Longwood University held its fourth annual Love Your Longwood Day on March 27, per Katherine Bulifant, director of Annual Giving in Longwood Institutional Advancement Department. The event is a 24 hour campaign for donations both to the university as a whole and for specific projects from various departments and organizations.
“It's just a 24 hour social media run campaign,” Bulifant said. “It's really just to encourage anybody who has an affiliation with the institution, whether it's students, faculty and staff, parents, alumni (or) community members to participate in Love Your Longwood Day (with) just a monetary gift of any size.”
Individuals fundraising projects created by departments or organizations are referred to as challenges and according to Bulifant, there were over 25. Each challenge had goals both for funds raised and number of donors.
“I can confidently say that I'm pretty sure majority of them hit at least 50 percent of, and some of them did hit goal,” Bulifant said.
According to Bulifant, exact numbers are not yet available, but more than 2,700 donations were made which exceeded the goal of 2,500 donations. Longwood used the GiveCampus platform for Love Your Longwood Day and more exact numbers will be released by the university at a later date.
“We raised over $325,000 we had over 20 matches happening, which means we had alumni or somebody affiliated with the institution who would match dollars coming in or donors that were coming in,” Bulifant said. “We had over 100 social media ambassadors that helped out pushing out content from the institution or just sharing why they love Longwood on their social media accounts.”
Bulifant said the donations came from alumni, parents, students, faculty and friends of the university in 42 states and several international countries.
“We went international,” Bulifant said. “So we had gifts come in from Canada, from Spain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Spain.”
In addition to donating online, students could also donate via LancerCash, per Bulifant. Over a hundred students donated that way.
“We were hoping to get 434 students to make a gift for our area code, and I don't know if that numbers been hit yet,” Bulifant said.
Per Bulifant, more exact statistics, including how many students donated online, will be known once the university receives them from GiveCampus.
According to the Love Your Longwood Day page on the GiveCampus website, one such project was Longwood Cares, which had the highest percentage of funds raised relative to the funding goal. Longwood Cares raised $13,735, which was 274% of their $5,000 goal.
Per Larry Robertson, dean of students, Longwood Cares is an initiative to provide emergency financial support and will start in Fall 2019.
"(It) was created this year by the Longwood University Foundation Board to provide financial support to allow the Office of the Dean of Students to assist students in emergency situations," Robertson said.
The money would go towards immediate emergencies and financial issues and students will be able to request it when they have explored all other available avenues.
"The goal is that the recipients would pay the money back when they can and pledge to assist others in the future when they are able to do so," Robertson said.
Longwood Cares is also raising funds through the Class of 2019 gift and Alumni Weekend.
The process for challenges being created started back in September, according to Bulifant. Groups had to request to participate before winter break.
“After winter break is really where it all happens,” Bulifant said. “So I let them know what the requirements are to host a challenge on Longwood Day (are). You have to have a 30 to 45 second video showcasing your cause of support. You need about a paragraph written cause of support for the campaign.”
Additionally, challenges were required to have pre-written thank you emails ready to be sent after a donation, per Bulifant.
“You have to have a thank you email for an automated system (for) anytime somebody makes a gift on your challenge, it goes out to them,” Bulifant said. “Then you with my department to kind of let us know what your solicitation lists would look like.”
According to Bulifant there will be another Love Your Longwood Day next year, but the date has not been chosen yet.
