How UMD Broke Records this Giving Day

UMD’s marching band Mighty Sound of Maryland raised $31,481 more than twice of their $15,000 goal (@mightysoundofmd)

The University of Maryland had a record-breaking Giving Day last week, raising over $2.7 million and in a virtual environment, schools had to change their approach to fundraising and found surprising amounts of success.

One of the main obstacles was changing the language of their pitches from previous years.

The Assistant Director of Development & Alumni Relations Department of Undergraduate Studies (UGST) Diana S. Forbus said a challenge for this year is a lot of the programs at UGST support in-person activities. For example, the Legacy Fund of the College Park Scholars Living Learning Program, which raises travel funds for internships and studying abroad changed the wording of their page to say that the funds would be going to those efforts once in-person learning can resume.

“We found that even in a pandemic, people were really generous and really wanted to support the programs they care about,” said Forbus.

There were 745 unique donors and 845 gifts for UGST, according to Forbus. The department raised $101,000 in total, beating their $100,000 goal.

Associate Director of the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) Greg Schofer also emphasized the importance of language in this year’s fundraising.

“We wanted to be sensitive in our messaging to the pandemic, for sure, so we included some language [saying] that it’s a challenging time, we understand, and it’s stressful,” said Schofer.

The department raised $156,072 from 685 donors. Schofer credits a lot of the ARHU’s success this year to UMD’s marching band who were very active on social media trying to get people to donate.

“Organizers said that the marching band dominated social media. They really were all over the place… I’m sure that the vast majority of our new donors and gifts were from the marching band, they really knocked it out of the park,” said Schofer.

ARHU had the most donors out of the departments who beat the donation records. The marching band won three social media awards totaling $500 and two $2,500 prizes for having the most alumni gifts in an hour. 75% of the alumni gifts during those two hours were for the marching band, said Schofer. Faculty also made a lot of donations this year. And according to Forbus, over half of the donations across all of UGST’s programs came from alumni.

“People love the university and they love these programs who helped shape the kind of person that they are and shaped their experiences while they were students,” said Forbus. “And so they want to be able to give that experience to other students.”

Schofer said there might not be as big a jump in donations next year as they saw this year, but getting more programs involved in Giving Day is also a priority.

“It’s as much about creating energy for the university than just raising money,” said Schofer. “It’s a way to show some pride and some enthusiasm about Maryland.”