From the Nominator

"Florida Tech's Advancement Services found a way to make every alum feel special with a new approach. Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, we began sending daily reports of every graduate who had recently updated their LinkedIn with new jobs and promotions. Those with potential major gift capacity were sent to the appropriate regional major gift officers and the others were distributed to students in the contact center. 

Thanks to the partnership with both annual and major gift teams, every one of these received, via LinkedIn, a "congratulations on the new position" message on behalf of Florida Tech and an opportunity to meet virtually 1:1 to record an alumni note for the magazine. We also used this opportunity to get to know them in personalized detail (asking how they originally came to the university, their experience as a student, and their professional path after as well as their hopes for the future). This has been adding incredibly rich information into our donor database while making donors at all levels of giving feel important. 

Naturally, the conversations also included an ask for support and further engagement. In terms of impact, we saw an average of 10-15 alumni promoted/day (250/month and a total of over 3,000 for the year), and 30-40% of these responded to their congratulations message and were willing to meet virtually. We were very pleased that 60-70% of those meeting pledged an annual gift during the conversation, making this a new driver for annual participation."

From the Judges

The judges appreciated the creative way in which this team developed a system for creating a relationship and recognition for alumni without asking for money first. The process provided a great model for that first touch or interaction to be the start of relationship building. This model has already been shared by some of the judges with peers at their institutions!