Hi everyone, welcome to our Independent Schools Panel Promoting Reunion Engagement and Classgiving. I'm Christy Grimm and I'm delighted you could join us. Before we get started, I just have a few housekeeping notes. This webinar is being recorded and will be provided to all registrants. You will all receive a follow-up email after the event with instructions for accessing that recording. The slides for this session are also already available for download from the event page where you found your link to join. You will just need to navigate to the course tab and select the access button next to course materials. I will also share that link in the chat in just a moment so you guys can all access that. We will be taking questions throughout the webinar, so please feel free to use the Q&A box to submit your questions as they come up. And without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to Amy Weinberg from Gravity. Thank you so much, Christy. It's really nice to be here. I want to thank CASE for partnering with us on sort of delivering this webinar today. My colleagues and I at Gravity were kind of sitting around thinking, you know, a couple months ago, what can we do right now that's timely, that's going to help the independent school community with, you know, what's next on the horizon for their calendar? We know that summertime, at least at the school that I was at, is the big push towards reunions, so that's what my alma mater is gearing up for right now. I know some of you are doing reunions in the fall, September, October. That's also a popular season, but you're always thinking about it year-round. And so we have a couple of our clients with us today who utilize a variety of Graduate and Advanced and other products from the Gravity suite, but they have some really cool stories to share about how they're approaching engagement and giving at their schools in the context of reunion, which we just thought would be really helpful. So that's really going to be the focus today, and I'll introduce our speakers here shortly. We have some great engagement ideas, both practical, strategic, tactical things that we're going to be hearing from Haverhill College, and then we're going to kind of transition that into what you can do around class giving and promoting participation in your donor community, again, in the context of a reunion with Chaminade High School, who does an amazing job of that out in New York. And then we'll just have a bit of a general discussion at the end about tying together, your engagement and giving strategy and take some more questions. So without further ado, I will introduce our two stars of the show today. We have Kate Crocombe with us, who will be our first speaker. She is the Director of Alumni Engagement at Haverhill College in Ontario. Kate has been a part of our client community for many, many years, having utilized our products at not only Haverhill, but at a former school that she used to work at, too, Bishop Strong School. And then we have with us Craig Pinto, who is the Director of Annual Giving at Chaminade High School in New York, and they have some great activity going on around class giving leading up to reunions. So that'll be really, really exciting to hear about the success that they've had. They're also a client of ours using our advanced platform for digital giving. And I think there's lots of great things to be learned, whether or not you're using technology for any of these sort of events and reunions or not. There's so much here that we can we can help you with and that we can sort of tease out as general themes of what works well. And then, again, as Christy said, I'm Amy Weinberg. I'm an Account Executive here at Gravity, and I'm the former Associate Director of Advancement at Brentwood College School out on the west coast of Canada, former client myself. And, you know, reunions, boy, they are the best of times. They can also be the worst of times. They can be stressful as all heck. But when they're done and you see those results, whether you're tracking engagement metrics, giving metrics, you name it, it's it's really, really, you know, obviously a huge part of the fabric of our schools and the work that we do. So without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to Kate to give us a little peek at the Haverhill College that she works at. Set the stage for us, Kate. Tell us about your school. Sure. Hi, everybody. I'm Kate and I am the Director of Alumni Engagement at Haverhill. And I'm just entering in my second year in August of this year. I will have been at Haverhill for two years. Prior to that, as Amy mentioned, I was at the Bishop Strawn School. And I like to tell folks that I think the Bishop Strawn School is one of the very first independent schools to adopt grad way. I mean, I've been telling people that story. I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm going to I'm going to stick with that. And so I really did sort of drive that. I really I really, you know, I was really pleased to find out that Haverhill was also using the grad way platform when I joined because it meant that I wasn't you know, the learning curve wasn't going to be so steep and I wouldn't have to learn a new a new platform. But all that to say, I'm very happy to be at Haverhill. It's about 130 years old. It's an all girls school right in the heart of Toronto. We have a about a ninety five hundred alumni base and they are, you know, mostly in Toronto, but also globally as well. And as mentioned, we do use the the grad way platform for our alumni engagement activity. Thank you, Kate. Yeah, you know, I think you're right. I think I think you were one of the first true pioneer in the digital alumni engagement space. So let's talk a little bit about that. How you're using the graduate platform currently at Haverhill and with the reunion season upon us, you know, what are some of the things that you are implementing? What are some of the overall sort of strategies that you have and some of the fun stuff that you're you're working towards right now? Sure. Yeah, our reunion happens in the fall. So it's it's happening that third week of September. And so we are really sort of ramping up. Our invites have gone out and we're starting to sort of collect our SVPs and those sorts of things. And so the planning for these sorts of things, as everyone on this call will likely know, starts, you know, pretty early. And so by this stage in the game, this is when we really are sort of ramping up our engagement and trying to build some some buzz around the event. And so we typically will use our grad way platform to do that. And so there's lots of different ways that you can do it. This is just a little a screen grab of our one of our groups that we use on on the platform. And so you can see that it's got some personalized headers and some really nice graphics that kind of add some punch to the page. But we, you know, as mentioned here on the slide, I think for us, we find that whenever we post archival photos on our social media channels, those seem to have the most traction with alumni, the most shares, the most likes. And so we utilize that same those same principles on our on our grad way platform as well. So oftentimes we'll post a photo, particularly of the classes that are celebrating really big milestones, 50 year, 60 year milestones, you know, sort of a class photo from their graduation day, 50, you know, almost 50 years ago. And so that