Build lifelong relationships

In 2025, NC State pulled in $50 million from 18,500 gifts in a single day. Boston University's 11th giving day broke records with $4.5 million from 12,000+ donors. Numbers like these come from a plan started six to nine months out that shows up as a single orchestrated moment.

In this blog, we’ll walk through how to organize a giving day from the first planning meeting to the final thank-you email.

What Is a Giving Day?

A giving day is a 24-hour, digitally driven fundraising campaign that rallies a community around a shared cause. Donors give online, ambassadors share the link, matching gifts unlock at set thresholds, and a real-time progress thermometer keeps the energy up until the clock runs out.

It is an industry mainstay event to acquire new donors, kick off year-end giving, and motivate an existing donor base.

‍

How to Run a Giving Day in 10 Steps

Step 1: Define the Purpose of Your Giving Day

Before you pick a platform or write a single email, be able to say in one sentence why this campaign exists. If three people on your team would answer that question differently, you are not ready to start planning.

Work through these with your team:

• What are you raising money for?
• Why does this campaign matter right now?
• Who will the funds benefit, and who is most likely to care?
• Is the goal dollars raised, donor participation, donor acquisition, or some mix?

Common purposes include supporting scholarship funds, athletics funds, student emergency aid, patient care; growing annual fund participation; lapsed donor re-engagement, first-time donor acquisition, or supporting a specific program/community initiative. A clear purpose statement helps you test every decision you make later.

Step 2: Set Your Giving Day Goals

Most teams set one goal. The strongest teams set two: a fundraising goal and an engagement goal. A dollars-raised goal tells a story about impact ("We need $100,000 to fund 40 scholarships"). A donor-participation goal tells a story about community, and every gift carries the same weight, which works well for students, young alumni, and grateful patients.

Apart from the headline numbers like total dollars raised and number of donors, a few secondary metrics tell you whether the day moved you forward:

• First-time donor count - whether the campaign opened new relationships.
• Recurring donor sign-ups - whether one-day enthusiasm converted to monthly support.
• Alumni, Class-year, parent, or department leaderboards - which communities actually turned out.
• Matching gift unlocks - whether your challenges were sized right.

Use Top-Down and Bottom-Up Goal Setting:

A Hubbub guide recommends combining two approaches when setting your number.

• Top-down goal setting starts with the impact. "We need $100,000 to fund 40 scholarships at $2,500 each." You work backward from your goal.

• Bottom-up goal setting starts with your data: donor segments, email list size, past performance, conversion rate, and average gift size. You build a “money table” that estimates how much the campaign can raise.

The right goal usually sits where these two numbers meet. If your top-down number is much bigger than your bottom-up estimate, the gap tells you where you need a matching gift, a major donor challenge, or a new donor base.

Step 3: Build Your Giving Day Team

A giving day is cross-functional. If it sits entirely with one annual giving manager, you are setting up for a tough week. The recommendation here is to have a dedicated campaign manager for at least six months before and one to three months after, with weekly check-ins.

Think of the roles in your team in three layers:

• Campaign leadership – campaign owner/manager, annual giving lead, advancement lead. Sets direction and unblocks decisions.
• Outreach – alumni relations lead, communications lead, major gifts lead, volunteer coordinator, a student or parent voice. Does the donor work.
• Operations – database lead, gift processing owner, campaign page owner. Keeps data clean and donations flowing.

Operations is the layer most often skipped and the one you miss most when 4,000 gifts arrive in 24 hours.

Team Structure for Universities and Colleges

Pull in annual giving, alumni relations, advancement services, major gifts, communications, deans, athletics, and student affairs. If your campaign has school or department-specific giving lines, a representative from each unit makes the difference between a campaign that feels campus-wide and one that lives only in the alumni office. When deans ask their faculty and alumni to give, response rates jump.

Team Structure for Schools

Schools tend to run leaner. You will want the development office, alumni office, board members, parent association, head of school, a few class agents, and student ambassadors. Parents are often the highest-converting segment, so do not leave them out of planning.

Team Structure for Nonprofits

Involve the executive director, development director, program team, communications team, board members, volunteer leaders, and the person who owns the donor database.

Step 4: Choose the Right Giving Day Date

Pick a date that connects to your story. A school might pick its founding date. A hospital foundation might tie the day to a patient awareness month. A scholarship campaign might launch the same week financial aid letters go out.

How Long Should a Giving Day Last?

Most giving days run for 24 hours. Universities with global alumni bases sometimes stretch to 36 or 48 hours to cover time zones. Stanford's Athletics Giving Day ran 36 hours in 2024 in honor of its 36 varsity sports and raised $521,173 from 1,128 donors, showing how the length itself can be part of the story.

Giving Day Planning Timeline

• 6 months before: Set goals, choose the date, and assign the campaign owner.
• 4 months before: Finalize audience segments, ambassador plan, platform choice.
• 3 months before: Build the campaign page, messaging, and creative assets.
• 1 month before: Start teasers, train ambassadors, test donation forms end-to-end.
• 1 week before: Confirm emails, line up matching gifts, and set up reporting.
• Day of: Monitor progress, send hourly updates, keep ambassadors active.
• 1 week after: Thank donors, share results, sync data into your CRM.
• 1 month after: Analyze results and build follow-up journeys for new donors.

Step 5: Choose a Giving Day Platform

Your platform should complement your campaign plan, not force you to redesign your campaign around what the platform can and cannot do. If the tool is making your strategy smaller, you have the wrong tool.

Giving Day Platform Features to Look For

A few features earn their place on the day:

• Branded giving pages and mobile-friendly forms – decide whether donors complete a gift. Mobile is most often underweighted. Nonprofit Tech for Good found roughly 43% of online donations happen on mobile.
• Multiple funds on a single form – donors give without leaving the page.
• Real-time thermometer plus live match and challenge tracking – makes the campaign feel alive.
• Ambassador attribution links – tell you who drove gifts.
• Donor segmentation built in – lets you tag and group new donors as they arrive.
• Email performance tracking – surfaces which subject lines, send times, and segments are pulling weight while you can still act on it.
• Automated tax receipts and a clean reporting dashboard.
• CRM integration without manual exports – giving days produce a flood of gifts, designations, soft credits, and engagement signals in 24 hours, and hand-cleaning that data costs teams days and sometimes loss of data.

The right platform should complement how your audience engages with you before, during, and after the day. Almabase's giving day platform sits on top of the same alumni and donor database your team already uses year-round. Which means the audiences you segment in the lead-up, the signals you capture during the day, and the records you steward afterward all live in the same place. Before, during, and after end up as one continuous workflow instead of three disconnected ones.

‍

Step 6: Create Your Giving Day Message

Messaging is the reason donors participate and treating it as a copywriting task produces something forgettable. If your message can be swapped onto another institution's giving day without changing anything, it is too generic to have any real effect.

Run a short messaging workshop. Start with your mission and what this giving day is funding. Finalise a single line plus supporting sentences ambassadors can use without rewriting. Fundraise Up puts it well: giving day "doesn't reward the loudest voice, it rewards the most interesting one". Souls Harbour Rescue Mission set a 2025 Giving Tuesday goal of $7,000 to fund Christmas dinners. After building a story-led campaign that launched a week early, they raised $138,978, nearly 20 times their goal. The story did the work.

Giving Day Messaging Examples

• University: "24 hours. One university. Thousands of alumni standing up for the next generation of students."
• Independent school: "Today, every parent, alum, and friend can help open a door for a student who needs one."
• Community nonprofit: "One day to fund the programs our community depends on every other day of the year."
• Healthcare foundation: "Give today so families don't have to wait when the worst happens."

The pattern is the same across all. The line is short; it makes the stakes clear, and it tells the donor who is involved and why now.

Step 7: Segment Your Giving Day Audience

One message does not work for every group. A first-year alum and a board member share an institution, not a relationship to it. Research states that personalized emails see a much higher open rate than generic ones, and a giving day is when that gap shows up in dollars.

Giving Day Segments by Organization Type

• Universities and colleges: alumni, young alumni, students, parents, faculty, staff, athletics supporters, department supporters. Class year is the most useful slice – a class agent's note will outperform a generic alumni email every time.
• K-12 and independent schools: current parents, alumni, grandparents, board members, trustees, class agents, faculty and staff. Parents and grandparents are usually the highest-converting groups; grandparents are almost always under-asked.
• Healthcare foundations: grateful patients, families, physicians, board members, major donors, event attendees, community supporters. Grateful patient stories carry the campaign.
• Nonprofits: first-time donors, recurring donors, volunteers, program supporters, corporate sponsors, board members, lapsed donors. Recurring donors are usually your most reliable givers on the day; lapsed donors are your biggest upside if you give them a real reason to come back.

Step 8: Recruit Giving Day Ambassadors

Ambassadors are how your campaign reaches past your email list and official social accounts. Hubbub has seen campaigns where up to 28% of gifts came from ambassador referrals. And peer-to-peer data shows that 71% of all donors learn about new causes through friends and family, making ambassadors a reliable acquisition channel.

Good reach comes from two different kinds of advocates - Influencers and Ambassadors. Influencers have large audiences and move attention quickly – North Texas Giving Day, for example, recruited pro athletes like Texas Rangers star Nathaniel Lowe and players from the Cowboys, Stars, Mavericks, and Dallas Wings as campaign "Champions of Giving." Ambassadors may have a smaller network but are genuinely passionate about your mission and will advocate one conversation at a time. You want both, and you treat them differently.

Who Can Be a Giving Day Ambassador?

The best ambassadors already love your institution and are willing to ask their friends to give. That usually includes student leaders, faculty, recent graduates, current parents, board members, longtime volunteers, and grateful patients or families. A small group of committed ambassadors will outperform a long list of people who said yes but never shared the link.

What Should Ambassadors Do?

Keep the ask simple:

• Share a personalized donation link on giving day
• Email five to ten friends, classmates, or peers
• Post a short video about why they give
• Reshare live updates throughout the day
• Make their own gift first so they can say they have already donated

Create a Giving Day Ambassador Toolkit

Give ambassadors everything they need in one place so they are not building from scratch:

• Message: one-page overview, the headline line, three talking points, short FAQs
• Assets: personal donation link, pre-written captions for Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, email and text templates, branded graphics, hashtags and tagging guidelines
• Schedule: a simple timeline of when to post, matching gift and unlock thresholds details

Step 9: Secure Matching Gifts and Challenges

Matching gifts and challenges are the most reliable way to create momentum on giving day. According to Double the Donation, mentioning matching gifts in a fundraising appeal increases response rate by 71% and average donation amount by 51%. 360MatchPro reports that 84% of survey respondents said they are more likely to donate when a match is offered.

Match types and challenges to consider:

• A flat match across the whole day from a single major donor or board pool
• A "first 100 gifts" match to push early momentum
• A power-hour match that doubles all gifts during a specific hour
• Threshold challenge – "$25,000 unlocked when we reach 500 donors."
• A class-year or department challenge tied to leaderboards
• A young alumni leaderboard challenge/match designed to acquire first-time donors

Layering at least two of these is recommended because each motivates a different audience at different moments.

