Connecting with Your ‘Ohana: How to Mobilize Your Community on Your Giving Day-Presentation

Presentation

Pdf Summary

The presentation "Connecting with Your ‘Ohana: How to Mobilize Your Community on Giving Day," by Bini Christensen and Holman Gao, focuses on strategies for small teams to effectively engage their communities for fundraising events, using Seabury Hall School's Giving Day as a case study.

Seabury Hall, a 5-12th grade school with 541 students and a 5-person development team, leveraged a three-step approach to mobilize support:

1. <strong>Community:</strong> They emphasized peer-to-peer engagement, making it easy and fun for students, faculty, and volunteers to participate. For example, parents created WhatsApp groups to encourage giving, sparking friendly challenges and social interaction.

2. <strong>Cause:</strong> The school embedded the philanthropic "why" deeply into the event, highlighting program needs, student stories, and the impact of donations to motivate giving.

3. <strong>Catalyst:</strong> They incorporated gamification elements such as class competitions, incentives, matching gifts, unlockable challenges, real-time leaderboards, and celebrations to boost excitement and participation.

Seabury Hall's 2025 Giving Day exceeded goals by raising $97,000 (162% of its target) from 269 supporters, including 102 alumni. Notably, a single texting campaign raised $4,855. Pre-event strategies included assemblies to reinforce the giving culture and allowing students to choose incentives. Day-of activities empowered students and utilized real-time data to track progress and encourage participation. Post-event, they celebrated with activities like a Color Run and thanked supporters to foster ongoing engagement.

The presentation underscores common challenges for small teams, such as limited resources and balancing daily demands, but shows that organic engagement tied to community connection, cause relevance, and catalytic fun can overcome these obstacles. Ultimately, successful Giving Days lean heavily on peer networks, clear impact messaging, and motivating, celebratory structures.

Attendees are encouraged to adopt these community-driven, cause-centered, and gamified methods to maximize their own fundraising success on future Giving Days.

Keywords

Community Engagement

Fundraising Strategies

Giving Day

Seabury Hall School

Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

Gamification

Philanthropy

Small Team Fundraising

Alumni Giving

Donor Motivation