really does sort of pique people's interest and really does create a bit of a buzz. Lots of times, too. I mean, it's there was smoking rooms in our boarding facilities. And so posting some of those really interesting photos where, you know, we could never sort of do those. You know, obviously there aren't smoking rooms in dorm rooms anymore, but it really does create a fair amount of buzz when you can find photos. If you have an archivist at your school that can find photos that speak to the certain milestone years that you are celebrating, it really does sort of create some buzz and folks seem to really like it. Hey, are you focusing on like 10 year milestone groups? Are you doing the five year thing? We do. Yeah, it's the five year thing. So this year, for example, we're celebrating anybody with a year ending in four and nine. And we do happen to have a dedicated archivist who is very helpful in this in this piece. Without an archivist, I'm not exactly sure how it would even really happen. So I'm very grateful that we have one. We also had one at the Bishop Strong School where I was. And so she's able to pull together gigantic folders of really old photos of anyone, you know, and classes and activities of things that happened in those years, ending in four and nine, going all the way back to the 1930s in some cases. And so it's it's really helpful when you're pulling together that sort of archival piece. Yeah, there's a lot of those archival photos. Obviously, you can see in the graphic that shared here in the banner, that is an old photo from the 1920s that we pulled and pulled that into our reunion graphic access assets. That's really neat. Yeah. A hundred and thirty year old school. I would hope you had some kind of archival support to some degree. I know a lot of schools are not in that position, though, and I would just share a little tip from from my experience. We had we underwent a project to digitize our yearbooks going right back to 1923. And that is a lifesaver as well. So if you're not in the position to have or hire a full time or a part time school archivist, but you really need a quick way to sort of find and look through school history via the yearbooks without flipping through them manually, get them digitized. There's some great resources and some places out there that do it. And it makes it so easy to flip through and find, you know, like actually do a digital search for the specific person or year or group that you're looking for. It's like having like an archival system almost at your fingertips. I just wanted to throw that out there as a as an idea for people. It's actually really a smart thing that you said. And I think the bulk of our photos come through that way because we digitize our yearbooks as well. And so we've had a yearbook since the school was founded 130 years ago. And so, yeah, it's just in addition to what also our archivist is able to find. But it is it's a it's a it's a big deal to to have access to those photos. It makes a huge difference. That's absolutely. Yeah. And then it's fun to create those albums, like you said, came in your reunion group to get people sort of breaking the ice, taking that trip down memory lane. And sometimes they end up being your archivist for you. They're helping you identify photos and people and places in those in those old school pictures. And that's part of the engagement strategy in and of itself. Right. And it's sort of like a two way street in that case. Yeah, absolutely. There is a question that came through. I don't know the company that digitized our yearbooks, but maybe, Amy, you do you remember which one you used? Yes, I can find it out. And the name is escaping me as well. But essentially there's a company that will scan all of your volumes for you, ship them off. There is a cost, obviously, to doing this. But then they can host them virtually. I believe that I wanted to say through the University of Toronto Archives is where our yearbooks are digitally hosted. But I can absolutely try to find that information and provide it to Christy afterwards if she wants to disseminate that with the attendees. So I'll make a note to do that. I'm sorry the name's escaping me. But one of the best things our school ever did, really, honestly. And that work had already happened when I started at Havergill, so I don't have much I can add to that. OK, Kate, carry on, carry on with this. OK, I think so this that the photos is a nice segue into groups. I think that groups is a really great place for you to sort of drive everybody, particularly those I mean, obviously those that are celebrating their reunion. But but that's where you're going to want to put your photos. That's where you're going to want to share little tidbits. And to Amy's point, I think you can use these photos as a jumping off point, asking folks, even if you know who the people are in the photo, even if you know what the space is, asking folks to comment. You know, that's the sort of engagement that you're looking for on the platform. And so any time, you know, photos, I would say, are probably the easiest way to do that. But I really like this notion of groups. It's a sort of, you know, the place where folks know they can go to get information or they can share their their, you know, lots of times for us, we have the school will host a series of events. But then we know that classes also likes to like to host their own private events. And so for those folks, those classes that don't have, let's say, a Facebook group or a big, you know, a text message or, you know, WhatsApp group, oftentimes they'll use the group to communicate their plans for their smaller group private parties that they're doing. You know, they'll share the details on there for everybody to see. And so it's just a really nice way to sort of keep everybody informed. And that would be the place that I would go and share the photos and ask the questions in there to sort of drive engagement there. And then it's always exciting when you see that engagement happening organically, when folks are reaching out and connecting through the group that way. Yeah. Yeah. Kate, do you have any anything that you would highlight as a particular challenge or struggle being an all girls school? Are there certain sort of unique differences that you have to tackle when you are thinking about boosting reunion engagement and attendance, or is your attendance pretty strong? I think, well, I can speak to the last. So when I arrived, we needed so I arrived in August and then we needed to do a big triple cohort reunion to sort of make up for lost time, as everyone knows, after covid. Yeah. And so that one obviously had fantastic attendance because we were inviting three different cohorts. But we did sort of a regular reunion last year. And I would say, you know, there wasn't a lot of great data collection that was happening at Haverhill, but we had very similar attendance to what I came to expect it at the Bishop Strong School when I was there. So I feel like reunion is one that, you know, oftentimes in the work that we're doing in alumni engagement, there's a fair amount of attrition when folks sign up for events, particularly if there's been no ticket price. You will have a fair amount of drop off. I feel like reunion is different. It's a bit of a different animal. I feel like if folks are making the commitment to come back and whether or not they're out of town or not, you know, I feel like we have we have less attrition. So I would say that I think, you know, reunion is one that we can kind of count on as being a great success every year. And although I've only been here for two years, it does feel as though it's it's trending in that way, similarly to the way it was trending at BSS as well. So, yeah, I would say it's kind of low hanging fruit as far as that engagement piece and having folks come back, because everyone seems to be really excited to excited to celebrate those those special reunions. Yeah. And are you segmenting, you know, not only communications, but also the actual events and activities that take place at the reunion across the different generations? Because, I mean, obviously, you know, a 10 year grad, a 50 year grad, they might want and expect and be comfortable with different things or get excited about different things. So how do you handle that? Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. And that is one of the unique and challenging things, working at a school that's 130 years old. We have alum, some of which are still involved and still engaged. And they're 100 years old. I was just connecting and talking to a 98 year old alumni on the phone today. And then we have our grad, you know, our graduating students, some of which are only 17, maybe 18 years old at this point. And so that's a pretty wide range of folks that we need to engage in this work. But we definitely cater to all the different ages and stages. And so we've got an older alum luncheon. So that's for anybody that graduated 50 years ago or earlier. And then we make sure to have some some social events, you know, and within those social events, we'll have a quieter space for our older alum. If they would like to come back to the cocktail reception, we'll have a space that they can go to where they don't need to be in the in the, you know, the mix and mingle with 400 other alumni. We'll give them a little bit of a quieter space. We also offer event an event for our former boarders being a boarding school. That's also really important to make sure that the folks that, you know, were in boarding, the experience is very different as a boarding student versus a day students. And so last year we implemented a former boarding student event as well. So, yes, we definitely try to think about how to engage all the different ages and stages. We also offer school tours and a light lunch on one of the days for folks that haven't been back in a long time, you know, so just trying to think about, you know, having a little bit of something for everybody. Yeah. And do you have any 100 year olds on your graduate platform? No, but we have a 91 year old, I think. Wow. That's pretty good. I mean, I know much better than that. I was I was actually surprised to the the participation and the uptake we had in some of our, you know, 50 and 60 year reunion attendees on our platform as well, especially as we go back to that archival content and going back to the good old days and the school that they remember. That was really delightful. So we had like 75, 80 percent of our grads from the early 1960s adopt the platform. Yeah. Reunion was the driving force. Really was. Yeah, I would say that's true at Haverhill as well. Last year that we saw a really big uptick because we really did sort of drive engagement through the platform. And so it certainly can help. I mean, not every alum is on Facebook or, you know, LinkedIn and those sorts of things. And so it is it sort of professionalizes things a little bit as well. And it does feel like sort of the one. It feels like its own little micro, you know, like it's it's like its own little website, but it's a little bit easier to navigate. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's talk about what's on this next slide here. Some of your best practices, tips and tricks, you know, again, leading up to during post-reunion. What is what has really worked for you? What would you highly recommend to those who are maybe new to reunions or trying to just refresh what they're doing? Sure. Well, I think any time you want to refresh something, I think asking folks what they think about your ideas to refresh or finding out what folks think about how things are and how they have been. I think that's really important. That's one big key learning that, you know, I can, I can share having, you know, being new to Haverhill. You know, a lot of times these schools, there's some very deep roots, and there's lots of tradition. And so anytime someone new comes in and wants to sort of shake things up a little bit and mix things up, sometimes there's there's some resistance to that. And so I found that asking alumni their thoughts on certain events getting there, you know, taking the temperature on some of the events that had been long standing, but that I had heard maybe didn't have great attendance, just trying to get a finger on the pulse of what people were actually, how did they feel about these things? I think that's really important before you make any changes. At post event surveys, I think, you know, we don't do them for every event, but we have done them for the new reunion events that we created and unveiled last year. And so I think that's really important as you're gathering data and deciding whether or not it was a, you know, a hit or miss. So I think that pre and post event surveys are really important. The other thing that you'll learn from doing a pre event survey or questionnaire, whatever you'd like to call it, is often the people that are responding to the survey and take time out of their day to respond to your questions are often your frequent flyers, as I like to call them, the folks that show up for things, the folks that are always willing to raise a hand, the folks that are willing to share their feedback. I think those are the types of alumni that you should lean heavily on if they've taken time to answer your questions and do it in a thoughtful way and are willing to share their ideas with you and their feedback. I think you need to be open minded and and and hear what they're saying, and really lean into those people because they, for the most part, I think do have a good sense of sort of, you know, what can stay and what can go. And so I through this process, I've been able to find a really great group of alum that I can lean on. And it's not just our volunteer structure that is already in place. These are other folks that I know that I can tap and ask the questions to, and I will get a very honest answer. And it's not always the answer that I want. But I think that that's actually part of the process and really important. Of course, yeah, they're they're your champions, they're your ambassadors, they're probably going to be the ones to to help drive a class giving initiative or something like that around reunion as well. So talk to me a little bit about your champagne treatment here. Yeah, next bullet. Who doesn't love a competition? I mean, I have to flip a Monopoly board when playing with my brother's way. So I mean, it's I'm very competitive. And I feel like I can't be alone in that. So I know this. So this what we like to do a little bit around our reunion giving, or whether or maybe it's, you know, asking folks, folks to post pictures on the platform of their class, who's posting the most pictures, like who's having the most engagement, those sorts of things. I think anytime you can sort of turn it into a bit of a competition, you tend to