Challenge
Counted among the U.S.’s top colleges by Forbes and the Princeton Review, among others, Rowan University is a public research institution that offers degrees from bachelor’s to doctorate to over 24,500 students. With an engaged community of donors and potential donors, Rowan needed a way to both maintain and enhance that engagement, keeping their community excited and invested year to year. Previously, the institution lacked the flexibility and control they needed for their leaderboards. To address this, five years ago, they turned to ScaleFunder.
Solution
ScaleFunder’s ease of use, ability to deploy matches and challenges, and engaging leaderboards are just a few of the tools that drew Rowan to the ScaleFunder platform. The freedom to build their own leaderboards and the flexibility to customize them were also features Rowan particularly valued. This year, Rowan leveraged leaderboards for early giving in the days leading up to their Day of Giving, as well as on the day of.
One innovative Day of Giving activation that Rowan employed this year was a philanthropy scavenger hunt, which started with the fundraising team soliciting $250 donations from a variety of donors. They also received donations from members of the advancement team, the president, and some deans. Each of these donations was associated with a plush owl hidden somewhere around campus. The owls were numbered and tagged with a QR code, and the student who found the owl scanned the QR code that led to a form where they would choose what program/organization they wanted the $250 to go to, with those donations, of course, being added to the day’s total in ScaleFunder. Students also took photos and videos of themselves with the owl and posted them to social media to further promote the challenge. Owl sponsors were then sent a follow-up email with a picture of the student who found their owl and a note saying where the student had decided to donate the money. And all the owls were found by the end of the Day of Giving.
ScaleFunder
