Organization Awards of Distinction

The Foundation for Fraternal Excellence Awards of Distinction provide the fraternal foundation community an annual opportunity to recognize organizations excelling and innovating in a particular area. Fraternal foundations are often known as the “heart” of our organizations and provide financial support to a variety of philanthropic causes as well as their collegiate and alumni members/local communities. It is an important responsibility of the FFE to recognize this critical role fraternal foundations play and the excellent work produced by our organizations. We also strive to recognize the accomplishments, contributions and influence of the individual men and women who have made a difference in interfraternal fundraising and without whom our industry would not be what it is today.

2023 Honorees

BEST COMMUNICATIONS EFFORT

Alpha Chi Omega Foundation

Ahead of their Common Bond. Uncommon Impact. campaign launch, 200 customized influencer boxes were filled with branded goodies and social shareables and distributed to select donors. Serving as campaign influencers, these donors were tasked with building excitement and engagement for the in-person and virtual campaign launch events at their convention. 

Amazingly, the effort resulted in more than two hundred social media posts using the hashtag #AXOuncommon to promote the campaign launch. When the campaign launch email was finally sent to 76,000 individuals, there were 52,000 total opens and 15,471 forwards. At convention, when it came time for the virtual launch, 745 individuals had registered and 237 attended the live broadcast. 

BEST DEVELOPMENT EFFORT IN AN ANNUAL CAMPAIGN

Lambda Chi Alpha Educational Foundation

Held from November 2-3 annually, their Founders’ Day Challenge celebrates their brotherhood and raises annual and unrestricted dollars, respectively named the “We Believe” Fund and “Seed Capital” Fund. 

Based on the previous year’s results of nearly $750,000 raised, they set their 2022 goal at $1 million dollars and 1,909 donors. To reach their goal, they leveraged a matching gift challenge and included peer-to-peer ambassadors providing them an online toolkit, personal fundraiser page options, and inviting members and friends of Lambda Chi to donate to the challenge as part of a chapter team or on their own. And, thanks to their generous match donor, their effort raised $2.1 million dollars! 

BEST STEWARDSHIP EFFORT

Pi Kappa Alpha Foundation

Working in tandem with their PC Dashboard, a tracking document identifying all members and their expiration dates, staff reviews President’s Council membership information monthly to see who will lapse soon and proactively schedules a meeting to secure next year’s gift or renewal. Additionally, a part-time staff member hosts virtual meetings with donors to save staff time and resources while still continuing the stewardship touchpoints. 

Since they view stewardship as part of the moves management and solicitation cycle, all of these stewardship efforts, coupled with their proactive development efforts, led to an all-time high PC membership in 2022!  Growing from 448 to 504 members — inclusive of 108 new members and representing an 89% renewal rate.

BEST USE OF A FOUNDATION GRANT

Gamma Phi Beta Foundation

A $66,100 grant was awarded to their sorority counterparts providing funding for the Belonging, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Summit — which is dedicated solely to creating a more just, equitable and inclusive Gamma Phi Beta. The grant was used to fund the keynote speakers, curriculum development, supporting staff and the technology to deliver this program to members.  

This grant impacts a significant portion of their membership, including every collegiate chapter with alumnae, collegians and staff and invited to participate in the half-day virtual summit. After reviewing established goals and outcomes, 98% of attendees report they strongly agreed or agreed they had achieved the intended outcome. 

BEST PLANNED GIVING EFFORT

Delta Tau Delta Educational Foundation

With more than 70 individual donors and nearly $12,000,000 in new planned gifts since the launch of their Forging the Future Campaign, the Delt Foundation used a strategic omnichannel approach that included face-to-face solicitation, email, direct mail, social media, web, and print media, their audience receives consistent messaging across every Delt platform.  

At the outset of the campaign they set an initial planned gift goal of $5,000,000 million dollars based on the results feasibility study. Due to the overwhelming response, however, they soon realized that this goal would be surpassed. Incredibly, their planned gift effort resulted in the single largest documented planned gift in the Delt Foundation history at five point three $5.3M dollars.