generate a little bit more buzz about it. And so for us, we've tried it at BSS. And also at Haverhill, there's been some reunion giving challenges, whether that's highest class with the highest participation rate class was with the highest sort of dollar amount raised, but we do like to celebrate them. And so what we've tried a couple different times, you know, a champagne treatment, chocolate, dipped strawberries, white gloves, champagne treatment in our head of schools office, or we have a principal at Haverhill, our principal's office where there's a private cocktail reception for that class that has reached those those really important goals. They're also called out in the cocktail reception, we draw everybody's attention and give them a bit of a call out. I think that makes people feel really nice. They can also be called out on the platform, you know, where you can take a photo and call them out. And you can do that after reunion or you know, as you're building up for reunion in the in the few days before, but I think anytime I think if you're asking classes to participate in these challenges, and they're they're doing that, I think celebrating them in a in a way that makes them feel really good about it, I think is really important. I think so too. And I know I'll be interested to hear Craig's ideas on this because they they do things a little differently, it sounds like so I think there's there's options for sure. One thing too, I wanted to point out before we go to the next slide, the digital scavenger hunt idea, that's something that you've been toying around with, I think on your graduate platform, for those of you were using an alumni engagement platform of any kind and trying to think of creative ways to get your alums involved digitally leading up to the reunion, the digital scavenger hunt idea is so cool. We've seen a few other schools do it. It's basically giving them almost like a bingo sheet of things that you want them to go and search out and find on the platform. And they have to answer, you know, can you find so and so what does so and so do now for a living, who's got a business posted over here and give them a reason and incentivize them in a fun sort of gamified way to take a little trip through the platform. It's helping them get more acquainted with it. And it's helping them get excited. And it's increasing usership, of course, on the platform, making it more likely that they'll keep returning, and that they'll get more familiar with the different things that are on offer in these alumni engagement networks. So Kate, any plans to maybe weave that into your strategy? Yeah, absolutely. We found a lot of success with that sort of scavenger hunt idea. We've also done it not connected to reunion where we were launching the app. And so we had folks in the moment at an event, try and find someone that works in law. And then the first person in the room that finds someone that works in law would win one of our prizes. And I'm always surprised at what folks what drives folks like a like a pair of Haverhill sunglasses is that, you know, where they're like, I got it first. No, I got it. But yeah, I think that in the moment, I think also worked really well. And if you have an app or something like that, I think, you know, I think that that can make it really fun. We are definitely going to try that this year, I think, you know, sometimes folks haven't connected with their fellow classmates in years. And so it could, it's a kind of a cool idea to ask them to go and find a fellow class of 1994 member, and back and tell us something interesting about that person, or, you know, we know that they have a business posted. So tell us, you know, all those things, I think it really does sort of drive engagement, as you say, and it does get them poking around in all those different areas. Well, in time learning something new about someone that they maybe had been disconnected from from a good amount of years. Absolutely. Yeah. The events for two, I mean, this, you've got a lovely sort of screen capture here, again, of all of the different reunion activities that are going on, what a great place to send them to as well to just sort of find again on their bingo card, which events Am I going to which are the special ones, which are the ones just for my group or my segment? Love how this looks. It's just again, a great way to put everything into one place that one stop shop, like you said, yeah, anything you wanted to address here before I know we're getting short on time for your segment. So you wanted to touch on here briefly. The only thing I would say here is that if you if you are using the graduate platform, and you do use the activity activity digest piece, what's nice about having events posted here is that it pulls these into your activity digest in a really, you know, sophisticated, professional looking way. And so it's always good to have your events posted on your events page. If you're if you happen to be using the graduate platform. Absolutely couldn't agree more. Well, I guess your gravity now I gotta stop saying grad. We still refer to it as the graduate platform. That's the name of the product. So yeah, you're on you're definitely right. You're not wrong at all. And so we're gonna do a quick little segue over to Craig now who's going to kind of pick up the engagement thread and turn that into our sort of giving and class challenge thread because he is doing just wonderful things at Chaminade with reunion giving I mean, I was like, Whoa, I couldn't believe some of the amounts that your your classes, your milestone classes are giving. So we're really excited to hear about that. Craig, please introduce yourself again, let us know a little bit about Chaminade here. And give us the story. Sure I am. My name is Craig Pinto. I'm the director of annual giving at Chaminade High School, Mineola, New York on Long Island. I've been here two years now. This is actually my second year at school. The school itself founded in 1930. So we're wrapping up year 94 going to 95. We've got a pretty large alumni base about 22,000 alums, with the most active donor being from the class of I'm sorry, the earliest donor being from the class of 1943, who's still engaged all the way through our current class, use graduate really for our, our largest campaigns, as well as it includes senior class giving campaigns. And then some of our bigger campaigns that are alumni focused, which I can definitely get into throughout the slides. First bullet, yeah, a little bit about what you're going to talk about Craig. And I think this is where we're going to get some real meat on the bone. So so walk us through these bullets and what you want to focus on here. Sure. Yeah. So with the in terms of having an alumni group, that's, I guess that this large, you know, in across the different decades and across different years, we really focus on segmentation. So we really drill down the messages and certificate point as well. We like to share a lot of older visuals and tie it into what's going on now at the school, we get a lot of good response when we sort of we show that we haven't lost the the bones and the structure of what's been going on. But we're also progressing. And we're using donor donor dollars and donations to keep moving forward. So that's a big, a big part of our segmentation, a big part of our messaging that drives that class giving in terms of what we do to create competition that takes