Award Winning Giving St Andrew’s Cathedral School smashes their target 2018 Educate Plus Award Winner: Best Fundraising Campaign / Annual Giving It is not often that an Annual Giving campaign is considered fun or exciting. However, that is exactly what happened this year with St Andrew’s Cathedral School’s fundraising for Chapter House. The goal of the campaign was to raise funds for light and sound equipment for a new performing arts space in our Chapter House, a glorious gothic historic building. We knew we would need to raise considerably more funds from our Annual Giving than had previously been achieved. We needed an appeal that would increase both the number of donors and the amounts donated. Having met representatives from Charidy at the NSW Educate Plus conference, we decided to partner with them and use their successful formula for a 24-hour, all-or-nothing on-line campaign. The results were astonishing. It was important for our community to become involved in our campaign. Chapter House is a very special historical place for our students, both past and present. We asked our successful performing arts alumni to become ambassadors for Chapter House, creating 30 second videos which both inspired our current students, and widened the awareness to our alumni. To develop a fun aspect, and involve our students and families as well as our alumni, we designed a “name-the- gargoyle” competition. Chapter House has only one gargoyle, and we held a competition to suggest names for it. Each House within the school short- listed a favourite name. The House that donated the most money would have the privilege of naming the gargoyle. This approach created fierce debate and competition on our social media pages and our ballot boxes at school were overflowing with suggestions. We chose the school’s birthday as our giving day - a day when our students are involved in inter-House competitions. Joining the spirit of the day, we made the giving day into an inter-House competition so that all donors could donate for their House and linked this to the gargoyle competition. The success of this giving day depended on finding matching donors, as the Charidy formula works by having matching donors quadruple community donations until the target is reached. In the months and weeks leading up to the campaign, we sourced matching donors. These people were proud to provide incentives to others to donate, and were willing to support the school. We were overwhelmed by our community’s response. On the giving day, our $120,000 target was smashed in just over an hour. We sat there, mesmerised as the donations came in from parents, students, graduates, staff, grandparents, and former parents. Donations were not only well beyond previous levels, but beyond what we had imagined possible. This campaign produced a remarkable outcome of over half a million dollars and a school community left buzzing with excitement. (And the winning House: St Paul’s, with a total contribution of more than $80,000. The gargoyle was named Salty Griffin.) LYN JARVIS DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ST ANDREW’S CATHEDRAL SCHOOL Images L-R: Students filing out of the Cathedral after the fundraising announcement; St Andrew’s Advancement Team - Anthony Segaert, Myf Austin-Eames, Karen Swibel, Lyn Jarvis; ‘Salty Griffin’ gargoyle. 4 9