Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: University of California San Diego

Title of entry: UC San Diego The Hub Basic Needs Center Email Campaign

About this entry: At UC San Diego, we create meaningful change for campus and society. Many decisions affecting universities in 2025 were beyond our control, but we have relied on alumni and donors to draw on their passion to propel impact. This email campaign for UC San Diego’s The Hub Basic Needs Center was a rare opportunity to provide immediate relief to students who found themselves in an unexpected moment of urgent need.
When CalFresh (California’s SNAP program) benefits were paused in November due to a federal government shutdown, it meant that 5,731 UC San Diego students would go without food assistance. The government shutdown and the loss of SNAP benefits nationwide had been in the news, and we knew our community would want to help.

Our Annual Giving team received an expedited request from campus leadership to fundraise for The Hub Basic Needs Center, which provides access to food and emergency aid to students on campus. We quickly gathered a team to coordinate, write and send the email in just over a week, and our gift officers also secured a dollar-for-dollar donor match up to $50,000.

Timing, awareness and urgent but empathetic messaging were crucial to the success of this project. We sent the solicitation immediately after CalFresh funding was paused, while the outcome of federal negotiations was largely unknown, and our donors were able to make an immediate and concrete impact. We raised nearly $125,000 for The Hub Basic Needs Center, including numerous gifts from new donors.