Inside the Toolkit That Helped The Governor's Academy Hit 118% Participation

Govs is an independent boarding school on Massachusetts' North Shore with about 400 students. Their Govs Giving Day, held in April 2026, runs 1,763 minutes, a nod to the year the school was founded.

Govs Giving Day accounted for about 20% of the $2.8M their Governor's Fund raised in FY26, but 70% of its donors. Of their 1,176 donors, 867 were new to the fiscal year, which makes it the school's single biggest driver of donor acquisition. This past year they aimed for 1,000 donors, with an anonymous family putting $100,000 behind it that would only unlock if the community got there, and they finished at 118% of that goal. Governor’s Director of Annual Giving, Rachael Singmaster has let us share the toolkit her team hands every class agent, which is at the bottom of this piece.

"We love a second gift, but this really is about recruiting new donors to the fiscal year," said Rachael.

Key takeaways

• Try organizing your class agent volunteer toolkit by time instead of by task: someone with two minutes and someone with half an hour should both find something they can finish.
• Smaller challenges can work alongside bigger ones: the $100,000 challenge anchored the day, but a $150 pledge from a reunion chair inspired a whole class to give. Challenges give volunteers a reason to reach out, which matters more than the dollar amount attached.
• Ask donors who are already giving to turn their gift into a challenge: it costs them nothing extra and gives their classmates something to rally around.
• Use text messages, and send more than one: Govs sent three, each with its own audience. Those sends produced 94 gifts totaling $11,216, and a visible spike in giving after each one.

Building their class agent program

Volunteers are a big part of how Govs reaches those participation numbers. This year they had 58 classes with confirmed alumni class agents, or 78% class coverage.

Rachael's team recruits them, trains them, stays in contact with them through the year, and gives them resources. It is an ongoing project.

Rachael says, "Emails can be passive. You need someone peer-to-peer to say, ‘I don't see your name on the leaderboard.’"

When the day comes, each agent gets a toolkit built to make the ask take as little time as they have.

Organizing the toolkit around how much time people have

Their volunteer toolkit is built for class agents, but the format transfers to parent volunteers or anyone else you're asking to spread the word.

Instead of handing volunteers a list of tasks, they organize the asks by how long each one takes:

• Social media prompts (1 to 2 minutes): three ready-to-use captions, including one that names a teacher who mattered to them and one that points at the alumni class leaderboard
• Text or group chat prompts (5 to 10 minutes): short messages built for a class group chat, one of which names the 1,000 donor goal directly
• Email templates (15 to 30 minutes): two full drafts, one for a whole class and one for individual outreach

A volunteer with four minutes and a volunteer with half an hour both open the same document and find something they can accomplish.

There are a few other nice touches in there, including:

• Fill-in-the-blanks for a teacher's name, a class year, and a cause: the copy stays personal without asking anyone to start from scratch
• A note that personal anecdotes are encouraged and often the most compelling: volunteers have permission to go off script
• The leaderboard in almost every prompt: volunteers reinforce the class competition when they make the ask
• An invitation in the email template to set up their own challenge or match: the toolkit recruits donors and the next round of volunteers at the same time

Giving their volunteers a reason to reach out

Reunion class challenges ran throughout the day, most of them arranged in advance.

Rachael says they encourage each Reunion Committee to make realistic but ambitious Class Gift goals to celebrate their milestone reunions. The Class of 2001 historically had an average of 11 donors. Then a classmate offered $2,500 if they got to 25, and the class rallied together with one of the strongest participation rates among their peers.

"It doesn't need to be $100,000 gifts to be challenges. You just need to ask the donor, if you're already planning to give on Giving Day, let's leverage it for your classmates to see that you have a special challenge for them,” says Rachael.

Another came from a reunion committee chair for the class of 2021, who offered $150 if her class reached its donor target and then reached out to her classmates directly.

The classes of 1967 and 1968 compete for the top of the leaderboard every year, and a trustee from the class of 1975 has a running competition with his daughter from the class of 2014. Alongside the leaderboard, the team uses a heat map so people can see where participation is coming from.

Keeping their community connected across 36 hours

A few other things helped hold the day together.

Their Head of School recorded a short, but impactful video. Their marketing team ran social throughout the day, and students filled in a large "if I had a million dollars" sign with dry erase markers, with those photos running on stories as the day went on.

They also saw their sharpest spikes in giving after sending text messages through Boost Marketing. Govs sent three across the campaign, each to a different group. Class agents got a preview the day before launch. Domestic alumni and current and past parents with a cell number on file got the second. The third went to previous giving day donors who had not yet given this year. Across 4,827 texts they saw a strong 11% click rate, which brought in 94 gifts and $11,216.

Internally, the team met for 15-minute huddles across the 36 hours to share wins and flag what was going out next, which helped keep everyone in step over a long two days.

How they closed it out

Govs sent a thank-you email to their community the next day, leading with the $100,000 challenge. Nearly 300 people had left a comment answering the prompt "share with us what inspired you to give today." More than 100 faculty and staff gave, and donors came in from 41 states and over 10 countries.

Their Class Agent Volunteer Toolkit

Rachael has generously let us share the toolkit Govs sends to their class agents, the one behind the time-tiered prompts above. It includes their social captions, group chat messages, and both email templates, along with the helpful links they give every volunteer.

Have a look and adapt whatever fits your school.

See Govs Giving Day on Boost: https://www.boostmyschool.com/orgs/govsacademy/campaigns/govsacademy-givingday2026

Congratulations to Rachael Singmaster and the whole advancement team at The Governor's Academy.