The Toolkit Behind Indian Springs School's 125% Day of Giving Result

Our partners at Indian Springs School in Birmingham, Alabama held their first giving day on Boost in March, and by 1pm they realized they were going to speed past their goal of raising $225,000.

Rather than reach for another dollar amount, Taylor Docking, Director of Advancement and Enrollment Management, pushed for participation instead and put a fun incentive behind it: 100 more donors and the entire school gets a Head of School Holiday.

Ninety minutes later they had met and exceeded the challenge. Indian Springs finished at $281,000 and 564 donors, 125% of their dollar goal.

Activating their student callers

Their student callers were let in on the challenge so they could work it into their calls, and photos of them working the phones went out in the updates the team sent through the day. Word spread quickly from there. Students started texting their parents, and it made its way around the school listserv that any gift counted, even a dollar.

Building challenges for parents, alumni, and international families

Taylor credits the parent and alumni challenges as the biggest difference maker. Here's what they ran:

• A grade-level challenge for parents and an alumni challenge, both running all day
• An international family challenge
• A class competition, where the top alumni classes earned a catered lunch with faculty
• A rise-and-shine prize for the first 15 donors of the morning
• Matching gifts secured ahead of the day, including one $50,000 donor

The Head of School Holiday was the only one they came up with on the spot, and they're already planning how to expand it next year.

Since the standing challenges were already running, the community was warmed up and paying attention when Taylor made the call at 1pm. The pivot worked because the groundwork was there.

Making peer-to-peer outreach easy

Indian Springs sent out a Day of Giving toolkit so anyone who wanted to help knew exactly what to say.

The toolkit included:

• Social posts written by audience: alumni got posts about what Springs meant to them and their class year, and parents got posts about watching their own child grow there, so neither group had to translate anything
• Social posts written by date: one for a week out, one for the day before, and several for the day itself, so a volunteer who wanted to post more than once didn't have to come up with variations
• Sample emails: one built around the alumni class challenge, and a longer appeal for someone writing to their own network
• Text messages: short enough to send without editing anything
• Photo guidance: they offered a graphic, and also told people they would rather see a picture of them in Springs apparel or from their own time on campus
• Hashtags and handles: both tags were listed along with their social handle, so posts were easy to find and reshare afterward

One note here: these are all written in the volunteer's voice, not the school's. The posts say "join me," not "support us." That's a small change that makes it a lot easier to actually post.

The toolkit also gives permission to change it. The instructions say these are suggestions and to put them in your own voice, so volunteers who would feel odd posting canned copy get an easy way to make it theirs.

And the hashtags do more than drive visibility. When a community uses a consistent tag, the advancement office can find what people posted, reshare it, and thank them by name.

Takeaways for your giving day

Taylor has generously let us share their toolkit. Take a look, take what's useful, and make it your own. Here's the link to check it out!

Take a look at their Day of Giving page on Boost: https://www.boostmyschool.com/orgs/indiansprings/campaigns/ISSDayofGiving

Congratulations to Taylor Docking, Jim Simon, Dawn Phillips, Pat Russell, Peggy Fleetwood, and the Indian Springs Communications Department!