Best of CASE District II Award
 

Institution: Saint Francis University

Title of entry: “On This Day…” 175 Years of Saint Francis University

About this entry: 2022 marked the 175th anniversary of Saint Francis University’s founding. However, due to two fires in that time that destroyed our archives, we have found it difficult in the past to celebrate the story of our history. Not many within our community know our history beyond the last fifty years or so. This year we sought to change that with the “On This Day” campaign, a yearlong story of Saint Francis University.

Every day of 2022 we shared a story from our history to our social media accounts, and every Friday we emailed a newsletter-style compilation of that week’s social media posts to our alumni.

The campaign successfully engaged our alumni community by celebrating both affinity-specific points of pride as well as well-known pivotal moments, legendary figures, and general notable successes. However, the campaign also revealed lesser-known key moments lost to time, celebrated unsung yet essential characters, and shared period slice-of-life vignettes. Additional efforts were made to locate stories and characters from the early days of the institution, of which our general population knows little.

The reception was tremendous across the board. Our social media accounts shattered our previous benchmarks for organic reach and engagement, and our weekly compilation emails also performed exceedingly well with an average of over 5,500 readers over the course of the entire year. More than anything, it was gratifying to hear from all those who either lived these stories or who never knew of them if not for this project.