CASE Award - Golden Gate University

From the Nominator

"During the pandemic, Golden Gate University's Advancement division experienced layoffs and employee turnover that left five individuals in the department. The decimation of the staff led to little fundraising (900 donors out of 90,000 alumni) and little to no alumni engagement. With a significant need to increase alumni engagement, the Office of Alumni Engagement partnered with Publishing Concepts, Inc. (PCI) to produce our first-ever alumni oral history project (OHP). The OHP's purposes were to update alumni contact information and ask them to verbally share their experiences at GGU. Our engagement of alumni via alumni newsletters, event emails and other communication was yielding extremely low engagement. With email messages sent out to 35,000 alumni at least 10 times during the fall 2022 semester, we saw maybe 7-10 clicks per email distribution or 7-10 gifts per email solicitation. We wondered if our data was woefully out-of-date.

PCI sent emails and postcards and conducted phone calls to reach our alumni and reconnect them with the university. In just two months, more than 5,000 alumni had called PCI to be interviewed and update their contact information. At the end of the call, only donors who had not given to GGU in the last five years or had never given were offered the opportunity to support GGU with a $25 gift. More than 400 new donors were gained through this project in just two months--almost half of all alumni donors in FY22."

Great partnership with PCI with benefits both for the association and alumni. AUBURN UNIVERSITY

The project went better than we thought it would and exceeded all expectations and goals. The PCI project staff was exceedingly responsive to any requests or issues. The PCI staff who conducted the phone interviews is well trained and and handled our alum audience extremely well. We couldn't be more happy with the results. Thank you for all you did to make the project a huge success, especially during this trying time of the pandemic. LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

The responsiveness of our Account Manager regarding any questions, concerns or transactional issues was always timely, friendly and helpful. The process from start to finish was highly organized and supplied our office with rich resources for all steps of the year long process. BOSTON COLLEGE

By partnering with PCI, we quickly collected updated contact information and stories from our alums. Our small office would never have been able to achieve the same results. Our alums, in general, enjoyed the project and appreciated being contacted. CAROLINA UNIVERSITY

The process has been easy to manage and has produced good results. There is no way a staff of our size could have accomplished this much in such a short period of time. INDIANA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

The PCI team was customer centered; recognizing the need for delays, consultation, etc... I would definitely recommend PCI to other colleagues working in the Alumni profession. INDIANA STATE UNIVERSITY ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY WINS CASE AWARD FOR ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

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