The Deacon Club: Annual Fund Campaign
Commit to the Deacs
The Deacon Club at Wake Forest University is the fundraising arm for the athletics department. Donations to the Deacon Club enable the school to invest in recruiting, training and educational resources for student-athletes.
The Challenge
The Annual Fund is the Deacon Club’s tool for covering scholarship costs, but with scholarship costs on the rise, the Deacon Club needed to drive donations and educate Wake fans that support of the Deacon Club is vital to the success of Wake Forest Athletics.
What We Did
- Communications Planning
- Direct Mail Design
- Interactive Development
- Website Hosting
- Broadcast & Video
- Social Media Marketing
The Solution
Dedicated fans follow recruiting, so we decided to treat donors as recruits and ask them to commit to the Deacon Club Class. We made a video to re-introduce the Deacon Club, sent prospects an Official Letter of Intent, and reskinned the website with the same language and look, and had coaches directly “recruit” donors through social media.
Using only owned media channels, the campaign resulted in the largest number of Deacon Club donors to date at an increase of nearly 15% over the previous year. They surpassed their goal of 5,000 members, set a new membership record, and raised over $5.96 million to benefit Wake Forest student-athletes.