off. It's not, you know, I'd say, it's an all boys school. So competition is not that hard to find competition really in anything here. legitimately in anything you can you can, we talked about going to get food or whatever it is, and whoever gets down there as fast as people really need to compete about everything. So in terms of creating competition, we, we'd like to use our especially with our alums, we'll use, we'll use a class leader board that we have through graduate on our giving campaigns, we'll do for our reunion years, we'll have our co our committee and our co chairs commit to 50% of giving for the class. And we'll use that as a match. And then use that message to say, hey, your committee is is matching 50% of the entire goal, you know, everybody else should step up if they're doing it and kind of create that among themselves. So we really use that we try to use that to our advantage as much as possible. And in terms of us finding our ambassadors, we go across again, really as far back as last year's campaigns, we've used ambassadors from the classes of the 50s, all the way through the 2020s. And what we'd like to do is find two per decade, one per half of each decade. So they can sort of speak to and potentially touch on four years of classes. So they'll be able to be able to relate a bit more to each decade and each half a decade they're speaking to. So your reunions, Craig, are they are they focused on? Are they are? Is it like an all in everybody comes back? Are you really focusing when you say two per decade? Are you talking like two per, like this year would be the the 2014 and the 2004 classes and so on? You're thinking like two per class for those milestones? I'm sorry, I was thinking of ambassadors, meaning people who do the outreach for us. So yeah, the the reunions what we do here, we have three separate reunion celebrations per year on campus, we'll do the 25th of 50th. And then an all encompassing five year, you know, five year marker. Yeah, so a little different, right? You've got you've got three separate reunion pushes throughout the year, which is a lot. But clearly an excellent way to drive alumni participation and giving. I mean, I think that's when alums are most compelled to give is when they are coming back for a reunion. So that's fantastic. Okay, talk to us about this slide here. Sure. So this is what we currently have going on now through the graduate platform. It's our senior class gift initiative, which we started, we're only in our fourth year of this. But what we do, it sort of helps us in two different ways. What we do is, we work with the senior class in terms of the importance and the senior class parents, the importance of giving before their students, you know, sort of wrapping up their time here and sending that message of, of appreciation, you know, for the education they've received for time spent here. And what we've done with the senior class gift is really segment just that, that, I'd say, just those, those, that class of parents and those students. And we've tied it to a capital project, which has been very helpful for the school. So over the last four years, we've actually raised money for now this is, this is our, I'll say a third separate capital project. The first two years, we rebuilt the teacher and faculty lounge, you know, through senior class gift initiative. Last year, we were able to rebuild our courtyard, which the students use during lunch. And this year, this year's class gift is going towards the cafeteria. So again, it's all things I mean, separate from the first year where we did the teacher's lounge. These are now tangible items that the parents can see, you know, we invite them back to campus, when the students, you know, after they graduate, we invite them back to see what they've done, you know, and where their dollars have gone. So that again, it sort of keeps it keeps it kind of cycling through and the parents stay involved, the students stay engaged. We really like to teach philanthropy as they're kind of going through their junior and senior year. And this ties it up for us. Yeah, creating that tradition with them early on, planting that seed of philanthropy, it's so important. We had a question here from Wanda, just about just going back to the ambassador idea. She's just asking what type of work do your ambassadors actually do? And what are you tasking them with specifically? Sure. So for the ambassadors, we'll we'll pull the list of say, say we have an ambassador who's representing the classes of 70 through 75. We'll pull the list of all the alums who have emails and who are engaged, and we'll write the content, we'll just really have that alum do the outreach. So it's, it's more recognizable classmate to classmate versus, you know, advancement office kind of continuously beating the drum and sending, you know, messages over and over. We'll also do what we've done last year, we'll, we'll do envelopes with that classmate signature, you know, on the return part. So they'll recognize it again, you know, from their classmates versus from us. So we try to use it a little bit in that sense, more strategically, where I think it feels more personal, you know, like a person to person outreach. Yeah, yeah, peer to peer, right? That's huge. If you can get your ambassadors to do that peer to peer fundraising, that speaks volumes, and it can be difficult, but you got to start somewhere, right? You have to just find those one or two who understand the importance of philanthropy in schools. Sometimes that message isn't always very well articulated by a school. And sometimes, you know, I'm speaking from a Canadian context here, we get a little shy sometimes about asking our alums to give, or asking our alums to ask other alums to give. So I think that's great. And you have to just chip away at that rebuild of your culture. And then we have another question for you, Craig, from Donna here, do you solicit your alumni in college as well? So we don't, we'll segment them out. We'll set, we'll reach out to our young alums to a certain year, if the students are currently in with them from solicitation. Because we don't, two parts of it, you know, they're university students who we don't anticipate would necessarily be donors or focused on giving when they've just gotten out of here. You know, a lot of times we see the seniors saying, you know, keep kind of giving you like a peace sign, and they don't want to see you for a while. So we don't bother them in that sense. And on the flip side, they are in college, so we don't want to already start potentially creating a negative sort of communication with them. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's, you're in the sort of the camp of most schools at that stage, you're really still trying to show how you can add value to them through that chapter of their lives, a very, a very taxing four to five to six years of going through college. And I mean, that's where the the graduate platform that Kate uses so well, is a nice value add for those alums for that college and career sort of support networking, finding my first internship and job. That's what you want to be focused on, right? You don't want to lose touch. You want to be adding value. And I think that's, that's really important. More questions here. How do you identify your ambassadors? Well, we have a, we'll go through our alumni groups. So first, so for us, it's our torch committee, sort of our advisory board. And the committee itself is, you know, alums from the 60s through, I'd say the most recent is our alum from 2010. So we'll go to our torch committee first to find those ambassadors. And then from there, we'll go to say, the alumni committee, we'll go to certain, you know, if it's the real estate committee, or the, so we have a lot of different groups here, just in terms of a lot of different sectors of work. So we'll work our way down to find committee members or ambassadors through each of those groups. Okay, yeah, it makes sense. And then another question from Donna, going back to the class giving initiative, do your seniors actually make a gift? Or is it just your parents that you're speaking to? And if so, how are you still involving the senior class and bringing that, you know, awareness of that philanthropy into their lives? It's both, you know, we're, we're thankful enough that it is both. Parents obviously drive the majority of the major giving and really, you know, most of the giving, but we do have the seniors involved. We do have a lot of our faculty who teach the senior classes, we'll speak to them about philanthropy, or we'll speak to them about the senior class gift, or they're able to see, you know, again, through change, just physical change in the building, they'll be able to understand it. This year, we again, you know, we're grateful enough to have a little bit more participation from the senior boys than we've had in years past. And then because we're starting to get that, like I said, this is the fourth year of the of this initiative, we're starting to get that sort of buy in that they're seeing a lot of change. And the boys are wanting to be a part of it, you know, and it's not, I'd say, you know, for the students, maybe no more than a $20 gift or $50 gift at most, but they're still showing involvement. Yes. Okay, wonderful. And then in terms of the the tools you're using, and as you've mentioned, you're using the advanced digital giving platform from Gravity, formerly Graduate, of course, but you I've got up on your screen here, the sort of little capture of all the different ways that people can make gifts through the platform, making it as easy as possible for them, as few clicks as possible for them. I mean, that's kind of the name of the game right now is digital philanthropy, it's got to be mobile friendly, it's got to be easy to make a gift. Talk to us about, you know, what you're doing there, how this is working for you. Are you finding that you're bringing in more gifts? Sure. So it's very user friendly, and it's been very good for us in terms of ease of use. We put one of our biggest pushes is for recurring giving for, you know, pledges and to begin recurring giving. So we keep those families in kind of sort of in the mix and in contact. And even though their sons are leaving the school, we use recurring giving a lot. And I'll say even for our 25th reunion, we have, we were about 50% of the way, in terms of time wise to the reunion, we've got about 40 or I think we have 44 gifts in from from the 25th, the class of 99. And 12 of them are recurring gifts. So so we really pushed that. So say almost 25%, or about 25% of each campaign is where we strive to get a, you know, a large pledge and recurring gift from. So any of these really we've we've had success with, I'd say, through the campaigns, you know, one time gifts are obviously the I'd say the biggest leader in all that. Appreciate stock, you know, we don't find that often, but we do have that come in. And again, matching gifts, it's been great, because we've integrated, you know, through the graduate platform, we've been able to now increase that we've we implemented that only last June, in 2023, was our first real, you know, introduction to having that with our graduate platform. But yeah, we really try to use each of these, and we promote each of them, whether you know, whether the messaging goes out to make a gift, we'll still tag something that you can also, you know, make a donation via Venmo, or, you know, matching different foundations. So we really try to plug each of the ways to make a gift. Okay, wonderful. Just a question from Elizabeth, how many students are in the senior class at Chaminade? This year, senior class has 375 students. Wow. And Kate, how does that compare with Havergill? What are you guys graduating every year? About 125 130. Okay. Okay, great. I had a question here, too. And I think like how we're going to wrap up in, you know, five to five to 10 minutes with with q&a, and some some overall sort of just general thoughts and tips and advice. We have another question, which I think is a very good one. And it's a tough one to answer sometimes. But this is from Yvette, she's coming from an international school, where most of the alums are spread across the globe, right? And it's difficult. And for those of us working in boarding schools, or international schools, we know how difficult it can be to get people in person to engage at an event. So do you guys ever have time to think about all those alums that can't make it to reunion, they're far flung, maybe they're elderly, they can't get there, they're or they're busy with family life, children, they don't have the capacity, or they're just, you know, too far away. What do you guys do to involve and excite and engage all of those people that can't be physically present? I mean, for us, I don't know if in terms of engagement for especially for older alums who can't make it to campus, we actually will offer them to record a piece that will show to their classmates, they're here, because prior to we have them meet in the small auditorium here, and we'll show sort of a through the years video. And then any classmates who can't make it, they'll actually have on the screen, you know, within our classmates. Well, so we do that as often as we can. Oh, I love that idea. That's, that's awesome. And because I mean, you can, your your mind might go automatically to, okay, I'm going to record parts of the reunion events. But who really wants to do that? I mean, that that's and it's mayhem. And we know this, we know that's mayhem, it's not going to be a good, but incorporating video is an important part of the strategy. So getting those classmates to submit their video, their update, even if it's like 30 seconds long, what a great idea. So how are you guys doing that, Craig? Like, what's that process look like? The process here, it's really our alumni, and it's our alumni communications department will do the outreach. Once we have our registrants who are in, we give them about two months, really, especially since we are since we do have a pretty vast alumni base, and they're all over the place. And you know, in international, we'll give ourselves some time to get that in. We put it together, it's kind of nice in terms of the output, when the other classmates do see people they haven't seen in a long time, and then they hear where they are. It's kind of a cool thing that we do here. So we give ourselves about a 60 to 90 day runway for that. Okay, 60, 90 days. And Kate, same question to you, what do you guys do to engage those that can't be physically with you? I mean, if anybody on this call has the actual secret recipe for that, I would like to know. We have a very robust class rep program at Haverhill. And so we tapped those class reps, or maybe some of the some of the class reps actually reached out to identify that as a