French American + International embarked on a 24-hour giving challenge on Giving Tuesday, looking to meet and exceed a $50,000 matching gift. The campaign included an interactive on-campus activity with our students and faculty, and dynamic, in-the-moment updates via email and social media that connected our larger, off-campus community to the action in real time. Building on our Annual Fund campaign theme, “The Power of Participation,” we asked our community to lend a hand to help us meet our goal. Throughout the day, students made hand-prints with paint onto an outline of our school logo. The idea: Hand-prints represent gifts, and every gift matters; If we fill up our school logo with hand prints, we’ve met our Giving Tuesday goal. This in-person activity was shared digitally as video, gif, and photo content in e-newsletters and on multiple social media channels throughout the day. Additionally, participation-themed original animations were created, and a “page-pop” lived on our website homepage. In total including the matching gift, we raised $375,000 for our Annual Fund and received more than 211 individual gifts and pledges, making it our best Giving Tuesday ever by $90,000 dollars.
From the Judges
We thought this campaign was sweet and simple. Great idea for the demographic of students, and demographic of parents from the domestic and international communities! We thought that everyone would want to participate in it—how could you not?! What we were most moved by was how well they know their constituents; the simple message translated to all. It was creative and had a clear message. This campaign was all about the kids, so could easily be replicated.
