How to Party with Your Alumni and Donors on Their Birthday!

JD Beebe
08/25/2020

Birthdays are a great way to personalize your outreach and connect with your donors on a day that’s special to them.

What is the number 1 reason you should send your birthday wishes for donors and alumni through ThankView? The automation! You can easily set up a campaign that runs throughout the year and automatically sends a ThankView to each recipient on their birthday.

Now that you’re setting up a birthday campaign with ThankView, what are some things that your Birthday campaign should include? Let’s take a look at the message, the video, and the call to action for a ThankView birthday campaign.

The Message

What’s the message of your birthday campaign? This will guide how you word the email message, shoot the video, and design a Call to Action button.

Do you want alumni of your school, college, or university to feel nostalgic, remembering fond memories of their college years? If so, make sure to feature your campus, students, or recognizable faculty in the message and video.

Are you a non-profit that features birthday gift campaigns? Make sure to send your recipients a reminder a week or two before their birthday so they have time to involve their friends and family in a birthday-gift-giving-celebration.

Here are some great examples of Birthday Subject lines:

*Your name* wants to celebrate your birthday with you!
A Special Birthday Video from *Your name*
Make a wish! Happy birthday from *Your name*!

The Video

What’s better than a written Happy Birthday? A personalized video saying Happy Birthday!

A ThankView birthday campaign can be scheduled up a year in advance, so this year-long campaign has the potential to be sent to hundreds of your alumni or donors. Knowing that, don’t be afraid to spend a little more time and energy on this video.

Some great birthday mesagage video and recording ideas for your campaign:

An acapella group on campus singing happy birthday
A birthday message from your organization’s President or CEO
Get students, staff and faculty involved for a massive extravaganza on the campus quad or right in your office featuring balloons, streamers, and whistles of course

Check out our Top 5 Most Creative ThankView Videos post to get more inspiration for your video!

In your group video message, make sure to use video sequencing to combine a personalized greeting, followed by a more generic birthday video featuring your staff, students, or mascots!

The Call to Action

Unlike an appeal campaign, a birthday campaign’s Call to Action button can be optional. The main Call to Action for your recipients may be to watch the personalized video you made for them.

If you choose to add a CTA, here are some examples:

A discount code for your school’s gear! (who doesn’t like a gift on their birthday?)
A link to an Alumni update form. Ask your former students how their life has changed in the past year. (New employment? Life updates? etc.)
If you’re a non-profit with birthday gift campaigns, make sure to send a reminder and encourage your donors to share their birthday gifts to help you pursue your mission

Your birthday campaign can be scheduled in advance and sending all year long, but your Call to Action button can be edited and changed from month to month. Maybe your CTA button will be different for different seasons of the year?

From your message to the video to the CTA, make sure to connect with your recipients in a special way on their special day!

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4. Continue to Steward Donors

Your relationship with the donors who give to your endowment doesn’t end when you secure their gifts. Because your endowment exists to make a difference in the long term, your supporters will want you to keep in touch about its progress. Ongoing stewardship means keeping donors updated about your endowment’s performance and impact. A report that strengthens your relationship with donors should cover:

The fund’s balance at the start and end of the year
Spending amounts and allocations
How the fund’s returns compare to your investment targets
A short narrative detailing the specific impacts the endowment achieved

Create a report for each endowment rather than sending an identical document to everyone. A donor who endowed a scholarship wants to hear about the students it supported, while a donor who endowed a building fund wants updates on construction projects.

5. Upgrade Your Endowment Management Tools

Your endowment management tools should make applying your spending policy across every fund easy. Investing in dedicated software is especially useful as your endowment grows. Handling unitization in spreadsheets might work for a few funds, but as you begin to manage dozens or hundreds of gifts, dedicated software can save your team time spent manually calculating gains and losses for each one.

Why Nonprofits Need Dedicated Endowment Management Software

Dedicated endowment software brings accuracy and consistency to every part of the management process, from tracking individual funds to improving security. See how these solutions compare to a spreadsheet-based approach:

nfographic table outlining the information below.

How These Methods Compare:

In managing your endowment with traditional spreadsheets, you may see:

High administrative burden: Manual entry across disconnected systems
Limited security and audit footprints: Reduced version control and audit trail visibility
Difficulty with donor transparency: Spreadsheets provide only static data that is difficult to turn into custom results.

By using dedicated software, you are likely to find the following improvements:

Lower administrative burden: Automated fund tracking and calculated allocations
Enhanced security and audit footprint: Audit-ready reconciliation with clear tracking
Greater donor transparency: Connects with reporting platforms

Dedicated endowment management software keeps your organization compliant while freeing up the time your team once spent manually managing spreadsheets.

Secure Your Endowment with Balance by EverTrue

Effective endowment management begins with excellent accounting. Balance by EverTrue handles unitization, applies spending rules, and produces audit-ready reports, so your team can spend more time on the donor relationships that built the fund in the first place.

Turn your data into a clear picture of long-term impact. Combine accurate fund accounting with donor reporting that showcases impact.
Connect with the tools you already use. Pair Balance with Impact by EverTrue and ODDER by EverTrue to create and deliver compelling digital endowment reports that you can send to donors with ease.
Know where every fund stands in real time. Check market values, gift history, and available spending for any fund. Then, share view-only versions with your team, so everyone stays informed.

With Balance, your team can stop spending all your time on manual management and instead add balance to your endowment workflow.

Additional Resources

To learn more about managing your endowment and other ways that technology can help your organization, check out these additional resources:

Webinar: Building a Seamless Relationship Between Endowment Finance and Advancement. In this webinar, we cover the keys to un-complicating your institution’s financial endowment reporting process. Explore how building a connection between your finance and advancement teams can lead to happier donors and happier staff.
The Best Alumni Management Software Solutions in 2026. Alumni management software allows your university to maintain an active community that supports your school in a number of ways. Review top software solutions.
Donor Segmentation: How Organizing Donors Boosts Retention. What is donor segmentation, and how can you use it to boost retention? Learn the need-to-know information in this guide from EverTrue’s fundraising experts.

Less stress, higher endowment funds. Discover how Balance provides the organization, security, and accuracy your endowment needs. Request a demo.

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