Office of Student Life
Buckeye Leadership Fellows Program

Expressing Gratitude-Students Partner with Ohio State Advancement

February 3, 2015

Philanthropic support is integral to any higher education institution’s advancement. Giving is about relationships of trust and confidence. The Advancement team at The Ohio State University is carefully thinking about the experiences we create for donors and developing more touch points to show appreciation and let donors know they make a difference to Ohio State. A tactic that we are piloting this spring is Thank a Donor Day.

Over the next eight weeks, our “fellows” are challenged to identify and implement ways to engage students in this effort, including creating a short video that conveys a thank you message to donors. 

This marks the first time we’ve hosted a Leadership Challenge with a University partner.

Thank a Donor Day is a common practice at other institutions – an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff alike to share their gratitude with the donors and partners who make it possible for the institution to persist.

This will be the first year that a Thank a Donor Day initiative is piloted at The Ohio State University.

University Advancement is coordinating efforts for this day, offering support and strategies to college-level units across the university to manage their work to connect with their college-specific donors.

With support and resources from the Advancement team, fellows will select key student audiences to engage, Establish metrics and goals for measuring your success with those audiences, Develop a communication plan, Implement specific engagement tactics for Thank a Donor Day, and work to meet team goals.

Additionally, teams will work to create a concise, 30-second thank you video directed towards all Ohio State donors. These videos will be judged by a panel of experts who will select the video highlighted during Thank a Donor Day. To measure effectiveness, the following objectives must be met:

Cohort Goals:

  • Collect 2,000 thank you notes by engaging students on Thank a Donor Day, in conjunction with 
  • Arm the Advancement team with information and tools that can be used to engage students in future efforts related to showing appreciation to donors (examples: a short presentation that could be shared with student groups explaining the initiative and encouraging their involvement, document lessons-learned from Thank a Donor Day, make at least one of the videos generic enough that it could be used to share with others in the future) Individual Goals
  • Identify at least two ways that donors have impacted your experience at Ohio State
  • Share at least one social media post about Thank a Donor Day
  • Generate interest and participation in Thank a Donor Day amongst at least 20 peers

Parameters

A successful team will do the following:

  1. Organize your cohort into the teams to strategically tackle this challenge.
  2. Choose a few specific student audiences (including the Student-Alumni Council) that should be engaged around Thank a Donor Day, with guidance from Advancement staff.
  3. Determine goals and metrics that will measure your success in engaging these audiences.
  4. Develop and implement a communication plan and engagement tactics for your audiences to be involved in Thank a Donor Day, with guidance from Advancement staff.
  5. Create a 30-second video thanking all Ohio State donors, with guidance from Advancement staff.