Occidental College Launched Classy Ahead of Schedule and Raised 35% More YoY
Mission
To provide a gifted and diverse group of students with a total educational experience of the highest quality
Challenge
Successfully launch its first campaign on Classy and start collecting donations within an ambitious timeline
Solution
Classy’s onboarding support enabled Occidental College to transition to a new platform, start accepting donations two weeks earlier than anticipated, and raise more
With an ambitious timeline, we knew we needed to rely on an industry leader like Classy for online giving that would deliver a robust toolkit of UI/UX features and a user-friendly design canvas to launch our first campaign. It’s not every day that you are ahead of schedule and I think that speaks to the project management and training support we received as well as the platform capabilities and ease of use.
– Natalie Greenhouse, Senior Director of Advancement Services
Results on Classy:
Accepted donations
2 weeks ahead of schedule
35% more raised YoY
for the fiscal year-end campaign
Launching on Classy Two Weeks Early
From the get-go, Occidental College (Oxy) was marching towards a July go-live date for the Classy platform because it is a typically slower month and they could ease into it. Classy’s Project Manager identified an opportunity to run the organization’s first campaign on Classy earlier, and the Oxy team decided to go for it. While it was a quicker timeline, which meant less time to prepare for the launch, with the support of Classy, Oxy was able to launch its first campaign two weeks ahead of schedule.
We faced some uncertainty about whether we could go live earlier, but ultimately, it was absolutely the right decision because it allowed us to launch a substantive appeal, as far as the volume of potential donors and dollars, rather than a cold start in July. It would also give us some lessons learned from an actual campaign.
Oxy’s First Campaign on Classy Raised 35% More YoY
Oxy runs an annual appeal at the end of its fiscal year to capture donations from supporters who had yet to give that year. As one of Oxy’s larger campaigns, this was a perfect testing opportunity to see the ROI (return on investment) of Classy. The team created a new main donation page and directed supporters from its email appeals and direct mail.
Some important strategy improvements for this year’s campaign on Classy included adding:
- Mobile wallet to offer donors the option to pay with Venmo, Apple Pay, and Google Pay—payment types not previously offered.
- Donor-covered fees allow supporters to increase their gift to cover any transaction or processing fees that Oxy would incur.
- Double the Donation integration to identify employer-matching gift opportunities.
Coupling the first use of a Classy donation page and a new campaign strategy, Oxy’s fiscal year-end campaign raised 35% more year over year.
Next up: Integrating with Salesforce Education Cloud
Next, Oxy plans to integrate with Salesforce Education Cloud. The goal is to further unify the platforms under one system to achieve greater consistency, data accuracy, and a stronger user experience for staff, donors, and other key constituents. This integration will allow the Oxy team to act more strategically, thanks to having better data and tools at their fingertips. That way, they can focus more on donor experience, impact, and stewardship.
The Classy platform has matched technology to meet our strategy and vision with custom fundraising pages that our legacy system could not support, transforming how we fundraise with our campus partners.
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