Reimagining Event Strategy to Deepen Donor Engagement: A University of Maryland Medicine Case Study-Slides

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This case study details the University of Maryland Medicine's (UMM) innovative approach to deepening donor engagement through revamped event strategies, in collaboration with iFOLIO, a digital marketing platform company. UMM’s Special Events team, led by Julie Ecke, manages a $3 million budget across 33 major annual events targeting donors, faculty, staff, students, and community leaders, with goals focused on donor cultivation and in-person fundraising.<br /><br />Previously, UMM faced challenges with a manual, resource-intensive event system that lacked analytics, had a confusing interface, rigid templates, limited attendee registration capacity, and costly per-registration fees. These limitations hindered delivering a high-end, consistent donor experience and made measuring event impact difficult beyond simple RSVP counts.<br /><br />Partnering with iFOLIO brought transformative digital innovations including integrated marketing, automated reminders, RSVP tracking, and collaborative cloud-based event content creation. iFOLIO’s user-friendly event builder allowed UMM to quickly create and deploy personalized event invitations, save-the-dates, and reminders, streamlining workflows and improving donor relation touchpoints. Crucially, iFOLIO’s patented analytics provided comprehensive insights into donor engagement, enabling data-driven strategies to optimize outreach.<br /><br />The case highlights successful events such as the Diversity Dinner & Celebration, which garnered nearly 1,000 views and wide geographic reach, demonstrating increased donor interaction. Best practices emphasized include embracing digital tools, personalizing communications, automating follow-ups, and leveraging analytics to tailor further engagement.<br /><br />The partnership showcased a hybrid model combining creative agency support and advanced technology to scale event marketing effectively. Feedback from major donors praised the innovative use of technology for storytelling and engagement enhancement.<br /><br />In summary, UMM leveraged iFOLIO’s integrated digital platform to modernize event strategy, improve operational efficiency, deepen donor connections, and elevate fundraising outcomes, providing a replicable model for other institutions seeking to transform advancement events through technology and data-driven personalization.

Keywords

University of Maryland Medicine

donor engagement

event strategies

iFOLIO

digital marketing platform

fundraising events

event analytics

personalized invitations

automated reminders

data-driven outreach