George Washington University

Located in Washington, D.C., The George Washington University (GWU) is the educational home of more than 27,000 students and more than 330,000 alumni in 130 countries. Reaching out to that many alumni requires a system that goes way beyond spreadsheets and call lists. It demands systems that work with the people reaching out, enabling them to have an intelligent conversation, while gently moving the conversation to giving.

“We want people to walk away remembering a good interaction with a student at GWU,” says Al Ham, Director for Direct Response Annual Giving. “We may not get the gift today, but we want that conversation to inform their decision to give later.” Al builds teams of at most 12 students who can reach out to alumni from the calling center and create videos about life as a GWU student.

For the Leadership Annual Giving program, Director Kristin Goodman has found that dedicating one Giving Officer focused on best practices for all alumni-focused outreach, and one concentrating on younger alumni delivers a much higher response rate than just a phone call. “Not all age ranges respond the same way,” she says. “Generation Z responds to text messages at a much higher rate than phone calls.”

Vanillasoft allows the team at The George Washington University to benefit from Al and Kristin’s expertise to create an engagement cadence structure that works and that they can change or tweak as desired. The results in their outbound communications have been impressive. For the last semester, GWU had a 14.5% connect rate (up from 9.85% the previous year). Al has also empowered his students to adapt the scripts to make them more conversational.

“Some of the content was informed by previous work we’ve done, managing call centers and giving programs,” says Al. “But a lot of it is actually informed by the students. They start using the scripts and talking through them, and they give us a lot of good feedback.” Al likes to keep the team small because he feels he can work with them one-on-one, something that’s hard to do with a team of 100. They also hear back from the alumni. “A lot of the feedback has been super positive,” he adds.

Not only is GWU’s connect rate up 47%, interactions with constituents are up almost 50% with 39% more individuals. The team has also sent 84% more emails and 49% more text messages this year with Vanillasoft over the same time last year without.

“Vanillasoft gives us the ability to think strategically about how to engage all of our population,” says Kristin. “By setting up Vanillasoft the way we have, we’ve really been able to segment our approach.” And if an alum or donor changes their behavior, the team can quickly move them to a sequence that better suits them.

Combining the Engagement Center and Leadership Annual Giving programs under one project allows the two teams to operate independently but with the ability to flow work between the two as the relationship becomes better suited for one or the other. Breaking down the silos between the groups allows Al and Kristin to make more strategic decisions around workflow with both programs in mind. It also enables them to take lessons learned in one program and share it with both to achieve better results.

With visibility across all the work they’re doing, it’s easier to segment the work. Al and his students can focus on their objectives without interfering with Kristin and her Giving Officers’ goals.