2016 Gold Award Winners: Social Media

Camphill Special School Celebrates #GivingTuesday 2015
Camphill Special School
Submitted by Camphill Special School

The Numbers
Recipients: 1,600
Response Rate: 5 percent
Total Cost: $100
Income Generated: $40,000
Average Gift: $284.88
Cost to Raise a Dollar: $0.0025

Why It Won
Cara Schmidt, development officer for Camphill Special School, wanted to build upon the school’s #GivingTuesday success in 2014 with a bigger, better 2015 campaign. The catch? She wanted to do it entirely via social media.

It’s easy to reach people on social media. It’s much harder to get them engaged. Schmidt knew that, and backed the school’s #GivingTuesday 2015 campaign with an extensive, grassroots effort to motivate and mobilize supporters. Each week leading up to the event, Schmidt shared photos of students with testimonials from parents. To expand Facebook reach and bring the campaign to more people’s News Feeds, she emailed family members and board members, encouraging them to like, share and comment on posts. She sent step-by-step instructions on how to share content, and quickly responded to 
donations with an acknowledgement email that included a personalized image donors could share on their own social media accounts. Schmidt also asked five parents of 
students at the school for pledged matching gifts, totaling $15,000.

All that groundwork paid off. On #GivingTuesday, the school saw 87 donations—
a 31 percent increase from the prior year. Those gifts totaled $23,800, with $700 in 
employer matching gifts and the $15,000 in matching gifts from parents bringing the total to just under $40,000. Camphill Special School’s only expense was $100 to boost posts on Facebook, bringing the cost to raise a dollar to a miniscule $0.0025.

See the complete list of 2016 winners here.