BEST MAJOR GIFTS DEVELOPMENT EFFORT

Delta Tau Delta Educational Foundation

The Forging the Future Campaign is the largest comprehensive effort in Delt fundraising history resulting in gift commitments of more than $26,000,000 dollars and counting.  

With major gifts, defined as donations of $10,000+ dollars, these gifts account for more than $9.3M dollars of total cash commitments to date from 285 unique gifts. Also incredibly impressive, the average major cash gift size comes in at $32,631 dollars. 

BEST NEW DEVELOPMENT IDEA

Pi Kappa Alpha Foundation, Sigma Alpha Epsilon Foundation & Sigma Chi Foundation

The Interfraternal Giving Tuesday Challenge is a fun, friendly competition between fraternity foundations to see which organization can raise the most money for its unrestricted annual fund on Giving Tuesday. In 2022, each participating organization had a record-breaking Giving Tuesday.   

Cumulatively the three groups raise $517,993.40, of which, $383,584.91 were unrestricted gifts. 

BEST CAMPAIGN/PROGRAM IN SUPPORT OF AN OUTSIDE PHILANTHROPY

Alpha Gamma Delta Foundation

Providing grants to 106 unique Fighting Hunger organizations across the United States and Canada, including seven new organizations this year alone, they have helped hunger-relief organizations provide meals to 2,015,916 individuals. And over the last five years, their support has helped organizations engage 258,985 volunteers. 

Additionally, the AGD Foundation has engaged 19 volunteers through their Fighting Hunger Grant Committee between 2017 and 2023, and as the program has grown, the number of applications received has increased, escalating the need for Fighting Hunger Committee volunteers. 

BEST OPERATIONS IMPROVEMENT EFFORT

Alpha Chi Omega Foundation

Created as a tool to assist volunteers in their fundraising responsibilities, the Volunteer Manager Portal provides real-time fundraising information — including recent gift information — for volunteers’ assigned donors and projects and allows them to enter donor contacts. The portal is directly linked to the Foundation’s CRM, with access and security governed by existing volunteer committees in the CRM.

The goals of the project were to provide volunteers with real-time information to more effectively perform their fundraising and stewardship responsibilities; reduce staff time required to provide updates; and allow volunteer fundraisers to enter their own moves management activities into the database for improved visibility and collaborative donor support. Eliminating the need for weekly and monthly reports previously distributed by email, volunteers love having access to fundraising information without having to wait for reports that consumed much of the staff’s time. 

2022 Honorees

BEST COMMUNICATIONS EFFORT

Pi Kappa Alpha Foundation

With a focus on content related to how the Foundation makes an impactcompared to a more traditional annual report largely featuring donor listingsthis year, the Pike Foundation flipped the script for their Annual Report. While still offering a printed piece and PDF, the report was also reimagined into a digital format available on their website. Through integrating QR codes and other indicators in the print version, readers were directed to their website where they were able to watch videos, explore Pike digital archives and “meet the CEO”. All of the web content was easily accessible and directly embedded on the webpage to keep visitors engaged. And with a digital version easily accessible, they were able to keep donation options front and center. 

BEST DEVELOPMENT EFFORT IN AN ANNUAL CAMPAIGN

FarmHouse Foundation

The 7th annual FarmHouse Day of Giving was held from April 14 to 15 spanning 1905 minutes in honor of FarmHouse’s founding date, April 15, 1905. To reaching $300,000 in gifts – surpassing their original $250,000 goal – the team executed a multi-challenge fundraising approach over the course of four months, including: direct mail, email, social media, personalized videos, challenge gifts, phone calls by Trustees and staff, Ambassador outreach and great stewardship to top it all off. In total 1,254 individuals donated, 48 of which were new FarmHouse Foundation donors. Investments secured from this wildly successful campaign will support leadership training, education, scholarships, research and ultimately will help to ensure the positive FarmHouse experience continues, and that current and future members achieve excellence in their academic, personal and professional lives. 

