The Full Story:
When Jillian Nelson looked at Illinois State’s phone program, she didn’t see something to cut, she saw a core competency: students. The move wasn’t to call more alumni; it was to train students to have better conversations, ask smart questions (including those that reveal wealth indicators), and follow up with the right next step.
The team rebuilt the call center into a true engagement center:
- Smaller, stronger team: 15–20 paid student ambassadors (down from around 50 previously) working 16 hours/week, recruited and compensated as one of the best-paying jobs on campus to match higher expectations.
- Portfolios that make sense: students are paired to colleges/majors (e.g., nursing with Nursing, business with Business) so they can speak authentically, swap stories, and ask better questions donors actually enjoy answering.
- Clear training and tools: a full-time staff manager runs onboarding and ongoing training modules. Students use ThankView with teleprompter scripts (pre-approved) plus space to add a personal note (e.g., “what I’m learning this semester”).
- Quality where it counts: everyone records core videos (e.g., pledge thanks, anniversaries). Students who are great on camera handle specialty assignments (e.g., President’s Circle renewals for donors giving $1,500+).
On the campaign side, Illinois State runs integrated micro-campaigns all year long. Each six-to-eight-week sprint anchors on direct mail (which Jillian says has grown, not faded), surrounded by personal video, email, text, and social. They also segment deeply, especially renewals, using variable data and department-level personalization (about 42 versions) so an Accounting alum hears what’s new in Accounting, with funds and talking points the department provided.
The team is intentional about where the time goes. They automated recurring tasks, like anniversary letters via a Marketing Cloud donor journey that creates tasks for students, to free up capacity for higher-impact work: retention, upgrades, and discovery. And they balance high-production creative (e.g., mascot-led Giving Day videos like “Birds Give Back,” Reggie Redbird as the “celebrity,” and the CASE-winning LEGO piece) with scrappier student-shot content (like a Valentine’s-themed ambassador-recruitment video filmed on tablets). Both styles work, because both feel human.
Most importantly, the data says the student-led, multi-channel, retention-first approach is paying off:
- A single engagement-center conversation led to a $960K gift that would have been missed in a churn-and-burn model.
- The prior year, the same approach uncovered $60K in major gifts.
- Institution-wide giving hit $42M+, with $8M from annual giving alone.
Jillian’s takeaways for peers are refreshingly practical:
- Don’t kill student engagement: evolve it. Train students to listen, ask smart questions, and pass insights for follow-up.
- Define success up front. Illinois State optimizes for retention, upgrades, and pipeline, not just raw donor counts.
- Use video where it shines. Authentic student ThankViews, even when you can see the eyeballs reading, work.
- Cut to create capacity. Automate what you can so you can personalize what matters.
In short: keep the students, keep the mail, add the video, and align it all. At Illinois State, that mix is turning friendly touchpoints into real relationships and real results.