How to Involve Major Donors

Major donors love being on the other side of a match. Instead of writing one check, they get to feel like they multiplied the impact of hundreds of other donors. Approach them with a specific challenge to fund, specific gifts to unlock, or to match smaller gifts. The Hubbub network has seen almost $750,000 in low-level major donor matching gifts across its campaigns in a single year.

Step 10: Create Your Giving Day Communication Plan

This step decides whether everything else shows up to donors. A great campaign with a quiet email plan will lose to a modest campaign with a strong communications cadence.

Pre-Giving Day Communications

The two to four weeks before the day are where you condition your audience to show up:

• Save-the-date email to your full list
• Campaign teaser naming the cause and goal
• Impact story from a past beneficiary
• Ambassador recruitment email
• Matching gift announcement once the match is signed
• Two weeks of social countdown content
• Internal staff briefing
• Board briefing so trustees are ready to amplify

Giving Day Email Schedule

The volume can feel high, but giving day is a one-day moment, and donors expect a higher tempo than usual:

• 7 days before: Save the date
• 3 days before: Why this campaign matters
• 1 day before: Tomorrow is giving day, are you ready?
• Morning of: We are live
• Midday: Progress update with the thermometer
• Afternoon: Match or challenge unlock update
• Evening: Final hours of giving
• Final hour: Last chance to be counted
• Next day: Thank you and final results

33% of donors say email is the tool that most inspires them to give – and giving day amplifies that effect because of the urgency and matching incentives stacked into the day.

Giving Day Social Media Plan

Your social plan should mirror the email cadence with more variety in format:

• Week-out countdown posts to set the date in your audience's head
• Donor stories featuring real names and faces
• Student or beneficiary stories in short video form
• Live progress updates posted hourly on giving day
• Challenges/matches unlock announcements
• Ambassador reposts and tags
• Thank-you posts throughout the day
• Behind-the-scenes content from the campaign room
• Final-hour urgency posts in the last 60 to 90 minutes

Giving Day Text Messaging

SMS is underused in fundraising. Nonprofit texts average a 98% open rate, which is way higher compared to email open rates. The trade-off is that texts feel intrusive when overused. Reserve SMS for ambassadors, students, young alumni, board members, and opted-in donors. A "we are live" text in the morning, a midday push, and a final-hour reminder will outperform a steady drip.

Giving Day Phone Outreach

Save calls for board members, major donors, challenge donors, high-capacity donors, and lapsed donors. A call from a dean, executive director, or trustee on giving day morning often closes gifts that emails never would.

Things to Do on Giving Day

The day itself is mostly execution. If the planning was thorough, your team will be energetic rather than scrambling.

1. Monitor Progress in Real Time

Keep a live dashboard up in the campaign room. Watch total dollars, total donors, first-time donors, average gift size, gift designations, ambassador-driven gifts, matching gift progress, failed or incomplete donations, and finally Email opens and clicks and Social media engagement. Failed donations are quietly expensive – a handful can cost real dollars if nobody catches them until the next morning.

2. Share Live Campaign Updates

Updates create momentum. The best ones tell donors that something is happening right now:

• "Only 50 donors left to unlock the $25,000 match."
• "The Class of 2015 just moved into first place – Class of 2016, your move."
• "12,000 donors and counting. We just passed last year's giving day record."
• "Pack Nation just crossed $25 million. Halfway to the goal – let's bring it home."
• "Power Hour starts now – every gift doubled until 2 PM."
• "766 former student-athletes have given so far. Help us hit 1,000 by midnight."
• "A new $10,000 challenge has just been unlocked. Time to push."
• "Final 3 hours to give."

3. Keep Ambassadors Active

Ambassadors will not stay engaged for 24 hours on their own. Message them four or five times: morning launch, midday update, challenge-specific push, final-hour rally, thank-you at close.

4. Respond Quickly to Donor Questions

Staff your inbox and phones. Day-of questions are predictable:

• Donation issues/blockages
• Failed payments and how to retry

• Matching gift confusions
• Fund designation questions
• Tax receipt questions
• Offline gift confirmations from donors who mailed a check and whether they will be counted towards thermometers and leaderboards

A two-hour response time on giving day is too slow. Aim for under 30 minutes.

What to Do After Giving Day

The first 72 hours of follow-up set the tone for everything that comes next. New donors are deciding whether you were worth their gift.

1. Thank Donors Quickly

Send a personal thank-you within 24 hours. Bloomerang cites research from Penelope Burk that a thank-you call from a board member within 24 hours of a gift increases the donor's next gift by 39%, and first-time donors who get a personal thank-you within 48 hours are 4x more likely to give a second gift. A handwritten note from a student or short video from your executive director will be remembered longer than the gift.

2. Share Giving Day Results

Publish the final numbers. Tell the story of who participated, what got funded, and what comes next. Donors gave to be part of something, and the recap tells them that they were.

3. Segment Donors for Follow-Up

Not every donor needs the same next email. First-time donors need a welcome series. Recurring donors need a thank-you and a quiet ask to keep their recurring gift active. Major donors need a personal follow-up from a gift officer. Lapsed donors who came back need a reason to stay.

4. Clean and Sync Giving Day Data

This is where the platform choice from Step 5 pays off. Get every gift, designation, soft credit, and ambassador attribution into your CRM, and tag the cohort so you can measure retention against it a year from now. Clean data is what gives you a real shot at retaining your donors

5. Turn Giving Day Donors Into Long-Term Supporters

Build a 90-day journey for new donors. Mix impact updates, an event invitation, a soft ask to convert to monthly giving, and one personal touchpoint. The second gift matters, but what you are really after is the relationship that produces a third, fourth, and fifth.

‍

How Almabase Helps You Run a Connected Giving Day

A giving day produces an enormous amount of donor data in a short window. Gifts, designations, soft credits, ambassador attribution, lapsed donors who came back, and first-time donors needing a welcome journey, all in 24 hours. If that data has to be exported, cleaned, and re-imported by hand, your team spends the week after giving day in spreadsheets instead of stewardship.

Almabase's giving day platform sits on top of the same alumni and donor database your team already uses, so day-of data flows straight back into the records you steward year-round. Class-year participation rates update automatically, ambassador referrals tie to real records, and new donors are segmented for the welcome journey by Monday morning. The campaign ends at midnight, but the relationships you built during it with the right platform will pay off for years to come.

It’s never an easy decision to switch to a new platform and if you’ve been a frequent user of Blackbaud NetCommunity (BBNC) for a while, you might have a fair amount of questions about moving elsewhere.

In case you’re on the lookout for BBNC alternatives, we’ve rounded up 5 potential replacements for you and your team to consider. Our choices are based on a variety of factors which we’ll be getting into first.

What to Look for in Your Next Platform

While evaluating alternatives, you might feel like most platforms have similar feature lists with a few differences here and there. But the way those features are organized and how they work together can reveal the best fit for your team.

Here's what to evaluate:

1. Integration That Works for You

For most BBNC users, Raiser's Edge NXT is already at the center of donor management. The rest of your advancement tools must work seamlessly alongside it and help your team stay coordinated.

That means having giving, events, email, and community engagement data flow into your CRM automatically and in real time. When a donor makes a gift, your team should be able to see it right away in RE NXT.  

2. Ease of Use

Most advancement teams likely do not have a dedicated tech person. The people using these tools should find it easy to navigate (and this shouldn’t only be the most tech-savvy member in your team!).

This means your team should be able to create event pages, build audience segments, send emails, and manage campaigns with confidence, because doing all this on the platform feels intuitive to them. Some platforms pay close attention to the user experience and take special care to make it easier for them to work on.

Just as important is the experience for alumni. The more alumni can do for themselves, the easier it is for your team to keep data current and engagement high. Features like profile updates, event registration, class note submissions, and communication preferences give alumni greater control while helping you maintain accurate records.

3.  Built to Grow With You

The platform you choose today should still work for you down the line as your alumni community grows and fundraising efforts expand in scale and complexity. Whether you're managing 5,000 alumni or 50,000, the experience should remain consistent.

This is particularly important for colleges and universities planning for long-term growth. The best platforms scale alongside your institution, making it easy to increase capacity and expand programs without disrupting day-to-day operations. As your needs evolve, your team can stay focused on engaging alumni and advancing institutional goals rather than managing technology transitions.

4. Moving Beyond Legacy Systems

If you've spent years juggling multiple systems, you've probably accepted a certain amount of friction as part of the job. This could look like pulling different places or reports that take longer than they should. As a result, your team spends more time making sense of information between platforms instead of building relationships with alumni and donors.
So moving platforms becomes an opportunity to look for a platform that does the work your old platform was doing, but does it better, and preferably, in one place.

5. The Best Platform May Not Always Be the One With the Most Features

On paper, many advancement teams have everything they need: tools for fundraising, events, email, and alumni engagement. But if those systems don’t work together smoothly, your team could find itself in a bit of a fix, managing tools when they could be managing experiences for attendees and donors. It's rarely a major problem on any given day, but the time and effort add up over the course of recurring issues across events.

In fact, we saw something similar firsthand at Almabase: Cornell College moved from managing alumni engagement across BBNC and multiple tools to one integrated platform, and the shift eliminated the constant back-and-forth that was taking up their team's time.

Top 5 BBNC Alternatives

Before we get into the deep-dive, here is a quick look at the platforms we’ve listed for you:

1. Almabase

Almabase was built with advancement teams in mind. Instead of juggling separate tools for giving, events, email, and alumni engagement, teams can manage everything in one place. It also integrates closely with Raiser's Edge NXT, helping data flow naturally between systems and giving staff a more complete view of alumni activity.

Best for: Institutions on BBNC struggling with complexity, looking to simplify their tech stack by bringing key advancement activities together on a single platform. It is a great fit for colleges and universities of all sizes.

Key Strengths:

• Everything works together by design: Integrated giving pages, peer-to-peer fundraising, event ticketing with donation options, leaderboards, gift matching, and real-time reporting all live in one place. You don't need separate vendors for campaigns, events, and community. You manage one platform, train staff on one interface, and your donors experience a seamless ecosystem where giving, events, and engagement connect naturally.
• Real-time RE NXT integration: Simplify database management and data hygiene without manual effort. TrueSync handles real-time synchronization between your CRM and Almabase, automatically resolving duplicates and keeping constituent records clean and current. Your team stops spending time on data maintenance and starts trusting that information flows accurately in both directions.
• Modern, robust platform built for complex advancement workflows: Handle multi-day events, sophisticated segmentation, and layered campaigns without requiring technical workarounds. Whether you're running a three-day reunion with concurrent sessions, a giving day with multiple funds and peer-to-peer components, or an integrated alumni engagement strategy across events, email, and fundraising, the platform scales with you.
• Self-service tools: Alumni can update their information, submit class notes, and manage preferences on their own. That means cleaner data, fewer administrative requests, and more time for staff to focus on engagement. You have dedicated support available around the clock to troubleshoot issues, answer questions, and help your team at your own pace. If alumni encounter problems, they have direct access to support too.
• Dramatically reduced manual overhead: From campaign setup to data entry to event coordination, the platform automates what used to consume hours. Automated data syncs replace manual exports and built-in workflows reduce handoffs, so team members can work concurrently. For lean teams managing large alumni bases, this translates directly to capacity for strategy instead of firefighting.
• Multichannel communication: Reach constituents through email, text messaging, and other channels from the same platform. With audience segmentation and automated outreach, it's easier to connect with alumni at the right time and through the right channel.