BEST STEWARDSHIP EFFORT

Delta Gamma Foundation

Going above and beyond to create individual stewardship plans for every $1M+ donor, Delta Gamma Foundation intentionally fosters meaningful relationships with each donor while inspiring and creating opportunities for continued giving. Not only a thank you card or a lifetime giving pin will do when recognizing their donors, Delta Gamma Foundation creates hard cover books for each of these donors with stories and photos that detail how their gift has made a difference. They ask scholarship recipients to send handwritten notes thanking the donor and explaining how their life has been impacted, and they annually recognize donors of this caliber in their magazine with a feature story for readers to understand the impact of giving to the Foundation. 

BEST USE OF A FOUNDATION GRANT

Alpha Phi Foundation

The Alpha Phi Leadership Institute grant supported a three-day immersive experience in partnership with the Disney Institute in Orlando, Florida. With a customized curriculum to Alpha Phi, the program was designed for participants to develop and strengthen leadership skills, learn to lead with purpose, identify personal values, and more. In the first of their three-year contract, 418 collegiate members applied, with every chapter granted the opportunity to send a member. In total, 164 undergraduates attended. Participants were surveyed in several areas prior to the program, as well as following, with amazing results! One of which was the understanding of “how to use storytelling as a leadership skill” which ranked 5.86 out of 10 before the institute and increased to 9.3 out of 10 afterwards! 

Lambda Chi Alpha Educational Foundation

The recently launched Leadership Skills Certification Academy, known as LSCA, was made possible by a grant of almost $1.5 million by the Lambda Chi Educational Foundation. Combining professional development resources, functional training, real-world tools, and relevant aspects of the fraternity leadership experience, this virtual program provides participants with marketable skills that appeal to prospective employers from all industries. Initially launched as a pilot program in fall 2021, 31 digital badges were awarded to participants – exceeding the original target of 25. A transformational experience now available for all Lambda Chi Alpha brothers following the successful pilot program, LSCA enhances correlation between content and real-world experience while serving their chapter as an officer offering tangible skills and competencies. 

BEST PLANNED GIVING EFFORT

Phi Mu Foundation

The One Destiny Campaign – a comprehensive campaign that wrapped up in summer 2022 – exceeded their estate gift goal by more than $5 million dollars, raising a total of $12,338,965 dollars in planned gifts to further support the Phi Mu Foundation and sorority experience. The effort largely focused on the promotion of a three-part gift to the campaign which included a planned gift. Along with their campaign consultant, they hosted a series of Foundation Friday coffee chats via Zoom that led to a three-part webinar series. The webinar series focused on educating women about their role as philanthropists and helped them better understand the impact they could have on Phi Mu through a planned gift. This effort culminated in May 2022 with a two-page spread on women in philanthropy and planned giving in Phi Mu Fraternity’s magazine. 

BEST MAJOR GIFTS DEVELOPMENT EFFORT

Delta Gamma Foundation

In June 2022, the Delta Gamma Foundation launched the public phase of Anchoring the Future: A Campaign for Delta Gamma, but the quiet phase of the campaign began in July 2018. At that time, a Campaign Cabinet of 16 members was created to amplify the Foundation’s ability to solicit major gifts from sisters and friends. The Campaign Cabinet’s collective portfolio of 261 individual donors donated more than $7.5 million over four years, averaging $472,070 raised per cabinet member since July 2018. Impressively, the $7.5+ million dollars in revenue attributed to Campaign Cabinet members is exclusively from individual alumnae members of Delta Gamma. However, Campaign Cabinet members have also been instrumental in soliciting gifts from collegiate chapters of well over $1,000,000. 

BEST NEW DEVELOPMENT IDEA

Phi Delta Theta Educational Foundation

The First-Generation Undergraduate Scholarship Initiative is a new membership program with the primary purpose of creating greater access to Phi Delta Theta Fraternity by breaking down social economic barriers to membership with $250,0000 in funding provided each year. Additionally, this program seeks to enable Phi Delt chapters to achieve a membership more representative of the campus where they reside. To that end, this endeavor will create new recruiting pipelines from a greater pool of member prospects, and provide more support to a greater number of new members. 

