Imagine if you could educate students about philanthropy – AND capture enough student video content to power a whole year of stewardship? The University of South Florida team figured out how to do just this. Here’s their story.
“Alumni engagement starts when a student is admitted.”
That’s a quote from Erika Jordan on her episode of the RAISE Podcast for Advancement Leaders.
Erika’s quote gets to the core of something really important: alumni engagement and philanthropy is a process. It takes time to cultivate and unfold. And it starts with students.
Anyone who works in advancement knows that the struggle to get alumni to engage (and give!) is real. The average alumni giving rate is just below 8%. Average email open rates are around 20%, indicating that most alums don’t even hear “the ask” to engage or give.
One of the reasons that it’s so tough to get alums to engage is because we didn’t do a great job of engaging them as students (a.k.a. future alums).
Educating students about philanthropy – what it is, why it actually matters for their college, and how it affects them, personally – has to happen early and often. Otherwise, it really shouldn’t be a mystery if they ignore fundraising appeals for years. (Or forever.)
“This is the day we teach students about philanthropy.”
Recently, the team at the University of South Florida were crowned 2025 EverTrue Innovators. (Check out their story about a digital shift that led to $4.7MM in pledge payments.)
We hosted two of their donor relations experts, Carly Plate and Dominika McLean, for a podcast conversation to learn more about their approach to working smarter and not harder. And we got some bonus brilliance about how they educate students about philanthropy.
Here it is, in a nutshell:
- Every year, the team hosts a day-long “Grateful Bulls Day” for all students.
- They provide pizza, giveaways, and music. They make it super fun.
- They have fun, themed spaces for students to write “thank you” cards to donors.
- They have a photo and video booth for students to share what they love about USF.
- They also capture “Happy Birthday” videos for donors, pledge payment reminder videos, gift anniversary videos, and first-time gift videos.
More than anything, on Grateful Bulls Day, students get to connect the dots between their opportunity and donors’ generosity.
AND – the team captures enough student video content to power a whole year of stewardship videos.
“ We basically get all the content that we need for stewardship purposes for the year.”
In the Advancement world, we are guilty of assuming that folks outside of this niche understand words like “annual giving,” “development,” and “current use.”
On Grateful Bulls Day, the USF team creates an open, fun, non-judgmental space where students can freely ask their questions about exactly what’s going on here.
The team fields questions like, “What is a donor, exactly? What does that mean?” They answer questions about scholarships, explain how alumni participation affects national rankings, and chat about how new spaces are built on campus.
As Carly and Dominika point out, the students love it. They are learning about the thing that fuels the school they love so much.
This learning experience leads students to want to write notes to donors, and to hop into the video booth to film a “thank you” video.
USF students get important exposure to philanthropy. They get to openly ask and learn about fundraising. They connect the dots of their college experience.
And in tandem, the USF team captures a whole year’s worth of authentic, heartfelt, in-the-moment video content from grateful students.
Everyone wins.