concern. And so what we did is we helped to facilitate some zoom meetings for those classes. And so for some, they did the zoom meeting on a day that wasn't on reunion. And there were a couple of our older classes that actually asked for a place for them to zoom all together for the the alumni that had actually come back to campus. And so we found an empty classroom, we could set them up on zoom with some of their their classmates that couldn't make it into town for their reunion. But outside of that, it is a bit of a challenge, you know, and we are we do have a boarding component to our school. And so lots of times alumni won't come back or can't come back because they do live really far abroad. And so yeah, it's definitely it's it's a it's a tricky piece, for sure. And we do think a lot about it. The hybrid, the notion of a hybrid event, it's also a really tricky thing to pull off. And it's also really expensive if you don't have the appropriate equipment and AV and mics and all those sorts of things. So it's a bit of a roadblock in that regard as well. And it's hard to have a hybrid cocktail reception, it doesn't really work. So for the moment, we're trying these individual sort of zoom sessions for classes that that ask for that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Another question here from from Gregory. For both of you, I think how do you market your giving? Do you promote your annual fund? Can donors earmark their gift to a specific designation like arts or athletics? Craig, I know you said you're trying to divert a lot of the fundraising towards capital projects. And that's kind of what you guys do. But I would love to hear more on that from both of you. How are you giving alumni a choice? How are you directing them to make a gift, pick a designation? Are you picking it for them? Kate, would you like to go? Yeah, I'll just go really quickly. Most of our giving asks are we direct them, we suggest that they give to their class fund. And the total amount in their class funds, it's it's no secret at Haverhill, we actually posted in the magazine. So each class has a section where they share their class news. And part of the upper sort of masthead that lists their class reps, we also list the amount of the dollar amount in their class fund. So we talk a lot about it. It's front and center. And we do ask them to give back to their class fund. For the most part, there are other alumni that would prefer to give to our you know, heads discretionary fund or annual fund. And so they can do that from the the link to the the giving page. But most of our asks, we're asking them to give to their class fund, it seems to make the most sense around reunion time. Okay, Greg. And for us, so our torch fund is our annual giving platform. So we do, we've, we've kind of switched up a bit in these last about a year, year and a half. So we'll ask torch fund is where we kind of want the gifts to go. We've opened up on on the graduate platform, different buckets, you know, let them know that all of our operating expenses are obviously they're covered by the torch fund, we'll actually allow them to, you know, we'll show them what, say the athletic expense bucket looks like, or the general operating expense bucket looks like everything filters through the torch fund, but this is what they cover. So we'll ask them that we'll ask them to donate to the torch fund specifically, we'll also give them an idea of, you know, this percent goes to athletic expense, this goes to extracurricular activity expense. And then that on the flip side will help us sort of get an idea of what the donor thinks to or what their interests are. So we kind of got that way. Very, very similar to what we did at Brentwood as well. Our student impact fund was our large sort of umbrella term for our annual fund that we sort of rebranded ourselves with. And then they could make we had sort of featured sort of areas that they could promote or kind of divert their gift to with within that umbrella. And it worked really well, because people understand any one of those funds that they give to is impacting the students directly, whether you give to the arts program, athletics, you give to academics, you give to financial aid, it's all trickling down to the students. It works really, really well. And I think just being more transparent about, you know, where the funds go, who's giving to them, which which areas are getting traction, which need your help, your support. That's all brilliantly done through through the digital giving pages that are available out there. Another question from Donnie, or how is money in the class fund spent? Does that go to financial aid? Is that like a legacy sort of a class legacy gift to a future student? How does that work, Craig? In terms of like our senior class fund, if we're doing that, that's that's strictly to that capital project that year. Okay, that's going to the capital project. Yeah. I know in some schools, it's it's a mix of things that could be going towards a bursary for a future student in that class's name, that's common. Oh, and Kate, same question for you. How are you guys spending the class giving funds? Where is that going to? It goes to student financial support. They're endowed funds for the most part. In some situations, the class has, you know, indicated where they would like their funds directed, or they, you know, did their fundraising in support of a particular initiative. Sometimes it's a, you know, a speaker series for or, you know, that that sort of thing. But for the most part, it's, it's dedicated to financial assistance. Okay, perfect. Thank you. We're just about at time, I wanted to kind of just address this last bullet point here. Before we kind of wrap up and take any final questions. Reunion is a springboard. I mean, you put so much effort into the day, getting people there, helping them have a great time reconnect with their school, maybe open their wallets. What is the springboard towards? What's the long term vision? You know, what are you going to do with your alums afterwards? Are you thinking through, okay, when they go home, they pack their bags, and then we don't see them maybe again for another five years. What are we going to do to keep them engaged, keep them, you know, in the community as much as possible? I mean, that's a really great question. We actually talk a lot about how to you know, what happens after anytime you do an event, I think that it's really important, you have to think about your return on engagement. For us, the reunion giving the class giving asks, don't stop. It's actually the reunion, as you say, Amy is the springboard for us. We're hoping that it does. I mean, we do some some asking and all of our communications, the ask is there and we're not we're not hiding it by any sense. And we do offer these little, little challenges. But we also continue to hit up those fours and nines in this year in particular, around continuing to give to their class fund. And we're hoping that this springboard, as you say, has conjured up all those feelings of nostalgia and pride, and that we can sort of tug on some of those strings and hope that that does elicit some some gifts, because they did feel really good about their experience, and they feel a reconnection to their alma mater. Love that. Craig, what are your thoughts on the springboard? springboard? So you know, in terms of the 25th and the 50th, I use those examples like the 25th reunion, you