California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) is a young institution of only 35 years. Because of this youth, we don’t have long-standing traditions, and this gives us the ability to be creative with our initiatives as we build the culture of philanthropy. Six years ago, we needed a fresh spin on employee-giving solicitations, and “Dibs” came out of a brainstorm of ideas. During our Dibs Employee Giving Campaign, all employees have the opportunity to call “dibs” by temporarily naming a location on campus. There are more than 100 locations that will proudly showcase Dibs signs with employee names during October. The signs are custom printed and prominently displayed with the Dibs logo and the employee’s name. The money raised during the Dibs campaign typically focuses on supporting students in need through organizations like the Student Emergency Fund, the Food Insecurity Fund, and our Health Assistance Fund, which focuses on mental health services. For fall 2023, we decided we needed to promote the campaign to employees more creatively. We produced a scripted video by employees, for employees. In this video, we highlighted a few past donors and showcased the easy process, start to finish, of giving. The response to the video was extremely positive. Not only did we increase donor participation, but we also exceeded the previous year’s donation totals.
From the Judges
We agreed that they did a fantastic job explaining the call to action. Additionally, we felt that the production value was top notch!
