing the school is for their child.”
This created a living tribute to community connection.
This will happen automatically. Because Christchurch School has both a domestic and international student body, the supporter map tool on the Boost platform was especially exciting—and required no additional work from Michelle's team. The platform automatically displays gifts geographically as they come in.
Michelle remembers “putting little tacks on a paper map” at past schools she’s worked for. The realtime gift tracking offered by Boost meant no manual updates, accidental pin-pricks, and staff time spent on administrative tasks during the actual day.
Of the 370 supporters who contributed to Christchurch’s day of giving, 70% were alumni, a figure that far exceeds traditionally modest alumni giving. Michelle credits the real-time features and easy engagement, as well as the ability to directly share their Boost page via socials and even conduct outreach via text message.
“Email’s great,” says Michelle, “but sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle.”
Students made calls throughout the day and used data about affinity groups (number of alumni givers from specific classes, donations from faculty and staff, board members, and current families) to get conversations going in outreach calls. Afterwards, it was easy to compile all of the data in Boost to update supporters in thank-you texts and messages.
Long before the actual day of giving, Michelle worked to secure multiple matching gift commitments, but she also leaned into the enthusiasm of parents, alumni and community members to generate matches day-of.
In addition, Michelle and her team held drawings for prizes and shifted their own outreach to times when they could see on the Boost platform that more people were active.
Ways to keep momentum going throughout the day:
This real-time engagement created unexpected opportunities.
Around 8 PM, when Michelle's team was preparing to wrap up, they got one last call.
“We were still in the office, and I got a call from a supporter when the school was at the $168,000 mark for gifts raised, and he said to me: ‘I want to see you get to $200,000. I will give you another match if you get to $200,000’."
This spontaneous matching gift happened because the community was invested–watching leaderboards, sharing messages, and encouraging one another to support the programs that mattered most to them.
By the end of the day, Christchurch raised $208,000—exceeding even Michelle’s original $150,000 goal. But the money wasn’t the only win.
“We want to build those relationships for the long term.”
Christchurch School’s successful Day of Giving represented roughly 40% of their previous year's entire annual giving.
Some classes experienced engagement levels they'd never seen in giving in an entire year. The day reactivated lapsed supporters and attracted first-time givers.
“We had people who said they were never giving again, and they gave. And we had people who called classmates who either hadn't given or gave another gift.”
From Michelle’s perspective, Christchurch School’s success is shared. “Often schools rely too heavily on broad transactional outreach,” says Michelle, “instead of empowering their parents, alumni, students and volunteers to be active participants.”
Spring and Fall appeals, year-round social media outreach, FYE deadlines: these are all important levers for advancement. But the thrill of day of giving–when an entire school community can come together to give and to celebrate the school and its achievements, is unlike any other form of standard outreach.
Upon reflection, Michelle noted how their Day of Giving success energized everyone involved for months afterward.
I have never seen this team more inspired than they were after this Day of Giving.”
[P.S. Christchurch School just had their 2026 Day of Giving: they raised $235,387 from 350 supporters.]
How do we manage this with a small team?
Michelle's four-person team (including one brand new staff member) succeeded by focusing on volunteer coordination rather than doing everything themselves. Train students for phone calls, equip class agents with talking points, and create systems that let volunteers see real-time results. It all falls on strategic preparation—mapping out matches, training sessions, and volunteer infrastructure—rather than working harder on the day itself.
What if we only have a few gift matching opportunities?
Start building them now, but don't wait for perfect conditions. Michelle's success came partly from having three matches secured before launch, but even one strategic match can create momentum. Focus on board members or committed families who understand the importance of leading by example during concentrated giving. Keep in mind that some of Michelle's most creative challenges came from alumni offering experiential gifts like weekend stays at their properties.
How do we avoid constituent fatigue with existing annual giving?
Make Day of Giving completely separate from annual commitments. Michelle was clear that prior gifts didn't count toward the 24-hour initiative, positioning it as an additional community celebration rather than a replacement for ongoing support. This actually increased total annual giving rather than cannibalizing it. The key is framing it as a special moment to celebrate school heritage and community connection.