know, reengaging some of the alumni who've been out of here, understanding that, you know, anywhere between like 42 and 44 years old, they may be hitting, you know, their stride in terms of earnings and beginning to get that that landscape of peak wealth, you know, for the next 10 years. So we want that sort of a good feeling and getting them reengaged and back on campus. In terms of our 50th, we've actually adjusted that and, you know, we'll still talk about, you know, what their experiences were here, their giving and staying involved giving. We've actually adjusted that to our new plan giving and planning programs. So we really adjusted based on, you know, reunion years, and how we want to look at them in terms of our long game. So that's what I was running. I was waiting for that from somebody, you know, what plan giving portfolio, right? Those those 50, 60 year grads? Is that is that being looked at? Right? Is that is that happening? Just kind of like organically? Or is that a real part of your strategy? The plan giving piece? Any any additional kind of points there? Thoughts? Because I think it's something that is a natural next step is to start cultivating some of those older grads for a plan gift, right? Absolutely. And for a while, we had just let it sit organically. And as people would just, you know, leave us in their will and whatever, you know, we get notifications. But we saw that as a piece where we have a lot of our again, our our major giver, our major donors in a certain demographic, we change the strategy. And then I like, you know, in turn change the strategy for the 50th reunion to say this is the discussion for the 50th reunion class, we'd like them to still stay engaged, but we're now offering plan giving and this is a more robust program for us. Thank you. Kate, any any thoughts on plan giving? There is Havergill looking at that as well. We are but it's just sort of in its infancy. We've kind of it hasn't really it's we're needing to dust it off and resurrect that. So we're actually just starting to talk about those sorts of things. Now we're actually hosting a session around plan giving in early May. So we're not quite at a place where I would have anything sort of really concrete to share right now. But it's certainly something to think about, particularly with your alums. When I was at the Bishop Strawn School, we actually hosted a session before estate planning, that sort of thing. Before that reunion luncheon for older alums that graduated 50 years ago or earlier. We did sort of couch it under this sort of, you know, estate planning, preparing your will, those sorts of things. But it was fairly well attended. And we captured everybody before they had a free lunch on us. So they kind of had to think through what we were what we were offering. But it's an idea that could work. Yeah. Elizabeth asks, are what companies are using for plan giving if any? Or are you looking at some because I know there's new ones popping up out there in the market. So any advice, thoughts? Have you looked at stuff? Have you used stuff before that's a dedicated plan giving solution? We have not. We use MyFreeWill. So we had looked at a couple companies, but we landed with MyFreeWill. And how does that work, Craig? Just a little bit of, you know, is that something that is very hands on? Is that sort of like a tool that you just hand over to the donor to do? Like, how does that work? We do. So it's more we hand it over to the donor. You know, we have our template language in there. And again, even there, we do segmentation. And we'll put those out. We use specifics, whether it's January, because it's a new year, you know, resolution time. I know there's a, you know, make a will month, which we really didn't know until we signed on with them. So we kind of we do that and we plan around different sort of what we think might be peak seasons. Okay, good. Yeah, MyFreeWill. I'll have to check that one out. That sounds interesting. Another person here in the chat, Susan says they use Pantera, P-E-N-T-E-R-A. Yeah, I think there's there's like, all of this stuff we're talking about today, so many ideas, solutions popping up there in the tech space that is going to really revolutionize and it already is revolutionizing how we're approaching this work. So that's, you know, what I get most excited about as well as how can I do more with the tech that's available. So I think you guys are doing just fantastic things at your schools. We don't have any additional questions in the chat right now. I'll give people an extra minute to maybe just put any last questions or comments in there. In the meantime, though, Kate, final word of wisdom, advice that you would give to those on the call today who are thinking about engagement for reunion. Final pearl of wisdom from you, please. Oh, that's a tough one. I don't know if it's going to be a pearl of wisdom. But you know, I think that it's, it's one of the events, as I mentioned, sort of right off the top where you can expect a critical mass. And there is something really exciting about that. Sometimes it's a bit of a crapshoot when you're attesting on a new alumni engagement event, and you're never really sure what the appetite is going to be. We know that there is an appetite for reunions. And so really lean into that and just get excited about having such a critical mass back at the school because it is a really, it's a pretty powerful and pretty impactful type of event where people are really excited to be there. And so just embrace that for what it is. And it's chaotic. And it's, you know, you know, it's a lot of work, but it can be really fun also, and you get to meet a lot of alum that you maybe haven't had the chance to meet yet. And so just embrace it for what it is. Thank you. And Craig, any final words of advice, encouragement? For us, it's really lean into the fund, you know, for the fundraising portion of the reunion. You know, for a while, I know, we were a little hesitant to say, you know, it's really we don't want to bother anybody. And then once we really did, we kind of unearthed some gems. And so I'd say, being able to do that, you know, feel comfortable in having the reunion, having them back on campus, knowing that they're back because they really enjoy being there. And then, you know, take the next step into kind of turning them into donors. Yeah. Very wise. Thank you so much to both of you. We do have to wrap it up now. And I want to thank again, Case for allowing us to co-host this session today. The team from Gravity, we love hearing about how you're using our products, how your overall strategies are going around reunion and all of your efforts throughout the year. So really thank both of you for for telling the story and to everyone for coming today. And Christy, I'll hand it back over to you. Thanks so much, Amy. Thank you, Kate and Craig, too. I know some of you guys have meetings to get off to. So I'm going to wrap it up with that. Just for everyone on the call, if you missed in the beginning, this was recorded, we will share out that recording with you if you want to go back and listen to anything that you missed. So look for that email from us later today and have a great day. Thank you for joining us, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Take care.

engaging alumni

boosting class giving

reunions

segmentation

competition

ambassadors

donations

capital projects

planned giving opportunities