Pi Kappa Alpha Foundation

This year Pike created a new business entity, the Historical Society. The Historical Society is a single-member LLC under the Foundation’s 501c3 umbrella that owns all historical artifacts and records. Partnering with HistoryIT to begin digitizing their entire collection, their most recent Founder’s Day of Giving was used to officially launch the new entity with fundraising efforts specifically benefitting the society. Messaging was tailored to focus on three specific needs: Gold Star Heroes, Digital Archives and their Archivist. These areas resonated with donors and led to a $40,000 matching challenge and resulted in more than $95,000 raised – a 790% increase over the previous year’s giving day amount raised of $12,000. 

BEST CAMPAIGN/PROGRAM IN SUPPORT OF AN OUTSIDE PHILANTHROPY

Tri Delta Foundation

In 2014, Tri Delta set the ambitious goal of raising $60 million for St. Jude by 2024 – a goal that was met in 2022, two years ahead of the original goal. From the signature letter-writing campaign, “Sincerely Yours”, to events like competitive “Delta Dodgeball” tournaments and popular “D-Hop” pancake breakfast events – all which helped to contribute to the $60 million-dollar goal – Tri Delta members worked year-round to raise funds and awareness for St. Jude at colleges and universities across North America. In honor of this momentous pledge, St. Jude named its on-campus, short-term housing facility Tri Delta Place, a home away from home for patient families.  

BEST OPERATIONS IMPROVEMENT EFFORT

Sigma Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation

In 2019, SigEp set a goal to improve their foundation stewardship and reporting abilities to increase trust from their donors and improve their donor experience. Two fiscal years later, they doubled their annual fund from almost $745,000 to more than $1.5 million. They completed an extensive overhaul of all their foundation processes, moving most of them off spreadsheets and manual manipulation, and into their Salesforce Database with support from ChapterSpot. One of the biggest changes for the team is that staff now receives a daily gift report to ensure data integrity and drive stewardship, including gift acknowledgment, fund disbursement, pledge reminders, annual tax letters and quarterly fund report.

2021 Honorees

BEST USE OF A FOUNDATION GRANT

Pi Beta Phi Foundation

Each year, Pi Phi organizes grants to local organizations in our communities across North America through First Book, a nonprofit that works with publishers to provide educators access to deeply discounted, to provide children with access to books. On top of the $157,000 grant Pi Phi planned to give in 2020 (resulting in 55,515+ books), Pi Phi granted an additional $480,000 specifically for COVID-19 relief from The Literacy Fund, which supports Pi Phi’s reading initiatives. With those dollars, 415,291 additional books were provided to children in need. Thanks in part to Pi Phi’s grant, books were able to reach an estimated 43,234+ kids, providing immediate relief during a time of complete disruption of our typical educational channels in the United States.

 

BEST USE OF A FOUNDATION GRANT

Kappa Kappa Gamma Foundation

In response to Kappa Kappa Gamma’s strategic initiative of increasing engagement and education opportunities for alumnae, as well as our current economy and high unemployment rates as a result of COVID-19, Kappa created CareerAcademy. This program is targeted to young professionals and women changing career paths or re-entering the workforce. The competencies were shared by leadership experts and professional Kappas who have career lessons to share. Through live events, online courses, printable resources, and self-paced podcasts, Career Academy focuses on the five topics while promoting professional development through shared stories of other women’s career successes, obstacles, and tips and tricks for getting started orc ontinuing a career journey.

BEST DEVELOPMENT EFFORT IN AN ANNUAL CAMPAIGN

Sigma Alpha Epsilon Foundation

In effort to raise unrestricted dollars while also honoring the 90th anniversary of their historic headquarters building, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Foundation launched a campaign that resonated with chapters as well as individual donors, and the response from donors was sensational. The campaign far exceeded the initial $150,000 goal by raising $420,000 with a total of 1,950 donors, including 400 new donors. The Shrine of Minerva campaign helped the SAE Foundation achieve their most successful year on record in addition to honoring the building, their ritual, immortalizing brothers on the Temple grounds, and supporting undergraduates.

