From the Nominator

"At the beginning of 2021/22 school year, the International School of Prague relaunched the annual giving program and implemented a new vision, strategy, and communication style. We shifted from the Annual Fund to the ISP Fund. While the Annual Fund raised money for the current year’s operating budget, the new ISP Fund raises money to be allocated for the following year in one of seven priority areas, benefiting our students’ learning experience in the year to come.   

The ISP Fund communication approach has been focused on the impact of giving through storytelling and why giving is so meaningful for our students’ learning experience (under ‘The Power of Giving’ stories series). We have also increased our transparency about how the donated funds are allocated and used.   

The results have been extraordinary. We have increased the number of donors from 40 to 80 (out of 560 families) and our annual gifts have increased by 130%.   

In 2022/23, we decided to go even further and organise our first-ever Giving Week (10-17 February 2023). The campaign focused on simple and straightforward messaging that was clear and emotional: No gift too small. 100% for our kids! The campaign was a great success in helping us build a new culture of philanthropy at ISP.    

Since the relaunch of the ISP Fund in 2021/22, we quadrupled the number of donors (from 40 to 123 donors) and the gifts increased from 1,1 million CZK to 3 million CZK."

From the Judges

The campaign showed exceptional results, including doubling the number of donors and increasing education related to annual giving. It also provided robust methodology and strategy, and a great deal of qualitative research. For a school not based in the United States, the use of a ‘giving day’ model and the demonstration of its success was truly unique and innovative. We hope this can be a model that other non-U.S. based schools can follow!