Best of CASE District II Award
 

Institution: Princeton University

Title of entry: Princeton University Annual Giving Impact Report

About this entry: The Princeton University Annual Giving team does an extraordinary job of fundraising and encouraging participation from alumni each year, but we were hearing increasingly from alumni volunteers and donors that they wanted to know exactly how the funds we raised were being used by the University. Our research showed that recent alumni in particular wanted to see results before they would commit to participate in Annual Giving.

We realized that it was imperative to create an annual report to help alumni understand that their annual gifts make an enormous difference each year for the University and its faculty, students, and initiatives. We met with the provost to explain our challenge, and she readily agreed to meet with us on an annual basis at the beginning of the fall semester to detail how the University had spent and allocated Annual Giving funding. While not possible to unravel threads of funding to give us exact dollar amounts spent in each area, the conversation with the provost allowed us to identify key areas of impact for the annual report.

Our collaborative team, which consisted of staff from Advancement Communications, Annual Giving, and Donor Relations, worked together to conceptualize and create the report.

The Impact Report was a digital-only report posted on the Princeton Alumni website, sent to alumni who were segmented into two groups. Those who gave in the previous year received a thank-you email; those who had not given received a solicitation email, noting the impact of the previous year.