BEST STEWARDSHIP EFFORT

Tau Kappa Epsilon Foundation

The TKE Foundation introduced monthly, peer-to-peer stewardship opportunities through an ambassador program, which saw a dramatic, 155%, increase in thank you messages sent – totaling over 1,700 personalized messages. The Ambassador program spread the organization’s mission through various channels and re-engaged approximately 600 LYBUNT (a donor who gave Last Year, But Unfortunately Not This year) and SYBUNT (Some year but not this year) donors. This represents a 155.11% growth in the number of stewardship messages sent by the group with the top 14% of contributors and gifts being recognizes by Ambassadors.

BEST COMMUNICATIONS EFFORT

Phi Mu Foundation

When the pandemic shifted Phi Mu’s convention and campaign launch plans, they discovered opportunities to involve social media influencers. The One Destiny Campaign is a comprehensive, mission-driven fundraising campaign that coordinates the Foundation’s five fundraising priorities into one strategic effort. The 450 collegiate and alumna team helped Phi Mu reach 3,477 members and friends during the live streaming campaign launch event on YouTube and Facebook with the recording reaching 12,377 in the first 12 hours, whereas the in-person would’ve only gathered about 700 members.

Delta Delta Delta Foundation

The Delta Delta Delta Foundation encouraged members to stay active while trying to stay connected during the time of social distancing by logging 132 miles between April and their Founders’ Day in November 2020. To help track progress, view their chapter’s collective progress, and individual leaderboards by member and state, Tri Delta created a website landing page for the mileage—this was great engagement with the members. For additional engagement, they created “Walking Wednesday” where they took to social media to highlight a song, podcast, activities and different ways for members to get their steps in. The initial goal was to have a total of 132,000 organizational miles, which they achieved by September!

BEST MAJOR GIFTS DEVELOPMENT EFFORT

Kappa Alpha Theta

To honor their Sesquicentennial, the Kappa Alpha Theta Foundation developed the 150 Giving Clubs at $15,000, $1,500, and $150 giving levels. This gave donors the opportunity to support both initiatives in the way most meaningful to them and allowed the Foundation to position major gifts received to inspire further giving. This year, the foundation quadrupled the number of $15,000 gifts.

BEST NEW DEVELOPMENT IDEA

Kappa Alpha Order Educational Foundation

Every organization has allies outside of their own membership, but how many utilize these allies to further their fundraising goals? The Kappa Alpha Order Educational Foundation used the support of nonmembers to reach their goal of 1,000 donors at $1,000 per year or more. Their nonmember giving society, Rose Circle of the Crimson and Gold, has monthly planning and progress calls led by these volunteers and bi-weekly new member reports so the new members are appropriately thanked by staff and volunteers.

Zeta Beta Tau Foundation

This idea developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since in-person identification, cultivation and solicitation was suspended, ZBT developed 13 virtual programs with 1,635 attendees, an average of 126 per program! Programs assisted undergraduate and alumni members maximizing their personal development and prepare them to be leaders of society. The programs have also allowed the Foundation to engage high profile alumni who serve as panelists and moderators.

2020 Honorees

BEST CAMPAIGN/PROGRAM IN SUPPORT OF AN OUTSIDE PHILANTHROPY

Alpha Delta Pi Foundation

Alpha Delta Pi is cited as a model partner due to the group’s overall long-term donations of time, unrestricted financial support and in-kind contributions. In 2019, this fraternal foundation celebrated the anniversary of their 40-year partnership with the Ronald McDonald House Charities by expanding, adding a new endowment to promote collegiate chapter participation as part of their larger $10 million We Believe capital campaign. The foundation was able to make five inaugural grants totaling $25,000 to local Ronald McDonald houses.

BEST USE OF A FOUNDATION GRANT

Alpha Chi Omega Foundation

A strong partnership between the fraternity and foundation has resulted in widespread philanthropic dedication across approximately 150 collegiate chapters. The Alpha Chi Omega Foundation has granted more than $1.2 million to promote domestic violence awareness education and advocacy, including a national partnership with RAINN and ongoing programmatic support. More than 4,100 student attendees at 36 chapters received a 4-hour intensive program on domestic violence awareness and approximately 300 packages of materials for tabling and awareness were provided to collegiate chapters.

