The landscape
Kutztown University, enrolling over 8,000 students, is part of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and has a growing community of over 76,000 alumni. When 2020 presented the COVID-19 pandemic, Kutztown, like nonprofits around the globe, took a step back to assess its fundraising plans for the year and began planning for 2021– especially as it was completing the silent phase of its $40 million campaign, “It’s Good to be Golden.”
The solution
As the university began forecasting 2021, it enlisted GG+A’s SurveyLab to custom design a survey to better understand its donors and how the pandemic might be impacting its philanthropy into 2021.
Asking the right questions was critical to gathering intelligence that would help inform fundraising decisions. GG+A and the university worked together to reveal what its most pressing concerns were. What were donors’ attitudes toward KU – were they happy with the how things were going? What about the university might motivate donors to give? Were donors reading university communications? In their overall giving, where did KU fall?
The result
Armed with this data, Kutztown was able to enter 2021 with a better understanding of its constituents and how the pandemic impacted their philanthropy and connection to the university. It developed communications, programs, and approaches that reflected the interests of its constituencies. The data guided stewardship in the near and long-term and helped the university identify new prospects and make informed decisions about its campaign.