With just $5 million left to raise, Salem State University has been working hard to finish out the largest fundraising effort in the school’s history—a comprehensive $25 million campaign.
The challenge? There’s a little under a year to go, and they’ve already tapped their largest donors for support. (Sound familiar?)
Realizing that they needed to expand their outreach and look beyond their known donors, Salem State began searching for a tool that could help them efficiently discover new prospects. They found a solution in GivingTree.
To find out how Salem State has been taking advantage of GivingTree, check out our case study. Spoiler alert: With the help of GivingTree, the team has already seen a 59% uptick in donors and a 70% increase in dollars raised!
Just for fun, here are the top five reasons we love working with Salem State, featuring commentary from Courtney Camps, Salem State’s customer success manager.
1. They are open to exploring new technology and techniques to help them reach their goals.
“Salem State has a big goal in front of them with their $25 million campaign, and they realized that—especially as a small office—they needed to make changes in order to get to the desired outcome. Their willingness to try something different to get new results is a big part of why our relationship with them has been so successful. The other factor is that schools like Salem State are starting to rely more on private rather than state funding. It’s becoming more and more important for them to discover new donors and move quickly to make up ground. Manpower alone can’t do that, but Salem State was very quick to realize that technology can help them get to where they want to be.”
2. They have a top-notch leadership team.
“It’s hard to enact change or new processes within an organization, but Salem State has a strong leadership team that has been incredibly supportive in helping the office understand GivingTree from day one. They are so excited about providing their team with a new software that can help take Salem State to the next level.”
3. We get to work with a broad spectrum of roles across their advancement shop.
“Salem State is smaller than a bunch of our other customers, and because of that we’re working with almost the entire office from annual campaigns to major giving. It’s cool to be able to help a group that’s touching upon the whole lifecycle of a donor. At some schools we’re only touching on parts of that lifecycle, but at Salem State we are helping with all levels of the giving pyramid.”
4. They’ve found opportunities to incorporate GivingTree into their existing daily work but are also using it to push the boundaries of their work.
“We’ve had two great coaching sessions with the Salem team. In one of the working sessions, we used [Director of Major Gifts and Planned Giving] Mike Randall’s trip to Braintree as a scenario with GivingTree. We planned the trip right there by pulling a list of young alums in Braintree who had given 100 dollars and who were great candidates to meet up with. It was that quick and easy, and a great example of how they could use GivingTree for projects they work on every day. Overall, the Salem team has really dove into the product and are actively using it to streamline what they are already doing today, while also finding opportunities to use it in new ways.”
5. We love working with a local schools, and visiting Salem is always a blast.
“It’s always great to work with organizations that are helping our state [Massachusetts]. It’s awesome to have a customer that is only a half hour away that we can collaborate with in a fun, historic location. We love getting onsite with our customers and getting to know the team. [Director of Advancement Services] Jeannie Patch is so fabulous, and so is [AVP of Institutional Advancement] Cheryl Crounse. They’ve embraced the product with open arms and have been so supportive with the whole thing.”