Georgia Tech Closes Major Gifts Using Portfolios Case Study
With a manual process largely dependent on mailings and print, college advancement teams struggle to reach and engage their communities.
Georgia Tech Development realized they needed to modernize infrastructure and go digital to connect and engage strategic donors, better, faster, and more effectively.
Using the iFOLIO Cloud Marketing platform, Georgia Tech shared digital stories that generated enthusiasm for the university. By targeting personalized digital presentations in a portfolio they were able to engage donors across devices and channels (video, web, mobile, iPad, email, text message, social). Georgia Tech grew donations and increased community engagement, in their best development year yet.
The astonishing results included more donors engaged and large gifts secured with iFOLIO portfolios (including $10 Million gifts and more).
Who is Georgia Tech Development?
Georgia Tech is a top 10 ranked public research university with over 44,000 students enrolled annually in 6 colleges, and over 188,000 alumni.
Georgia Tech Development is responsible for all corporate giving, foundation relations, gift planning, intercollegiate athletics, international development, parent giving, regional development, reunion giving, and more.
This team plays a crucial role building relationships, and making strategic asks to donors and Georgia Tech’s community to advance the mission of Georgia Institute of Technology.
Challenge: More Effectively Reach, Engage, and Convert Donors
Most development teams have a highly manual and print oriented process. Often communications are packaged in booklets, brochures, and folders of documents and sent via mail to an address that may be out of date.
Mail-only strategies result in high rates (over 50%) of never reaching the intended recipient. The high costs from the print and returned mail do little to affect advancement outcomes.
Georgia Tech needed to modernize how they packaged and delivered communications so they could more effectively reach and engage their constituents across devices and channels, where-ever they are.
Solution: Personalized Donor Engagement on iFOLIO Marketing Cloud
The flexible platform enables development teams to collaborate with marketing and deliver exciting customer experiences at scale.
Info sites get the word out and automated campaigns scale engagement. Personalized portfolios enable development leaders to make substantial 1-to-1 with modern digital portfolios.
Georgia Tech sent over 100,000 personalized portfolio communications to strategic donors, alumni, and constituents. The engagement was incredible.
The communications campaigns were segmented, automated, or delivered in real-time in a sit-down meeting. Engagement averaged between 3 min 51 seconds up to 42 minutes. The industry average engagement with a paper full of text is 8 seconds.
Convert with Rich Visual Storytelling
To convert, Georgia Tech’s development team delivered personalized digital portfolio presentations to donors.
The portfolios include videos, animated charts, and interactive content bringing stories of students, research and innovation alive.
These presentations are visually rich, can be viewed on any device, and have everything the donor needs to know on one vertical scroll.
Analytics
After a campaign or a portfolio presentation, Georgia Tech used iFOLIO’s patented heat map analytics to know donor's reactions.
They can see opens, clicks on links, and which donors most engaged inside the portfolios, including what block of content got the most interest.
Now, development officers could engage and converse with donors who they knew were active with their targeted marketing campaigns.
This process saves time and boosts team morale.
Results
Georgia Tech Development had their best campaign year to date their first year using iFOLIO, during the pandemic in 2020.
GT Development generated $175 Million including $10 Million gifts directly from iFOLIO
Some examples include:
- An estate gift for $7.5 Million
-Track and Field Facilities
- A matching gift iFOLIO campaign filled in 1 week for GT Swim & Dive.
Campaign Success Results in
iFOLIO Expansion for Historic $2 Billion Capital Campaign
The overwhelming success of the campaigns on the cloud platform sparked new energy for Georgia Tech Development.
In 2022 Georgia Tech expanded with a long-term partnership with iFOLIO to power 200 development officers and 3 Million Digital Stories across the institution for the historic 2027 Capital Campaign for $2 Billion.
Georgia Tech is already planning going digital with iFOLIO for other functions from a Philanthropy Quarterly magazine, to case papers and portfolios for student scholarships.