BEST DEVELOPMENT EFFORT IN AN ANNUAL CAMPAIGN

Kappa Alpha Order Educational Foundation

As part of a campaign to raise $1 million in unrestricted funds yearly, Kappa Alpha Order Educational Foundation leaders reframed an existing giving society to celebrate the $1,000 plus contributions. Starting in the first year of the program, the Crimson & Gold Society had 270 members; by this year, the fourth of the campaign, the foundation is on pace to reach 800 society members. The organization’s investment in a multi-tiered outreach strategy has resulted in $3.3 million raised total with 80% of donors renewing year-over-year.

BEST STEWARDSHIP EFFORT

Tri Sigma Foundation

The Tri Sigma Foundation thinks outside of the box in creating channels to help their donors feel a sense of love and gratitude. Members of the Steadfast Giving Club who missed the 2019 convention each received a t-shirt, lanyard, booklet, socks and a hand-written thank you note in the mail less than three weeks after the event – generating an emotional connection and celebrating the individual’s commitment.

Kappa Alpha Order Educational Foundation

Kappa Alpha Order successfully transitioned a reception for members of a high-level giving society to a virtual event in less than three weeks time. The foundation hosted video-streamed remarks from national leaders, a virtual tour of the headquarters building and grounds and engaged patrons with an online toast. Initial expectations were for about 60 attendees, but the Crimson & Gold Society and 1865 Trust Virtual Reception ended up with 150 live participants, including one alumnus who made a $10,000 bequest the following day.

BEST COMMUNICATIONS EFFORT

Beta Theta Pi Foundation

Beta Theta Pi invested in celebrating the milestone anniversary of member initiations for 25-, 50- and 75-year brothers, annually reaching about 4,000 men. Each member receives a formal package with congratulatory letter and certificate; 75-year members also receive a commemorative pin. Besides the mailed package, volunteers and current donors receive a personal phone call from a foundation staff member.

BEST MAJOR GIFTS DEVELOPMENT EFFORT

Pi Beta Phi Foundation

This impressive major gifts campaign shined as part of the Pi Beta Phi 150th anniversary celebration. An initial internal goal of $10 million was quickly increased to a public $28 million goal, which was ultimately surpassed. The foundation’s leadership worked to ensure each member and chapter learned the importance of organizational philanthropy and advocacy, and as such reached 7,000 donors over four years.

BEST PLANNED GIVING EFFORT

Beta Theta Pi Foundation

Beta Theta Pi partnered with Freewill.com, an online resource which allows users to create legal wills in a matter of minutes. Freewill’s portal includes an option for members of the fraternity to establish a planned gift. In April 2019, the service was launched through a highly strategized communication plan utilizing email, print, web, and direct mail. In the following year the foundation surpassed its initial goals, with more than 1,000 brothers visiting the webpage, 171 creating a will and 29 committing to the foundation in their plan, resulting in an estimated $1.7 million in new planned gifts.

BEST NEW DEVELOPMENT IDEA

Phi Delta Theta Foundation

The leadership at Phi Delta Theta challenged traditional processes and translated careful strategic planning into development impact. The foundation removed all references to chapter-specific giving from their communications with potential donors and this mindset has changed the giving culture to one grounded in a belief of supporting the greater good of the fraternity leading into a 2030 strategic initiative and related capital campaign. Tactically, the foundation is creating giving options linked to the fraternity’s strategic plan, which was influenced by a foundation feasibility assessment and a bottom-up review of the organization by the staff.

Tau Kappa Epsilon Foundation

Created earlier this year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tau Kappa Epsilon created an innovative way to raise funds for affected students. A unique new Day of Giving campaign generated over $100,000, more than double the initial goal, allowing the Foundation ultimately to establish over $70,000 for need-based scholarships. This achievement was reached through a benefit concert over Facebook and Instagram Live that generated $13,000 in contributions during the live program — but also sparked a $50,000 matching gift.