From the Nominator

Each year the Office of Alumni at Morehouse School of Medicine hosts an annual "Alumni Holiday Party" to celebrate the season and encourage graduates to return to the campus. Attendance had been declining for some time, so in 2019 we started a new tradition of honoring our youngest alums with "Top 10 Under 40" awards. This helped build excitement about the event, and increase attendance exponentially, allowing us to raise $5,000, making this the Office of Alumni’s second-largest student scholarship fundraiser. 

When COVID-19 struck, donors tightened their purse strings and MSM tightened its budget—allocating less to the Office of Alumni—while canceling in-person events. Yet we still were expected to raise money for scholarships. 

So we pivoted to create “Alumni Holiday Week,” a week-long holiday celebration with various online activities designed to support engagement, networking, and fundraising efforts. The team built a multi-faceted, multi-channel campaign to drive attendance by families, students, staff, donors, and community members. We managed to register 600 guests and raise roughly $20,000 to support student scholarships—all in one week. 

This was the most amount raised at an alumni event. Meanwhile, we managed to increase our new donor engagement by 7 percent, and the number of engaged alumni by 12 percent. We also raised $1,000 from students, and saw faculty and staff giving grow by 5 percent.

From the Judges

We appreciated that the submitter of this entry took the time to investigate and learn more about their audience prior to creating the event. The fundraising portion was also very well integrated (and successful!). They strategically appealed to a wide variety of their audience's population in an effective manner.