Almabase in action:

Cornell College manages a community of 15,000-17,000 alumni with a remarkably lean advancement team. Before Almabase, staff were piecing together BBNC and other tools, spending valuable time managing disconnected systems and manual processes.

After moving giving, events, email, forms, and community engagement into Almabase, event registrations flowed in smoothly and alumni could update their own information. With an alumni community that cares about staying connected, the college was able to elevate their Giving Day experience with leaderboards, campaign pages, and real-time participation tracking.

After the switch, Cornell exceeded its Giving Day goal, reaching 1,008 donors and earning a 4.7/5 participant rating. Homecoming attracted more than 430 attendees, and their "All In for the Hilltop" campaign raised over $226,000 from 992 donors.

Watch the team from Cornell College share their experience here.

What it's not great at: Almabase does not include prospect research or wealth screening tools. If major gifts research is a priority, you'd need to layer in a separate platform.

Pricing: Custom pricing based on institution size and needs.

2. GiveButter

‍

GiveButter is an all-in-one fundraising platform designed to help nonprofits raise funds, engage donors, and manage donor relationships through customizable donation forms, embedded donation widgets, and various payment options. The platform is known for its transparent pricing model, operating on a "tip-or-optional-fee" basis, meaning nonprofits receive 100% of their donations with no hidden fees. 

Best for: Organizations looking to launch peer-to-peer campaigns without a subscription commitment, schools running crowdfunding initiatives on a low budget, and nonprofits seeking easy-to-navigate platforms for both staff and donors.

Best for: Organizations looking to launch peer-to-peer campaigns without a subscription commitment, schools running crowdfunding initiatives on a low budget, and nonprofits seeking easy-to-navigate platforms for both staff and donors.

Key Strengths:

• Transparent, flexible pricing with no mandatory fees: GiveButter offers a "free forever" plan as well as paid options starting at $29/month, making it accessible for schools of any size. You only pay if you choose to, or opt for donor tipping instead of platform fees.
• Customizable donation forms and fundraising pages: Build campaigns quickly with branded donation pages, text-to-donate and scan-to-donate QR codes, and goal bars that display campaign progress in real-time to motivate donors throughout the campaign.
• Built-in CRM and donor management: Track donor activity, send personalized messages, and build stronger relationships with integrated supporter management tools. 
• Peer-to-peer and event fundraising tools: Launch peer-to-peer campaigns with donation forms, fundraising pages, event management, and marketing tools to analyze progress and streamline workflows. Event features include ticketing with QR code check-in and online and silent auctions.
• Multiple payment options for donors: Accept payments in the form of Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, giving your supporters flexibility in how they contribute. 

What it's not great at: GiveButter primarily caters to nonprofits and may not be as experienced with educational institution's needs, especially volunteer management and alumni engagement like platforms built specifically for higher education. If you’re looking for advanced alumni networking, community engagement, or multi-day event management at institutional scale, you'll likely need to supplement GiveButter with other tools.

Pricing: The platform’s core features are available at zero platform fee when optional donor tips are enabled. If you turn off tips, a flat 3% platform fee applies.

Givebutter Plus, which is their paid tier, starts at $29/month and provides advanced automation and analytics.

3. Hivebrite

Hivebrite started as a community platform and has evolved into a comprehensive alumni engagement hub. If your priority is building a place where alumni actively engage with each other (not just receive messages from the institution), Hivebrite delivers that experience.

Best for: It's a great pick when your goal is fostering actual peer-to-peer connections: discussion spaces, networking, job boards, and mentoring. It works well for schools with large, geographically dispersed alumni networks that want to position the platform as a living community.

Key Strengths:

• Active alumni community spaces: Alumni can connect through discussion groups, class-based communities, and interest networks that keep engagement going well beyond campaigns. A visual directory with map-based search also makes it easy to find and reconnect with peers.
• Smarter networking through AI: Built-in matching helps surface meaningful connections based on shared interests, behaviors, and engagement history, which helps you turn passive browsing into more intentional networking and mentoring.
• Career and mentoring tools in one place: Job boards and mentoring features are integrated directly into the platform, allowing alumni to share opportunities, offer guidance, and support each other’s professional growth without needing separate systems.
• Flexible event and engagement journeys: From reunions to local chapters and onboarding experiences, institutions can create structured engagement paths that guide alumni through relevant content and activities over time.
• Customizable and integration-ready: The platform supports branding flexibility and connects with existing systems like CRMs and analytics tools, allowing institutions to tailor the experience while keeping data aligned across platforms.

What it's not great at: While Hivebrite features direct, bidirectional integrations with major CRMs like Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT and Salesforce to prevent manual data syncing, its transactional giving modules are still not at the center of operations. If your team requires advanced fundraising toolsets like gamified giving day leaderboards or major gift prospect tracking, you will likely need separate, dedicated tools alongside it.

4. EverTrue

EverTrue brings prospect research and wealth screening directly into the platform. It's built for institutions focused on major gifts and looking to connect engagement data with donor intelligence. It really stands out with helping teams identify which alumni are most likely to give and when. This is fundamentally different from the other platforms in that it's more specialized than all-in-one.

Best for: Institutions with a dedicated major gifts program and the capacity to leverage wealth screening and engagement data together. Works best for universities managing alumni records where prospect identification directly feeds major gifts strategy.

Key Strengths:

• Smarter prospect discovery from digital engagement: EverTrue helps advancement teams surface potential major donors by pulling in signals from social media and online engagement. Teams can quickly identify prospects they may not have previously flagged through traditional screening methods.
• Engagement tracking connected to giving potential: See which high-net-worth prospects are actively engaging with your institutional content, allowing major gift teams to prioritize their cultivation efforts on warm leads.
• Proven impact on major gift pipelines: Institutions have used EverTrue to uncover hundreds of new major gift prospects and generate millions in proposal opportunities by tightening how they identify and qualify leads.
• Donor Experience Officer (DXO) programs: The platform offers specialized software tailored for DXO tracks, enabling a single digital gift officer to manage a portfolio of prospects each month with personalized, tech-enabled outreach, achieving significantly higher retention rates and revenue lift than traditional annual fund averages.

What it's not great at: It’s not a full platform replacement. You still manage separate systems for events, email marketing, and community. Best used alongside other tools, not instead of them.

Pricing: EverTrue offers custom pricing based on institutional requirements.

5. 360Alumni

360Alumni is an all-in-one platform similar to Almabase, but leans more into networking and community as the centerpiece. It's built for schools that want to give alumni a branded, customizable space to connect and engage while also managing fundraising and events. The platform launched in 2013 with a specific mission: help institutions deliver value through their alumni network, not just extract giving.

Best for: Institutions wanting a modern, integrated alternative with strong community and engagement features. It works well for colleges prioritizing alumni network building alongside fundraising, particularly schools at earlier stages of alumni relations sophistication.

Key Strengths:

• Unified platform spanning alumni networking, fundraising, and events: Brings community, giving, and events together into a singular administrative environment, reducing the need for separate point vendors.
• Interactive directory with mapping and member search: It features a visual, map-based directory search layer. Colleges use the platform to make it easy for alumni to find one another, create virtual communities anywhere in the world, and coordinate local chapter engagement. 
• Built-in email marketing through integrated Emma tool: Includes a full native enterprise integration with Emma Email Marketing. Key demographic and behavioral segment data flows in real time without manual lists, with standard contracts packaging up to 50,000 email deployments per quarter.
• Job board and mentorship program capabilities: Supports organic career connections by allowing alumni to self-post corporate roles, offer resume guidance, and manage peer-to-peer mentoring matching natively.
• Nimble, Feedback-Driven Customization: The team builds features requested by clients; examples include discussion board threading and custom job board naming.

What it's not great at: CRM integration maturity is less established than some other platforms on this list. The community-first approach can mean fundraising and advancement workflows feel secondary. Smaller user base means fewer case studies and peer reference institutions compared to more established platforms.

Pricing: EverTrue offers custom pricing for institutions based on alumni count and feature requirements.

Making the Move: What to Consider

Setting expectations around things like how data migration will work, what resources your team will need, and what “success” looks like in the first few months will help you and your team down the line.

Before you commit, it helps to get clear on a few key areas:

Questions Worth Asking Before You Commit

Get answers to these before you sign anything:

1. Data migration: Think about all the logistical parts:

• How will your existing alumni records, giving history, and event registrations move over?
• Will your data be clean and accurate on the other side, or will you spend months cleaning it up?
• What happens to historical data you might need to reference?

2. Timeline: What's a realistic implementation schedule? If a vendor suggests a short implementation window, like a week, for a full migration, it might be time to invoke some healthy skepticism. Most implementations take 3 weeks to two months when you factor in data cleanup, staff training, and testing.

3. Training and onboarding: What does the platform’s ongoing support look like after go-live? Will you get a dedicated implementation manager, or are you on your own, and does that work for you?

4. CRM integration: Work out the specifics: will it be real-time or batch sync? How often do you sync? What happens if something breaks, who takes the responsibility to troubleshoot?

5. Costs: Consider implementation, ongoing licensing, and any integration fees you might not have anticipated. Ask for a three-year cost projection, not just the first-year number.

6. Contingency: What happens if you need to run both systems in parallel? Can the vendor accommodate that, or are there any additional costs there?

Give Yourself Time to Get It Right

Your current platform isn't disappearing tomorrow. You have time to approach this strategically.
Running parallel systems briefly costs less than rushing the transition and spending months fixing mistakes. Early vendor conversations will tell you a lot about their implementation approach and about gaps in your own readiness. Budget time for staff training alongside platform setup. Even the best platform in the world won't work out if your team doesn't know their way around it.

Things to keep in mind with your new platform of choice

• The first 90 days after implementation are especially important because your team is still learning the platform, exploring workflows, and building confidence. It helps to support this phase with a clear structure. Assign a platform champion who can act as the internal point of contact, schedule regular check-ins to catch issues early, and acknowledge small wins so the team builds momentum.
• Cleaning and organizing data before you move it ensures you are not carrying old inconsistencies into a new system. It also helps to define clear ownership for ongoing maintenance, including who keeps records updated and who monitors for duplicates.
• A phased approach to adoption works best. Start with core functionality like giving, events, and community engagement, then introduce additional features once the team is comfortable with the basics. This helps build confidence and reduces unnecessary complexity early on.
• Change management plays a central role in long-term success. Training, documented processes, and ongoing communication help teams understand how the new platform fits into their work and support steady adoption over time.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the best alternative to BBNC is a chance to make day-to-day work easier for your team and create a smoother experience for alumni and donors.  We've seen institutions get the most value when they reduce the number of disconnected tools staff have to manage. Cornell College achieved this by bringing critical functions together in one connected ecosystem.

That same pattern shows up in other institutions that have modernized their BBNC setup: cleaner workflows, less manual work, and a better experience for the people interacting with the institution.

If you'd like to explore more, these stories are a good place to start:

• Minnesota State University, Moorhead, used Almabase to streamline its Giving Day experience and increase participation across the campaign.
• Using Almabase, Elon University raised $3.6 million on Giving Day while simplifying campaign management for its team.
• For Rhode Island School of Design, moving from BBNC to Almabase resulted in significant gains in efficiency and cost savings while still getting the functionality their team needed.

Whatever platform you choose, the goal is the same: give your team fewer systems to wrestle with and more time to focus on alumni, donors, and the work that matters most.

If you're exploring alternatives to BBNC and want to see what a more connected advancement experience could look like, request a demo and we'd be happy to walk you through it.

Fundraising events are a mainstay in institutional and nonprofit advancement strategies across the board. With 77% of nonprofits that host fundraising events meeting or exceeding their fundraising goals, events remain one of the most effective ways to engage supporters and generate revenue.
Whether it’s a charity gala for a hospital foundation, a school auction for a K-12 PTA, or an alumni giving day, your choice of event management fundraising software can really affect the kind of experience you’re able to offer to your team as well as your attendees.

And with so many platforms that seem to do it all, picking which one actually fits your needs is easier said than done.

In this blog, we take a closer look at what fundraising event software helps with, what features to look for, and which platforms are worth considering depending on your goals and use case.

What is a fundraising event software?

Fundraising event software is any platform that helps nonprofits, schools, and advancement teams plan, promote, manage, and measure fundraising events.

This usually covers everything from registration and ticketing to donation collection, guest check-in, and post-event reporting. This list of features can look a little different across different platforms, but a good platform usually has a combination of these to offer, all in one place. The types of events it can support include:

• Galas and charity dinners
• Silent and live auctions
• School auctions and PTA fundraisers
• Alumni reunions and giving days
• Donor stewardship events
• Walkathons and peer-to-peer fundraising events

With a general tool you might stop at RSVPs and ticketing, but with a fundraising event software you’d be able to connect registrations to donor records, process gifts, track giving history, and feed all of that data back into your CRM so you can inform your future fundraising strategy.

Essential features of fundraising event software

While it might seem like every platform offers a set of similar features, it is important to be very clear about exactly what combination of features fits your fundraising event requirements the best.
Here are a few features that we think could set you up for success:

1. Event registration and ticketing

The platform should allow your team to create branded registration pages, sell tickets, manage guest lists, and track RSVPs. Support for multiple ticket types, table sales, and promo codes is essential, especially if you run complex, multi-day events.

2. Donation collection

Your event software should make it easy to collect donations before, during, and after the event in multiple ways: could be giving forms, donation add-ons at checkout, or live appeals during an event.

3. Auction and bidding tools

For some galas and charity dinners, features like silent auctions, mobile bidding, paddle raises, and item management are central to the fundraising strategy.

4. Sponsorship management

Many fundraising events depend on sponsorship revenue to break even or exceed their goals. You’ll want to manage sponsor packages, track visibility (logos on event pages, branded displays, etc.), and process sponsorship payments cleanly.

5. Email invitations and reminders

The platform should support personalized event invites, automated reminders, confirmations, and post-event follow-ups.

6. Check-in and attendance tracking

QR code and mobile check-in options reduce event-day mismanagement and capture accurate attendance data. This becomes especially relevant if you’re running multi-day fundraising events.

7. CRM or donor database integration

Your event data should sync back to your donor database or CRM automatically so your team doesn't have to spend time after every event manually reconciling lists and data across registrations, attendance and giving.

8. Reporting and ROI tracking

The right platform should report exactly what happened in your events with the right metrics: registrations, attendance, donations raised, revenue per event, expenses, donor participation rates, and follow-up opportunities.

9. Hybrid and virtual event functionality

As more and more organizations continue to adopt both in-person and virtual events (or a combination of both), the ability to support virtual attendance, livestream integration, and online-only becomes much sought-after.

Best fundraising event software platforms to consider

1. Almabase

Best for: schools, universities, and advancement teams

Almabase is built for educational advancement teams that want event management, giving, engagement, and CRM sync in one connected platform. It links registration, attendance and gift records back to your constituent's engagement history, so events become part of a donor journey.

Its TrueSync integration with Raiser's Edge NXT allows two-way, real-time data sync without manual intervention, saving your team lots of time and effort. The platform works well for alumni reunions, giving days, donor stewardship events, and school fundraising events.

Almabase is a good fit for teams that don't want event data sitting in a separate tool. It helps teams keep event management, gifts, communication and engagement data unified so every event can feed into a larger donor engagement strategy.

2. OneCause

Best for: galas, auctions, and live fundraising events

OneCause (now part of Bonterra) is a well-known platform for nonprofit fundraising events, mostly galas, auctions, mobile bidding, and paddle raises. It supports unlimited events, a customizable event website, ticket sales, QR code check-in, seating management, real-time scoreboard displays, and text campaigns, all within a single platform.

Its mobile bidding and auction tools are purpose-built for high-energy, donor-facing events for which real time engagement is really important.
OneCause is a great fit if your organization runs mid-to-large fundraising events and needs a reliable platform that keeps bidders engaged from start to finish.

3. GiveSmart  

Best for: mobile bidding and auction-heavy events

GiveSmart is an all-in-one fundraising platform with mobile bidding, event management, and donor engagement features. With an annual subscription, your team can run unlimited events like galas and golf tournaments, complete with text-to-give appeals all year-round, without needing separate tools for each.

GiveSmart has an impressive feature set including ticketing and seating, customizable event websites, mobile bidding, live donation displays, and donor management. This makes it a good choice for nonprofits and schools that run multiple event-based fundraisers throughout the year.

4. Handbid

Best for: silent auctions

Handbid is a mobile-first auction and fundraising platform designed specifically for organizations running silent auctions. Built by nonprofit fundraisers who decided to fix the chaos of paper bid sheets, Handbid replaces that process with a native mobile app, automated outbid notifications, real-time leaderboards, and streamlined guest check-in and checkout.

Over 40,000 auctions, Handbid has helped organizations raise more than a billion dollars. Beyond auctions, it also supports live events, paddle raises, peer-to-peer campaigns, text-to-give, and hybrid events with livestreaming.
For private schools, nonprofits, and any organization where the silent auction is central to the fundraising strategy, Handbid is the platform for you.

5. Givebutter

Best for: free or low-cost fundraising events

Givebutter is an all-in-one nonprofit fundraising platform that combines donation forms, event management, auctions, peer-to-peer fundraising, as well as a built-in CRM and offers all of these features under a free pricing model.

These core features are available at no platform fee when optional donor tips are enabled. If you prefer to turn off tips, a flat 3% platform fee applies.
Their paid tier, Givebutter Plus, starts at $29/month, which provides advanced automation and analytics.

Givebutter is a great choice for small to mid-sized nonprofits and schools looking for a capable, budget-friendly platform that handles both events and broader fundraising without adding platform costs.

6. Zeffy

Best for: budget-conscious nonprofits and schools

Zeffy is the only fully zero-fee fundraising platform for nonprofits. It asks for zero setup fees, no monthly subscriptions, and no platform or processing fees. It is funded through voluntary contributions from donors, meaning 100% of what you raise goes directly to your organization.
Over 100,000 nonprofits across the US and Canada use Zeffy.

For event management specifically, Zeffy offers customizable event pages, multiple ticket types, QR code check-in, in-person tap-to-pay capabilities, as well as detailed reporting.
It's the choice for smaller institutions, nonprofits or smaller schools that need professional event management tools but are operating on limited or no budget.

7. Donorbox

Best for: donation forms and simple campaigns

Donorbox, previously known for its embeddable donation forms, has grown into a broader fundraising suite that includes event ticketing, peer-to-peer fundraising, recurring giving, and a donor CRM. Since its event feature was launched in 2022, organizations have sold over $25 million worth of tickets through the platform.

Its event ticketing tool supports multiple ticket types, fair market value calculations for tax receipts, QR code check-in, and integrations with payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.
Donorbox is a great option if your team wants reliable donation forms and basic event ticketing within the same tool.

8. Bloomerang

Best for: donor management with event capabilities

Bloomerang is a giving platform that brings together donor management, fundraising tools, volunteer management, and event management in one system. Its event management module has a massive set of features including ticketing, QR code check-in, auctions, peer-to-peer campaigns, and text-to-give, with AI-powered features that reportedly boost giving form conversions by up to 55%.

Events are tracked alongside giving history, engagement scores, and communication records, making it easier to identify your most active supporters and tailor follow-up accordingly.
For teams that put long-term donor relationships at the center of their fundraising strategy, Bloomerang is a great fit.

9. Eventbrite

Best for: simple ticketed events

Eventbrite has been one of the most widely recognized event platforms, and it remains a good fit for institutions that need quick, reliable ticketing. Publishing events on the platform is free, while ticketing fees apply to paid tickets. Even so, nonprofits can access a 50% discount on Pro plans.

Eventbrite is best for straightforward fundraising events where the goal is getting people in the door. Millions of people turn to Eventbrite to find local events. For nonprofits, it’s a good way to reach new people and get more attendees to community events.

Where it falls short for fundraising purposes is deeper donor engagement: it doesn't offer native donor record creation, CRM integration, or fundraising-specific tools like auction management or pledge tracking. If you need those capabilities, you'll likely need to layer another tool on top of Eventbrite.

10. Cvent

Best for: large-scale event logistics

Cvent is an enterprise-grade event management platform designed for organizations with complex, high-volume events. These events are supported across multiple formats: in-person, virtual, as well as hybrid. It handles end-to-end event planning, from venue sourcing and registration to session management, and provides detailed analytics as well.

Given its scale, Cvent is most at home in larger environments: hospital foundations, university advancement offices, and associations that run many events annually and are looking for scalability, and integration across an existing tech stack. It's generally better suited for institutions with dedicated event operations staff and complex event programs than for smaller teams running one or two fundraisers a year.

Best fundraising event software by use case

The right platform depends heavily on the kind of event you're running, who's attending, and how much work your team is left with after the event ends. Here’s a quick look at everything we discussed so far:

Free vs. paid fundraising event software: Which one should you choose?

Free tools work well for smaller teams, simpler events, or organizations that are just getting started. Platforms like Givebutter and Zeffy offer a good set of features with little to no platform cost, and for many, it’s a perfectly reasonable starting point.

That said, as your event complexity rises, so do the capabilities you look for from the platform you’re using. You might still find a few of your requirements on free platforms, but if you need more than a basic set of features, you might need to consider a paid platform. So the choice really comes down to if your event requires the following (or any combination of these):

• CRM or donor database integration
• Custom branding and event pages beyond basic templates
• Advanced reporting and event ROI analysis
• Complex event workflows that can handle multi-day programs or multiple simultaneous sessions
• Auction support with mobile bidding and item management
• Sponsorship management and tracking
• Donor segmentation for targeted post-event follow-up
• Multi-event management across a full calendar year
• Dedicated customer support, onboarding, and implementation help

If your platform cannot handle the scale of your event, the free tool might cost you more in staff time and missed opportunities than a paid platform would have, simply because it was not built to handle a complex set of requirements.

How to choose the right fundraising event software

With so many options available, choosing one might seem challenging. After a point, everything starts looking the same. We suggest working through these questions with your team before you start comparing platforms. It can save a lot of time (and help you avoid a costly switch down the road).

What type of fundraising events do you run most often?

Your primary event format should drive the decision. Auction-heavy events, peer-to-peer campaigns, and large galas all have different platform needs.

Do you need ticketing, donations, auctions, or all three?

Some platforms specialize in one area. Ensure the tool you’ve chosen handles the full scope of what you actually do.

Do you need peer-to-peer fundraising?

If supporters fundraising on behalf of your organization is part of your strategy, it is a core feature for you and your platform too should support it as such, and not as an add-on.

Does event data need to sync with your CRM?

This is probably the easiest of the lot. If the answer is yes (and for most advancement teams, it is) this should be non-negotiable for you.

How much manual work happens after every event?

If your team spends days reconciling spreadsheets post-event, you need a platform with stronger automation and integration.

Do you need branded event pages?

Branded, professional registration pages bring credibility to your event. This can affect the donor’s first impression when they see your giving page. Building trust with your donors matters!

Do you need reporting on event ROI?

If you're accountable to a board or leadership team, choose a platform that reports the right set of metrics to give you clear visibility into revenue, expenses, and donor participation.

Who will use the tool?

Consider who in your team will work with the tool the most. Whether it's your advancement team, alumni relations staff, or volunteers, make sure that the platform is easy to use for those who will work with it. Implementation support is also a factor to consider at this point.

FAQs

What is the best fundraising event software for schools?

For K-12 schools and universities, Almabase is a great fit. It is built for teams that want to connect event management, giving, and alumni engagement in one place with CRM sync back to Raiser's Edge NXT or other systems.

What is the best fundraising event software for nonprofits?

For nonprofits running galas, auctions, or multi-event programs, platforms like OneCause, GiveSmart, and Bloomerang are strong contenders. For budget-conscious teams, Givebutter and Zeffy offer free-tier options.

How do you calculate ROI from a fundraising event?

Event ROI is calculated by subtracting your total event costs (venue, catering, platform fees, staff time, marketing) from the total revenue generated (ticket sales, donations, auction proceeds, sponsorships), then dividing by the total costs. A positive ROI means the event generated more than it cost.

In 2022 alone, charity golf events at U.S. courses raised an estimated $4.6 billion, with more than 141,000 events held and roughly 80% of all U.S. golf facilities hosting at least one. The average event raised about $29,500, but the ceiling is far higher: a well-structured tournament with the right sponsorship strategy can clear six figures in a single afternoon.

The best golf fundraising ideas however, look different depending on who you are. A K-12 booster club has different assets, different donors, and different cost structures than a hospital foundation courting major-gift prospects, and both look different from a community nonprofit trying to reach a new audience. Below are the ideas that actually work for each, with real examples of organizations putting them into practice.

Why Golf Tournaments Work Well for Fundraising

Over the last few years, golf tournaments have become a staple of nonprofit fundraising, and for good reason. They attract donors who might not engage through traditional channels, create natural sponsorship opportunities, and give your team multiple moments to ask for support before, during, and after the event. And it’s always great to engage in a bit of goodwill and fun over a game! Essentially, golf fundraisers are built-in community experiences.

Here are a few reasons why golf tournaments work so well for fundraising:

• Built-in sponsorship opportunities at every level: Every meal, contest, and activity can be sponsored, creating multiple entry points for businesses to support your cause.
• Strong engagement from donors, alumni, and community partners: Golf brings together your best supporters in a social setting where relationships form naturally and giving does not feel like a compulsion.
• Natural connection to auctions, raffles, contests, and dinners: You can work in natural pause points into these tournaments (lunch, awards dinner) and layer in additional fundraising moments without disrupting the event.
• Good fit for major donors, board members, and business relationships: Golf is a prestigious activity that fits into the lifestyles of high-net-worth individuals and corporate decision-makers who may not respond to other fundraising asks.
• Revenue that comes before, during, and after the event: You can sell sponsorships months in advance, add-ons and contests on tournament day, and follow up with thank-you gifts and challenge pledges after the event closes.

Golf Fundraiser Ideas for Healthcare Foundations

Healthcare foundations occupy a different fundraising universe. Their donor base often skews into the wealthier and more philanthropic demographic, their cause has obvious emotional weight, and their boards often include physicians and executives who are themselves avid golfers. The events here tend to be larger, more polished, and more sponsorship-heavy.

1. The Signature Hospital Foundation Tournament

The flagship model is an annual event hosted by the foundation at a premier course, often featuring physicians and executives as players. 

PIH Health Foundation's 2025 golf tournament raised $400,000 to support hospital priorities ranging from medical technology to caregiver support. The Edward Foundation, the fundraising arm of Edward Hospital in Illinois, raised more than $460,000 at its 30th Annual Charity Golf Tournament at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club, with more than 300 golfers contributing through sponsorships, donations, raffles, and games. Since its founding in 1990, that foundation has raised over $57 million for community healthcare initiatives, and the annual golf tournament is a meaningful piece of that total.

These events succeed because they bundle three things: a beautiful course experience, peer recognition (physicians playing alongside major donors), and a clear connection to a hospital service line the donor cares about.

2. Cause-Specific Tournaments

Tying the tournament to a specific disease, program, or population sharpens the emotional pull.

‍The Hanscom FCU Charitable Foundation's Alan M. Hart Memorial Charity Golf Classic raised $150,000 in a single year for Home Base, a Red Sox Foundation and Mass General Hospital program supporting veterans dealing with the invisible wounds of war. Over time, the tournament has contributed to more than $1.2 million in support for that program. 

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has been the beneficiary of the FedEx St. Jude Championship for more than 50 years, with the event helping raise over $60 million for pediatric cancer and life-threatening disease research.

If your foundation supports multiple service lines, picking one cause per tournament and rotating year by year keeps the storytelling sharp.

3. Inaugural and Capital Campaign Tournaments

A first-ever tournament tied to a specific capital project creates urgency that recurring events lack. 

The Seneca Healthcare Foundation in California hosted its inaugural charity golf tournament at Bailey Creek Golf Course and raised more than $85,000 while building awareness for the construction of the new Lake Almanor Community Hospital.

Th event drew over 100 golfers and featured creative touches including a MASH-themed drink station and live stand-up comedy from a group called the Hole Hecklers. Pairing the tournament with a tangible "we're building this" story gives donors something concrete to point to.

4. The Helicopter Ball Drop

For events that already have momentum, layered add-ons are where the real money is. 

The Edward Foundation's 30th Annual Charity Golf Tournament raised more than $460,000 at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont, with more than 300 golfers donating through sponsorships, donations, raffles, and games. The event even featured a Helicopter Ball Drop contest, where entrants paid for the chance to have a numbered golf ball dropped from a helicopter to land closest to the flag.

‍Ball drops are particularly effective because they sell to people who aren't golfing, including hospital staff, board members, and community supporters who want to participate without playing 18 holes.

5. Hole-in-One Insurance Plays

Offering a $10,000 cash prize, a luxury car, or a luxury trip for a hole-in-one creates outsized excitement at relatively low cost. Most foundations partner with a hole-in-one insurance provider to cover the prize, paying a small premium for enormous marketing buzz. Co-sponsoring the prize with a local car dealership turns the sponsorship into a billboard for the dealer at the event.

‍

Golf Fundraiser Ideas for Schools and Higher Ed

Schools and universities have one fundraising asset most other organizations would kill for: a built-in, lifelong community of alumni, parents, and boosters who already feel emotionally invested.

6. An Annual Alumni Scholarship Classic

The single most reliable model in higher ed is a recurring, branded scholarship tournament that runs every year on the same calendar slot. Take the three below examples:

• Eastern New Mexico University's Alumni Scholarship Golf Tournament, for example, raised a record $60,000 in 2024 and has generated roughly $620,000 in scholarship funds since its launch in 2010. 
• Indiana State University's President's Scholars Golf Outing pulled in more than $115,000 at its 31st annual event, funding the university's most prestigious scholarship. 

• The University of Cincinnati's College of Engineering and Applied Science has run an alumni golf outing for 30 years that has produced over $250,000 in tuition assistance.

For institutions that have had a rich history of golfing alumni or golf fundraisers in the past, it should be a no brainer. However, the only way tradition gets built is if something gets it started in the first place. So maybe this can be the year where your institution starts to grow that tradition if it already hasn’t?

7. Memorial and Legacy Tournaments

If your school has lost a beloved coach, professor, or alum, a memorial tournament builds extraordinary loyalty. Freed-Hardeman University's annual tournament honors the legacy of Dr. Cliff Bennett, a 1961 alumnus and former golf coach whose endowed scholarship still supports students. These events draw deeper giving because donors aren't just buying a foursome but also honoring someone who mattered to them.

It also provides a natural storytelling opportunity that builds a strong emotional connection for your next and future golf fundraisers within this frame.

8. Student-Run Operational Fundraisers

For K-12 and college club teams that don't have a country club or alumni database, one thing you can consider is to sell labor and small experiences. 

Ohio University's club team brought a putting green carpet to the busy College Green area and sold $1 putts to students for a chance to win a prize.

Similarly, The Citadel's club team works local tournaments in exchange for reduced greens fees and sells mulligans for $1 each on a single hole with the course's permission. These ideas also have the added benefit of almost zero overhead and turn a team into a visible part of campus life.

9. Greek Life and Department Tournaments

Smaller, themed tournaments hosted by fraternities, sororities, or specific academic departments can sometimes surprise you and outperform their size. 

The Tau Kappa Epsilon chapter runs an annual golf tournament to raise funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. These events benefit from tight-knit communities where attendance feels almost obligatory in the best way.

‍

Golf Fundraiser Ideas for Nonprofits

Community nonprofits typically have smaller donor lists and tighter budgets than hospital foundations, but they also have more flexibility to experiment. The best ideas in this category lean toward inclusivity (so non-golfers can participate), creativity (so the event is shareable on social media), and modern formats that don't require a 7am tee time at a country club.

10. Topgolf Tournaments

The single biggest shift in nonprofit golf fundraising over the past five years has been the move to Topgolf and similar venues. Topgolf events are accessible to people who don't actually play golf, run in 2-3 hour windows instead of full days, and feel more like a party than a tournament.

Avery's Hope, an all-volunteer nonprofit supporting families of pediatric GI patients, hosts an annual Topgolf fundraiser specifically to be more inclusive for patient families and children.

They drive revenue through bay sponsorships, a silent auction, and a raffle. 

11. Glow Golf and Night Tournaments

A glow golf night tournament uses glow-in-the-dark balls, LED-lit flags, and illuminated tee markers across nine holes after sunset.

The format is highly photogenic, perfect for social media promotion, and stands out in a market where most prospects have already been invited to half a dozen "traditional" golf scrambles this year. The lower hole count also means a lower entry barrier for casual players.

12. Mini-Golf Tournaments for Families

If your donor base skews younger or has lots of families with kids, a charity mini-golf tournament is a high-yield option. The economics are excellent: course rental is cheap compared to a country club, kids can play, and the whole event runs in an afternoon. This format works especially well for nonprofits serving children, families, or schools.

13. Golf Ball Drops as Standalone Events

A golf ball drop doesn't actually require a tournament. Sell numbered balls for $10 to $25 each, drop them from a helicopter or crane over a target, and award prizes to the closest balls. The model is brilliantly simple: supporters who can't golf, won't golf, or live nowhere near the course can still buy a ball and watch the drop on a livestream. Many nonprofits run a ball drop as a low-effort revenue add-on to an existing event.

14. Golf Simulator Events for Winter Months

Indoor golf simulator venues let nonprofits run "tournaments" in November, December, January, and February when outdoor courses are closed in most of the country. Players can compete on famous courses like Pebble Beach or St. Andrews without leaving the building. Because most other nonprofits cluster their fundraising in spring and fall, a winter simulator event lands in a less competitive calendar window for donor attention.

15. Hole-in-One Challenges as Standalone Promotions

You don't need a full tournament to run a hole-in-one challenge. Some nonprofits set up a single par-3 hole at a community event, charity festival, or even a parking lot driving range and charge $10 to $20 per shot. The prize, again, can be insured for a small premium. It's a strong choice for organizations that want some "golf" energy without the operational complexity of running 18 holes.

16. Putting Contests and Closest-to-the-Pin Add-Ons

For nonprofits already running events, putting contests are an easy revenue layer. Charge $5 per putt at a fundraising gala, festival, or community event with a prize for the longest putt sunk. Operationally simple, instantly fun, and works at almost any venue with 30 feet of flat ground.

‍

Golf Tournament Sponsorship Ideas for Nonprofits

A stacked list of sponsors can bring in a lot of revenue for a fundraiser. From an organizer’s perspective, you can work in various tiers based on the scale of your event and make each feel valuable, while giving sponsors visibility that justifies their investment.

Here are the sponsorship tiers that work across different golf fundraising contexts:

17. Title Sponsor

The headline sponsorship tier. Your title sponsor gets naming rights: their name appears on all promotional materials, event signage, email campaigns, and social posts as "The [Sponsor Name] Golf Tournament."
They also receive premium recognition during opening remarks and the awards dinner. This is your main sponsorship and should carry the highest price tag.  

‍
At Northwest Community Hospital’s 26th annual Golf Classic, Elite Ambulance served as the Title Sponsor at Medinah Country Club, which raised $784,000 to support cancer care initiatives. The ‘Elite’ logo appears front and center across all branding and promotional materials used during the event.

18. Presenting Sponsor

Presenting sponsors appear alongside the title sponsor in most materials and get recognition during the event. However, owing to an investment lower than the title sponsor, they don’t get the full naming rights. This tier works well for major local businesses or corporate partners who want significant visibility but may not need the top-tier sponsorship.

The 3rd Annual PGA Hope Charity Golf tournament took place on April 13, 2026, with presenting sponsor Yaamava Resort and Casino. As presenting sponsor, Yaamava received high-level brand visibility alongside the event name, as well as recognition across select signage, digital promotions, and on-site materials.

The 2026 event raised over $50,000, which will directly fund free six-week adaptive golf instruction, camaraderie building, and wellness programs for at least 45 local military veterans. 

19. Hole Sponsorships

For schools especially, hole sponsorships are the unsung hero of the budget. Local businesses pay $250 to $1,000 for a sign on a tee box, and parents who own those businesses are an easy first ask. This tier is easy to sell to smaller, local businesses because the investment is modest and the visibility is clear. 

Most tournaments have 18 holes, so you can easily move 18+ sponsors at this level. Having multiple sponsors builds more credibility for your event and cause as well.

20. Cart Sponsorships

Think of golf carts as little, mobile billboards. Cart sponsors get branded decals on every cart in the tournament, meaning their logo is visible to golfers all day across the golf course. 

A beverage cart sponsor for example, provides (or co-sponsors) the drinks and snacks on the course. Golfers encounter this sponsor multiple times during the round, and beverage sponsors often get naming recognition: "Powered by [Company Name]." Local restaurants, beverage distributors, or quick-service businesses are good fits here.

21. Swag Bag Sponsor

This is a great way to create a lasting impression with your attendees and bring multiple local businesses or small sponsors together. If you're creating a gift bag for golfers, a swag bag sponsor (or sponsors, if there are multiple,) covers the items or the cost. This tier works well for local businesses, vendors, and corporate sponsors looking for an approachable way to get involved.

‍

Golf Tournament Raffle and Auction Ideas

Raffles and auctions unlock revenue from people who may not necessarily participate in the tournament. At the same time, a golfer who plays in the scramble may buy a raffle ticket for the silent auction in the tournament, while a board member who attends only the dinner might bid on a live auction item. These revenue moments, layered into the event flow, could even equal or exceed registration fees.

22. Silent Auctions

Run before or during the event (usually during lunch or dinner), silent auctions work well for items in the $50-$500 range and let attendees bid at their own pace. Items might include local experiences, golf packages, sports memorabilia, or services. It might be a good idea to display items prominently so golfers and guests can browse before they tee off, and to open bidding a day or two before the tournament so people have time to consider their bids.

The Township of Tiny Mayor’s Charity Golf Tournament successfully integrated a digital silent auction and raffle alongside their traditional on-course play. By taking the auction virtual, they allowed participants to browse, helping the tournament surpass its goals to raise $54,000 for 17 local non-profit organizations.

23. Live Auctions

A live auction is best-suited for a faster-paced moment, usually at the awards dinner, where an auctioneer drives energy and competition. Live auctions work best for high-value items ($1,000+) or experiences (golf trips, private lessons with pros, VIP event tickets). The auction moment also energizes the room and typically generates larger bids than silent formats. 

The 2023 edition of the Mike McCann Charity Golf Tournament concluded its multi-course event with a high-energy award dinner and live auction run by a professional auctioneer. There were more than 80 items for attendees to bid on and the dinner portion of the event helped push the envelope to achieve $1.6 million in fundraising totals. These funds went on to support communities across Ottawa, Southwestern Ontario, Montreal, and British Columbia.

24. 50/50 Raffles

A raffle runs on a high participation model: sell tickets for $5, $10, or $20 each; winner takes home half the pot, and the other half goes to your organization. It's easy to explain and you can expect high buy-in from attendees.

25. Local Business Raffle Baskets

Ask local restaurants, salons, spas, and boutiques to donate items or gift cards. You can build themed baskets (wine and cheese, spa day, date night) and raffle them. This benefits local businesses by bringing them visibility and gets you donated items at no cost.

26. Travel and Experience Packages

Golf trips, resort weekends, or sporting event packages command high bids and create aspirational excitement. You can partner with travel agents, resorts, or event venues to secure donated or discounted packages.

‍

How to Plan a Golf Fundraiser

Planning a golf fundraiser might look like a lot, but breaking it into clear steps keeps the project manageable and helps you stay on schedule.

1. Set your fundraising goal

As the very first step, decide how much money you need to raise. All your other decisions, like how many golfers you need to register, what sponsorship packages to offer, will be built around this.
A golf tournament typically raises $20,000 to $50,000, but it depends on your donor base, the course quality, and your sponsorship capacity.
Once you know your goal, you can work backward. For example, if you need $40,000 and you expect 80 golfers at $150 per player, that's $12,000 from registrations. You'll need sponsorships to cover the rest.

2. Choose the right golf course

The venue sets the tone for your entire event. Look for a course that fits your budget and has availability on a date that works for your supporters. Ask about their nonprofit rates: many courses offer discounts for charity events.
Once shortlisted, do a bit of background check as well: a well-maintained, scenic course attracts sponsors and golfers. Also confirm what facilities the course provides (cart rental, beverages, lunch) and what you would need to source separately.

3. Build sponsorship packages

Create 4-6 sponsorship tiers that appeal to different business sizes and budgets. Start with your anchor tiers (Such as: Title Sponsor at $10,000+, Presenting Sponsor at $5,000), then add mid-level options (Hole Sponsors at $1,000 to $2,000, Cart Sponsors, Beverage Cart Sponsor, etc).
Make sure each tier includes clear benefits: logo placement, signage, recognition; it’s best to be very specific about what sponsors get in exchange for their investment. A well-designed sponsorship deck should be able to generate 50% of your fundraising goal. Set this target with your team.

4. Create a registration page

Set up an online registration page where golfers can sign up and pay. Include clear pricing (foursome rate, individual player rate, dinner-only ticket), event details (start time, course, what's included), and a simple checkout process.
You could offer early-bird discounts to incentivize early registration. Make registration mobile-friendly since many golfers are likely to sign up on their phones.

5. Recruit sponsors and teams

Start with your board members, major donors, and corporate relationships. Assign specific team members to each prospect and get started on personalized sponsorship pitches, not generic emails.
For team recruitment, ask golfers to form teams of four and invite their friends and offer team entry at a discount if they register early. Use email, social media, and direct outreach to build visibility. Open registration 8-10 weeks before the event so you have time to follow up with people who express interest.

6. Add contests, raffles, and auctions

Once you have your core registration and sponsorships, layer in revenue boosters. Contests like longest drive, closest to the pin, and putting contests are easy to sponsor and fun to participate in.
Work in a silent auction during lunch (aim for items in the $50-$500 range) and a live auction at dinner for high-value items ($1,000+). You could also sell raffle tickets throughout the event. These add-ons, when carefully built into the event flow, could bring in as much as 20-30% of your total revenue without requiring much operational overhead.

7. Promote the event through email and social media

Build awareness early and often. Send email updates to your donor list at 8 weeks out, 4 weeks out, 2 weeks out, and 1 week before the event. The content could include sponsorship opportunities, team registrations, and special features (live auction, concert, celebrity attendee, etc.).
Post on social media weekly with photos from past tournaments, sponsor spotlights, and registration reminders. Create and promote event hashtags and encourage participants to share during the tournament. Promotion should emphasize the mission impact, not just the golf.

8. Prepare event-day check-in

Plan your check-in process weeks in advance. Create a registration table with volunteer stations: one for name lookup, one for payment, one for name badges and cart assignments. Print scorecards, provide tee times, and ensure volunteers understand the day's schedule.
It’s always good to have a backup plan for weather (rain, extreme heat). Brief all volunteers on the mission, key talking points, and where to direct questions.

9. Capture donor and attendee data

During registration and checkout, collect names, email addresses, phone numbers, and company affiliations. This data is gold for future stewardship and fundraising. If you’d rather not do this manually, you can use a registration system that automatically captures this information and integrates with your donor database.
If you're using paper forms, set time aside to enter the data afterward. The goal is to know who attended, what they gave, and how to stay in touch.

10. Follow up after the event

Once the event is over, it’s time to show gratitude! Send thank-you emails within 48 hours to participants, sponsors, and volunteers. Share photos and impact metrics (total raised, number of veterans served, students supported, etc.).
Follow up with sponsors who expressed interest in next year. For major sponsors, consider a personal call or thank-you lunch. Send a final thank-you with tax documentation for donors.

‍

How Almabase Helps Nonprofits Run Better Golf Fundraisers

Golf fundraisers generate significant revenue, and keeping track of everything that went on becomes much easier when registration, sponsorships, auctions, and follow-up are coordinated seamlessly. Almabase consolidates the entire flow in one platform, so you can manage the event, capture data, and steward supporters without having to switch between systems.

Manage registration, tickets, sponsorships, and donations in one place

Almabase's event management suite lets you handle everything from a single dashboard. Golfers can register for individual spots or groups, ticket-only guests purchase dinner seats, sponsors select their sponsorship tier and complete payment, all in one integrated flow.
You set registration pricing, ticket tiers, and sponsorship packages and Almabase handles the checkout, payment processing, and confirmation emails.
Guest management keeps track of who's coming, dietary preferences, and seating assignments, while real-time reporting shows you registration progress, sponsorship status, and revenue toward your goal, so you know exactly where you stand at any point in the campaign.

Run auctions and giving moments alongside the event

Almabase’s fundraising and event tools let you seamlessly integrate raffles, fund-a-need campaigns, and auction checkout directly into the event experience.
Attendees can purchase raffle tickets right at check-in, participate in a live paddle raise via optimized mobile giving pages, or pay for winning auction items.
Post-event, you can extend the giving window by promoting online donation campaigns to your entire donor base, ensuring supporters who couldn't attend in person can still drive revenue toward your goal.

Engage supporters before and after the event

With Almabase, you can place the golf tournament within a longer stewardship journey. Almabase's email communication tools let you segment your donor list and send targeted messages at each stage.
Send save-the-date announcements to past donors, early-bird registration reminders to your core supporter list, and event reminders to registered participants.
After the event, you’ll be able to send personalized thank-you emails to golfers, sponsors, and auction winners within hours. 

Sync clean event and gift data back to Raiser's Edge NXT

Almabase syncs all registrations, sponsorships, and final auction payments directly to Raiser's Edge NXT. Rather than having to plan for tedious manual entry, your team can review and push gift data directly into your CRM.
Registration details map to participant records, sponsorship packages are accurately attributed, and event revenue ties to the right constituent profiles. This seamless flow maintains absolute data integrity, giving your team an updated, clear view of tournament revenue without the post-event administrative scramble.

‍

Wrapping up

Golf fundraisers will likely continue to be an important part of fundraising culture, especially in the US. With their added advantage of flexibility across institutions and nonprofit organizations, they also serve as one of the more flexible options (provided a golf course is geographically practical).

All that said, we hope we’ve given you plenty of ideas for your next (or first) golf fundraiser! And if you are looking for a platform to help you host your fundraiser, engage donors, and raise funds, book a personalized demo with us and we’d love to know how we can help!

A well run reunion event offers a seamless experience to your attendees. They register once, select a few events for the weekend, receive timely reminders, check in and move smoothly from one gathering to the next. From their perspective, the whole thing only takes a few seconds and minimal effort.

Behind the scenes, however, is an enormous amount of coordination happening across teams and timelines.

For smaller gatherings, lightweight event tools may still work perfectly well. But once reunions become larger, multi-event set ups, or tied to broader advancement goals, managing registrations or ticketing is just one cog in the wheel. That’s when many alumni and advancement teams eventually move toward platforms designed specifically for reunion and alumni engagement workflows. In this blog, we’ll break down the platforms best suited for different types of reunion events, team structures, and engagement goals.

Why Reunion Teams Need a Dedicated Platform

Many teams begin with the tools already available internally, like spreadsheets for guest tracking, email platforms for outreach, online forms for RSVPs, and a ticketing platform layered on top to handle payments. And that set up works well for a while too.
Most event platforms are designed to handle transactions: collect registrations, process payments, send confirmation emails. While this works just fine for one-off events, reunions call for something more.

Most advancement and alumni teams are already familiar with the friction points:

• Tracking RSVPs across multiple class years and attendee groups
• Managing separate capacities for paid and free events
• Coordinating multi-day schedules without creating confusion
• Handling guest registrations and last-minute changes manually
• Sending segmented communication to different alumni audiences
• Moving attendees through check-in quickly during peak arrival windows
• Reconciling attendance data after the event
• Updating alumni records without hours of manual entry

Individually, none of these problems are unusual. But together, a combination of any of these issues creates significant overhead. This holds especially true for leaner teams, when the issue becomes even more visible after the event ends. They might find themselves having to spend days cleaning spreadsheets, confirming attendance records, updating CRM systems, and piecing together engagement data that should have been captured automatically.

Why Generic Event Tools May Not Be Enough

Reunions are complex and involve long-term alumni relationships, donor engagement, segmented outreach, multi-day programming, and post-event reporting that extends well beyond the weekend itself. They require platforms that will understand the context behind why all this needs to be connected.

For example, knowing that 400 people registered for a reunion is useful. But knowing which classes had the strongest turnout, which former volunteers re-engaged, or which lapsed donors attended for the first time in years is significantly more valuable.

The same applies operationally. Generic platforms often require teams to manage communications, reporting, and CRM updates separately, creating duplicate work across systems that don’t naturally connect to one another.

That’s why many institutions eventually move toward platforms designed specifically for alumni engagement and reunion management. It makes a huge difference to reduce manual coordination, improve data continuity, and make reunions easier to manage as part of a larger alumni strategy.

At a Glance: Top Reunion Platforms

‍

Best Platforms for Milestone Class Reunions

Milestone reunions sit at the intersection of emotional significance and operational intensity. These are your 10th, 25th, 50th year reunions.

You need class-year segmentation for targeted invitations, multi-day session management, integrated giving pages and CRM sync so reunion attendance feeds your donor records. Here are our recommendations:

1. Almabase

Almabase is particularly well suited for milestone reunions because it brings event management and alumni fundraising into one place. Alumni can sign up for multiple reunion activities, contribute to a class gift campaign, and receive communication tailored to their class year, all within the same experience. On the admin side, QR code check-ins and automatic CRM syncing make it easier to track both attendance and giving, which is especially useful when reunion engagement feeds into long-term donor stewardship efforts. Custom pricing offered.

2. Eventbrite

Eventbrite is a practical option for smaller institutions or volunteer-led reunion committees where the goal is mainly registration and payment collection rather than advancement integration. The platform is for free events; and fees apply for paid ticketing, which can be borne by the organizers or passed on to attendees.

3. Slate

Slate is a unified, enterprise-grade CRM tool built exclusively for educational institutions that manages the entire student-to-alumnus lifecycle within a single database. For institutions already using Slate, reunion data flows natively into existing student-to-alumni records with absolutely no external CRM sync needed. The platform offers heavy-duty fundraising support with dedicated giving portals, customized gift processing, and major gift pipeline management. It’s a great fit for institutions that want a complete ecosystem to bridge admissions, student engagement, and advanced donor stewardship. Base licensing starts at $30,000/year.

Best Platforms for Multi-Day Reunions

Multi-day reunions are a little tricky to coordinate, because they demand seamless coordination across fragmented schedules, multiple venues, and diverse participant needs. Your platform should be able to handle sub-events, inventory management for ticketed activities, provide attendees with scheduling tools so they can build their own agenda, and give organizers visibility into logistics in real time.

1. Almabase

Almabase brings event management and multi-day scheduling into one place. This means attendees can sign-up for personalized itineraries across sessions, receive real-time updates about capacity and changes, and organizers track attendance by session and segment. Capacity management, dietary tracking, and tiered pricing (full weekend vs. individual days) are straightforward to configure. Another great feature is the CRM sync which captures which alumni attended which sessions, giving organisers a comprehensive picture of attendance.

2. Cvent

Cvent is purpose-built for multi-venue, multi-day events with precision logistics. Its session management capabilities include capacity limits, waitlists, and real-time room changes. Attendees can even use a mobile app to build schedules; while organizers see live dashboards by session and venue. It also offers venue integration, dietary management, badge printing, and check-in workflows, which are all native to the platform. The pricing for Cvent is based on event size and features.

Best Platforms for Activity-Based Reunions

These are the more happening, lively events: Homecoming weekends, sports alumni reunions, performing arts gatherings, and these are usually built around movement and participation rather than a single formal gathering.

1. Almabase

Almabase is a strong fit for institutions running reunion weekends with multiple parallel events and alumni segments. You can create separate registration flows, send targeted communication to different affinity groups, track attendance across activities, and connect participation back to alumni engagement records. It works especially well when the reunion weekend also includes fundraising or volunteer engagement initiatives. Almabase offers custom pricing.

2. Swoogo

Swoogo is best suited for highly programmed reunion weekends with complex schedules and session tracks. Teams can use the platform to build personalized agendas, move between activities, and manage multi-day itineraries through one system. Their pricing starts around $11,800 a year for a single-user license.

3. Whova

Whova is a useful option for highly social reunions where interaction between attendees is part of the experience itself. Features like attendee networking, live messaging, digital photo galleries, and mobile directories make it well suited for homecoming-style events. Custom pricing is offered based on requirements.

Best Platforms for Family-friendly and Community Reunions

Many reunions are designed to bring entire alumni communities together, including spouses, children, volunteers, and local alumni chapters. These events usually require flexible registrations, family-friendly ticketing, and simple communication workflows.

1. WildApricot

WildApricot is a natural fit for community-oriented reunions because it combines event management with membership and volunteer coordination. Family registrations, recurring events, and simple payment collection make it particularly useful for alumni associations and smaller institutions trying to manage ongoing community engagement beyond a single reunion weekend. Pricing starts around $60/month.

2. Glue Up

Glue Up works well for alumni associations with active local chapters and recurring community events. The platform focuses heavily on member engagement and ongoing relationship management over one-off events. Custom pricing is offered for enterprise level subscriptions, while the ‘Plus’ tier is priced at $4500 a year.

3. Mailchimp + Google Forms

Using Mailchimp and Google Forms together is a practical setup for smaller reunion teams with limited budgets. This combination makes for a nifty set up when the reunion is simple enough that teams mainly need RSVP collection, reminder emails, and attendee exports. Mailchimp is free for up to 250 contacts; paid plans start at $13/month and scale based on your chosen features.

Best Platforms for Professional and Impact Reunions

Reunions under the five-year milestone and professional networking events for recent graduates have a different priority: career connection and networking over nostalgia. Attendees want a professional directory, session selection (panels, workshops, speaker talks), and a way to connect with people in their industry after the event.

1. Graduway

Graduway is designed specifically for career-focused alumni engagement. Its tools are geared toward helping alumni build meaningful professional connections through mentorship programs, networking communities, alumni directories, and ongoing career engagement initiatives. The platform offers custom enterprise pricing.

2. Almabase

Almabase is particularly useful when institutions want professional reunions to feed into broader alumni engagement and advancement efforts. Teams can segment alumni by industry or graduation year, manage multiple networking sessions, track attendee engagement, and continue communication after the event through the same platform. Custom pricing.

3. Anthology Encompass (formerly iModules)

Built for institutional database workflows, Encompass (formerly iModules) is a great fit for professional reunions with multiple panels, workshops, or speaker tracks. Attendees can register for individual sessions, while its built-in capacity controls help manage high-demand events more smoothly. It also automatically logs attendance and engagement data back into advancement records. Pricing for the platform depends on the broader institutional enterprise license.

Best Platforms for Virtual and Hybrid Reunions

Not every alumnus can fly back to campus. You need virtual and/or hybrid attendance registration separate from in-person, live streaming or integration with a streaming tool, the ability to capture virtual check-ins for your CRM, and post-event recordings so remote alumni can watch sessions they missed.

1. Hopin (RingCentral Events)

‍Hopin is best suited for large hybrid reunion experiences with multiple simultaneous sessions and networking layers. Features like virtual expo halls, breakout spaces, and structured networking make it work more like a digital conference than a webinar being held with minimal interaction. Pricing starts at $99/month per organizer.

2. Airmeet

‍Airmeet is a good option if you have an interaction-heavy virtual reunion in mind. Social lounges and networking tables create smaller conversational spaces, which helps remote attendees participate more actively instead of simply watching a stream. Entry tiers start around $167/month.

Key Features to Look for in a Reunion Management Platform

As reunions have evolved over the years, so too have the platforms that they are hosted on. However, there are always new as well as persistent issues for which you will want the right features to fit your needs. Here are a few features worth looking into:

1. Registration and RSVP Management

Especially when the reunion is a large one, registrations, check-ins, and RSVP management is often a big headache both for staff and attendees if not done well. When platforms aren’t built for that complexity, your staff end up having to compensate with manual work: tracking waitlists in spreadsheets, reconciling duplicate records before CRM uploads, or maintaining separate documents just to manage attendee data accurately.

2. Ticketing and Payments

A strong reunion platform keeps all of your ticketing, payments, and gifts connected in a single system, handling pricing, refunds, add-ons, as well as reporting together so staff aren’t left reconciling records after the event ends.

3. Email and Guest Communication

Reunion communication begins long before the event itself. A reunion platform should be able to keep communication connected to registration data, allowing updates and messaging to adjust automatically based on schedules, roles, and attendee preferences.

4. QR Code and Mobile Check-Ins

Mobile check-in reduces friction by allowing volunteers to scan QR codes, process attendees quickly, and log attendance automatically in real time.

5. Multi-Day Event Management

A reunion platform becomes even more relevant for large, multi-day reunions because it keeps attendance connected directly to attendee records from the start, making it easier to understand who attended, which sessions saw engagement, and where follow-up should happen next.

6. CRM and Database Integration

Reunions offer institutions a rare opportunity to understand alumni behavior in real time. A strong reunion platform integrates cleanly with systems like Raiser's Edge NXT, Salesforce, or HubSpot so reunion engagement becomes part of the institution’s larger alumni record instead of remaining isolated event data.

‍

How to Choose the Right Platform for Your Reunion

Don’t start by comparing feature lists side by side. The decision usually becomes clearer once the event objectives and operational constraints are visible. Think about what the reunion is trying to achieve, who is running it, and how much of the work needs to connect back into long-term alumni data.

In practice, the “right” platform is the one that reduces the most friction in your specific setup, rather than the one with the most capabilities on paper.

1. Start With Your Reunion Goals

Reunions that are focused on increasing attendance depend heavily on segmentation and communication. Getting the right message to the right cohort at the right time has more impact than any individual feature in the registration flow.

For teams focused on reducing administrative load, the issue is not necessarily the event itself, but the amount of manual reconciliation required afterward. If reunion data doesn’t flow back into the CRM, the operational work doesn’t disappear but moves to a later stage in the process.

2. Match the Platform to Your Team Size

Allow your team size and structure to shape platform choice! Smaller alumni teams need systems that can be set up quickly and managed without dedicated technical support. In those environments, simplicity and speed matter more than deep configuration options, because the same person managing the reunion is often also handling communications, donor outreach, and reporting.

Larger advancement teams operate under a different set of constraints. They have larger targets tied to advancement goals which require deeper CRM integration, more structured data flows, and systems that can support multiple stakeholders working in parallel.

3. Evaluate Your Data Needs

Data requirements are one of the main deciding factors. Some institutions need full CRM synchronization, where registrations, attendance, and gift activity flow automatically into systems like Raiser's Edge NXT.

Other teams operate with simpler needs: clean registration exports, basic attendance tracking, and manual uploads into existing systems. In those cases, lighter platforms can be perfectly sufficient without introducing unnecessary complexity.

4. Consider the Attendee Experience

Confusing registration flows, unclear session structures, or poorly timed communication show up quickly in abandonment rates. In case alumni have not interacted with institutional systems in years, clarity and simplicity in the registration process will go a long way.

The same applies at check-in: a smooth entry experience sets a very different tone compared to visible queues or manual lookups at the door.

5. Think Beyond the Event Day

What happens afterward is just as likely to determine whether the event contributes to long-term engagement or remains an isolated activity in the calendar. Attendance data, donor participation, volunteer sign-ups, and communication history all become more valuable when they can be carried forward into future outreach.

In practice, the most useful systems make post-event work feel like a continuation of the same workflow. When reunion data feeds cleanly into CRM records and follow-up communications, each event builds on the last.

‍

Frequently Asked Questions About Reunion Platforms

1. Is Almabase a good platform for reunions?

Yes, particularly for institutions on Raiser's Edge NXT. Almabase covers registration, ticketing, segmented email, mobile check-in, peer-to-peer fundraising, and CRM sync in one system. The bi-directional RE NXT integration means reunion attendance flows into constituent records automatically. Request a demo to see how the event and CRM workflows connect.

2. Can general event management platforms be used for reunions?

They can handle basic ticketing. They can't segment alumni by class year, sync attendance to an advancement CRM, or connect the event to a giving campaign. For a small, informal reunion without advancement goals, a generic platform works. Once class-year data, giving campaigns, or donor stewardship are involved, purpose-built tools are worth it.

3. Is there a difference between institutional and nonprofit reunions?

Mostly in how success gets measured. Institutional reunions typically include a fundraising component tracked against engagement and giving metrics in a CRM. Nonprofit reunions center on volunteer engagement and cause-based giving. The platform features that matter shift accordingly.

4. Is a platform necessary for a reunion?

Not for simple events. A Google Form and Venmo can get 40 people to a dinner. The complexity scales when you're managing class-year segmentation, multi-day scheduling, tiered pricing, CRM data requirements, and post-event reporting. At that scale, doing it manually costs more in staff hours than the platform does.

Final Recommendations

Choosing the right reunion platform comes down to the goals of the event and the challenges your team is trying to solve.

For smaller reunions with simple registration and communication needs, lightweight tools like WildApricot or Eventbrite are quite enough. They work well for straightforward ticketing, RSVPs, community events, and recurring alumni gatherings without adding unnecessary complexity.

As reunions become more activity-driven or networking-focused, platforms like Almabase, Whova, and Graduway offer stronger support for multi-day programming, attendee engagement, and professional networking experiences.

For advancement teams running milestone reunions with a fundraising component, Almabase is one of the strongest options because registration, communication, check-ins, reunion giving, segmentation, and CRM sync all work together in one system. Instead of becoming isolated event data, reunion participation becomes part of the long-term alumni engagement record.

If you want to see how Almabase can power your next reunion, feel free to request a personalized demo, or if you want a self-guided look, head over to our product tour!

The annual giving campaign was once the primary window for alumni fundraising. Institutions could send a few emails with a year-end giving appeal, and still see support from alumni who felt a strong sense of loyalty to the institution.

That approach is harder to rely on today, as alumni are now asked to support many causes outside their alma mater. If the institution reaches out only during fundraising season, the appeal can feel disconnected.

Despite this, the opportunity to grow alumni donations remains strong. CASE’s latest findings show that giving to U.S. colleges and universities reached $78.8 billion in FY2025, up 4% from the previous year.

In this blog, we’ll cover how to keep alumni engaged before the ask and plan campaigns that make giving timely, relevant, and easier to repeat.

What Drives Alumni Donations Today?

Alumni donations today depend on the relationship alumni have with the institution before a campaign goes live. Loyalty still matters, but it carries more weight when alumni hear from the institution regularly and understand why their support is needed.

Here are the shifts shaping alumni giving today:

• Alumni are more likely to respond when outreach reflects their current relationship with the institution.
• They want to know what their gift will support and how it will make a difference.
• When alumni see others getting involved, the campaign feels more active and easier to join.
• A poor donation experience can stop someone at the moment they are ready to give.
• When repeat giving is simple to set up, institutions can build steadier giving programs over time.

‍

How To Increase Alumni Donations

Increasing alumni donations starts with making the ask feel earned. Alumni are more likely to participate when the institution has stayed relevant before the campaign begins.

The sections below focus on the parts institutions can improve directly.

1. Strengthen Alumni Engagement Before Asking For Donations

A donation request works better when alumni already feel involved with the institution. Regular communication helps maintain that connection.

For example, a useful alumni newsletter can keep alumni connected between campaigns. It can share student stories, highlight meaningful campus updates, and point alumni toward ways to participate.

Institutions can strengthen alumni engagement by:

• Sharing updates that connect alumni to student outcomes, campus priorities, or alumni stories
• Inviting alumni into low-pressure roles before asking for a gift
• Building smaller communities where alumni can engage around shared interests or class identity
• Personalizing outreach based on what alumni have already engaged with

Teams that need more practical alumni engagement ideas can start with programs that give alumni a reason to participate before the donation ask. The goal is to make giving feel like a continuation of the relationship.

2. Make Giving Easy Across Devices

A strong campaign can still lose participation if the giving page is difficult to use. This is especially important on mobile. Many alumni will arrive from an email, text message, social post, or event reminder. If the page is slow or the form asks for too much information, the donor may leave before completing the gift.

A better giving experience should make the next step obvious:

• Load the campaign page quickly, especially on mobile
• Make gift amounts and fund choices easy to understand
• Ask only for the information needed to complete the gift
• Offer payment methods donors already use
• Let donors choose recurring giving without extra steps
• Confirm the gift immediately and follow with a clear thank-you message

The point is to remove friction. Once alumni have decided to give, the donation flow should not make them rethink the decision.

3. Use Campaigns, Events, And Peer Networks To Create Momentum

Alumni campaigns work better when people can see activity around them. A time-bound campaign gives alumni a reason to act soon. An event gives the ask a natural moment. