Giving Tuesday - December 3, 2024

What a day!

We turned out the lights in HFR and opted to take a little break around 9:30pm. You can see where the counts are on our giving form--right now just over 900 gifts and more than $2.7mm across all designations. We'll keep counting till the end of the week (if you put a check in the mail today, we want to count it!) and there'll be an officially tally sometime hopefully next week.

That said, keep going! We're not quite to our 1,300 donor goal, but by golly we put a big dent in it. I had the pleasure to talk to a bunch of Catamounts today, including a good number of Catamount parents, and I left feeling charged up about what it is we get to do here in Cullowhee. It's special, y'all. You know this. I know you love it.

If you didn't get a chance to give today, give tomorrow. If you did, then text a buddy. Send an email or two to your old roommates or fraternity brothers or fellas from down the hall. 

Or give 'em a call. Give them a line something like "Gosh, I hate to do this, but you know, they're trying to raise some dollars for the Catamount Club, and they wanted me to call some people, and I figured I could probably sucker you into it." Tell them to blame that James Hogan character.

Thanks to everybody who helped out today. You all make this work, and I cannot tell you how grateful we all are.

GO CATS!

It's a great question. The platform that we use to run those campaigns gives us a handful of breakout reports that are available on the public side of the software, but fund designation isn't one that we used.

That said, if you don't mind giving us a week or so to get all of the gifts entered into our database, I can bring an update back.

One quick note.

Think of the fundraising team as two units, engagement and development. To use a metaphor, the engagement team is mostly interested with stocking the river with trout. We want to get as many fish into the water as we can. Development, on the other hand, is mostly interested with catching the biggest trout it can find.

You don't get big trout without small trout. Which is to say, events like Giving Tuesday are primarily about increasing the number of donors to WCU (and in this instance, to the Catamount Club). Our buddy Dale Collins at the Tuck Fly Shop can look at a trout and tell you how old it is based on its size, because he knows the growth rate.

Likewise, fundraising is a long game. This week I'm certain we picked up a new Catamount Club donor. Somebody who made his or her first gift. Maybe it was modest--perhaps $25 or even $100. We cannot build a football stadium with $25 donors, but that doesn't mean those gifts aren't absolutely critical. Why? Because we will build future projects with donors who started by giving $25. 

Yesterday was an engagement-forward event. We are restocking our river. At the same time, on the development side of things, we have our best folks out there looking working on folks who love WCU and are passionate about helping us grow and succeed. 

Final thought on Giving Tuesday: we count everything. More specifically, we count everything from November 1 through December 6 (or whatever the Friday after Giving Tuesday happens to be). That's been our method since we started purposefully fundraising on Giving Tuesday. When you see those numbers broken down, you'll see gifts across the entire university, because by golly, a lot of wonderful, generous folks decide to put their gifts toward a wide number of designations. 

Y'all keep asking fundraising questions. I'll answer every one that I can.