2017 March (Alumni Giving) Madness – Round 1 Results

UPDATE: See who won the 2017 Alumni Giving tournament

While many of you were watching the start of the NCAA basketball tournament, I was deep in fundraising statistics computing our March (Alumni Giving) Madness competition. This alumni giving tournament is a fun way to look at fundraising trends. It started last year when one member of our team asked the question:

What if the NCAA brackets were decided based on alumni giving statistics?

You can read about the methodology we’re using to answer the question this year in our first post. This alumni giving tournament looks at alumni participation, two different looks at alumni donor counts, total giving per alumnus and the institution’s online giving portals. The data comes from the Voluntary Support of Education Survey and the U.S. News and World Report college ranking data. There is also a small random factor to keep it interesting. (UPDATE: Final Results Released!)

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First round insights

• There were some VERY close games. Our simulator assigned a score of up to 64 points to each institution, and one first round Men’s bracket match up was within 25 thousandths (.025) of a point. One Women’s bracket matchup was within .03 of a point.
• Some great teams have missed shots with online giving vs. peers since our last tournament. One major player fared pretty poorly vs. opponents after being a star in our 2016 tournament. They declined significantly in ease of online giving and their overall online donor portal. Because they were very close in score to their opponents, it cost them a win. Mobile optimization is absolutely crucial given that a majority of online donors will now be using a device to make a gift. Your online giving portal is a solicitation. Think critically about how easy and how engaging it is for donors to complete a gift.

How do you score with digital engagement?

One of the most important ways you can grow your donor base is through optimized online giving experiences. Soon, over half our alumni databases will be Millennials, who have grown up interacting online and in social-media rich environments.

If you’d like to see how you can improve your digital engagement, ask us for a Digital Engagement scorecard. Click here to request your free scorecard and one of our Fundraising Strategists will contact you.

And stay tuned, next week we’ll release the results of round 2 which will take us to the “Sweet 16” of this year’s alumni giving winners.