BEST CAMPAIGN/PROGRAM IN SUPPORT OF AN OUTSIDE PHILANTHROPY

Alpha Omicron Pi Foundation

In the past fiscal year alone, AOII donated $1 million to their philanthropic partner. Their gift to the Arthritis Foundation has touched over 7,000 individuals and channeled more than $350,000 into groundbreaking research initiatives. 

Beyond financial contributions, sisters are commonly referred to as the “Panda People” to the Arthritis Foundation and involved families. Through their beloved panda mascot, they bring joy to children and facilitate hands-on learning at the Panda Clinic hosted at each Juvenile Arthritis Family Summit. Additionally, Alpha Omicron Pi raises awareness at the national and local level encouraging members and supporters to get involved with initiatives like AOII Goes Blue, aligning with the arthritis awareness ribbon color. 

BEST COMMUNICATIONS EFFORT

Kappa Delta Foundation

From September 2023 to April 2024, Kappa Delta offered a three-part, virtual speaker series called “Confident Conversations: Healthy Minds, Strong Sisters”. To promote this Foundation-funded program and generate excitement among members, the Sorority and Foundation teams worked together to develop a comprehensive marketing and communications effort, including digital and print assets across social media, a microsite (kappadelta.org/confident-conversations), in Kappa Delta’s magazine and more. 

This year there were 4,409 registrants with 2,368 attendees across the three virtual sessions, more than doubling the number of members who attended the 2022-2023 series.

Honorable Mentions:

• The Educational Foundation of Alpha Gamma Rho, 1904 Collegiate Society Campaign
• Delta Gamma Foundation, Anchoring the Future: The Campaign for Delta Gamma Launch

BEST DEVELOPMENT EFFORT IN AN ANNUAL CAMPAIGN

Sigma Alpha Epsilon Foundation

SAE’s 6th annual March to the Madness is a multi-week, bracket-style fundraising campaign, modeled after and taking place at the same time as the NCAA March Madness Tournament. This campaign supporting their Annual Loyalty Fund encourages SAE chapters to compete to see who can raise the most money each round. 

Successfully exceeding their goal of raising more in 2024 compared to 2023, $149,017 was raised, a 7.85% increase year-over-year. In total, 447 donors contributed with 84 of those being new donors. 

Honorable Mentions: 

• Beta Theta Pi Foundation, “Catch the Spark” Video Campaign
• Kappa Alpha Theta Foundation, Theta for Good

BEST MAJOR GIFTS DEVELOPMENT EFFORT

Lambda Chi Alpha Educational Foundation

Lambda Chi’s Seed Capital Campaign — through which $5.5 million in new major gifts were secured — aimed to reposition how young men grow, serve and lead. This effort reversed a five-year, seventeen 17% year-over-year membership decline with an average of five insurance claims per year by reorienting programming and creating a compelling launch point for further Series A funding.  
 
In total, more than 6,000 members directly benefitted from programs funded by the $13.5 million raised through Seed Capital Campaign.

BEST NEW DEVELOPMENT IDEA

Delta Upsilon Educational Foundation

To close a gap in Ignite the Charge Campaign funding, Delta Upsilon secured a $300,000 gift and launched a matching challenge, the terms of which being that each dollar would be matched for any one-time contribution to the Annual Loyalty Fund, and all five-year pledges would be matched three-to-one! Meaning a $2,500 gift over five years would equate to a $7,500 match. 

As of May 15, 2024, 592 donors made one-time gifts totaling $172,152. Another 78 donors made five-year commitments totaling $308,465. In total, this innovative initiative secured at least $780,617, including the challenge gift, ensuring the Campaign’s $6 million goal was exceeded by four-million-three-hundred-fifty thousand dollars $4.35 million.   

Honorable Mentions: 

• Alpha Chi Omega Foundation, Mid-level Giving Program
• Alpha Omicron Pi Foundation, 10 for 10 Initiative

BEST OPERATIONS IMPROVEMENT EFFORT

Delta Tau Delta Educational Foundation

Previously operating on separate CRMs, Delta Tau Delta’s transition to a single Salesforce database ensures all staff have access to the same membership information across all enterprise entities. 

Since switching to Salesforce, Delt has taken advantage of powerful automation, reduced tedious tasks, and allowed staff to focus on more impactful items. Data visualization via Salesforce dashboards has been helpful for fundraising efforts, as they can view giving data through many lenses quickly. This includes year-over-year comparisons, summary information by fund, specific portfolios for each fundraiser and more. 

Honorable Mention:

• Kappa Delta Foundation, KDHQ Organization Structure & Collaboration

BEST PLANNED GIVING EFFORT

Alpha Chi Omega Foundation

Feeling it was important to present donors with options, the AXO Foundation included the following asks in their “Common Bond. Uncommon Impact.” campaign proposals: an annual gift, an “over-and-above” gift to a campaign priority, and a legacy gift to sustain the organization’s future. 

To help reach their planned giving goal of $5 million, the Foundation increased their direct mail outreach to targeted planned giving audiences focusing on IRA-qualified charitable distributions, charitable gift annuities and bequests, driving donors to their planned giving microsite alphachiplanmygiving.org. Additionally, they partnered with the National Gift Annuity Foundation to provide charitable gift annuities and charitable remainder trusts.

BEST STEWARDSHIP EFFORT

Alpha Omicron Pi Foundation

Inviting donors whose unrestricted gifts total a minimum of $1,897 in honor of AOII’s founding year, or whose lifetime giving exceeds $15,000, the foundation hosted 50 donors for a sisterhood retreat including a welcome reception, dinner, confidence workshop, and brunch. 

While the event focused on stewardship, $29,000 was secured in sponsorship and $50,000 in revenue was generated for the Foundation through donor commitments made during the weekend. 100% of attendees rated the overall event a 4 or 5 out of 5 and 79% strongly indicated they felt a greater sense of belonging to the Foundation.

Kappa Alpha Theta Foundation

The impetus behind this Theta’s Scholarship Directory came from a desire to collect and preserve the inspiration — the “why” — behind the many Theta scholarships offered. 

Housed on their website, the digital space has been created and is now live with over 40 scholarships showcased of the more than 200 distinct scholarships offered. Through this effort, they have been able to connect (and re-connect) with donors outside of an ask that reminds them that their story and gift are incredibly special to the Foundation and their scholarship recipients. 

Honorable Mention: 

• Pi Beta Phi Foundation, With Gratitude Annual Impact Report

BEST USE OF A FOUNDATION GRANT

The Educational Foundation of Alpha Gamma Rho

After four years of planning and piloting, AGR raised more than $15 million through their Local Chapter Excellence Capital Campaign to underwrite the fraternity’s newest program, Top Leaders Institute. Top Leaders Institute serves as a beacon of leadership excellence within AGR, empowering participants to embrace their potential and make meaningful contributions to their chapters, campuses, and communities.  

Because of gifts to the campaign and the Educational Foundation’s grant, a total of $312,012 was awarded to 529 undergraduate members, breaking down to approximately $590 per person. While this grant was solely for 2023, the Educational Foundation has a long-range plan to continue and expand this initiative. 

Honorable Mention:

• Kappa Delta Foundation, Confident Conversations

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. 

BEST COMMUNICATIONS EFFORT

Pi Kappa Alpha Foundation

With a focus on content related to how the Foundation makes an impact – compared to a more traditional annual report largely featuring donor listings – this 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.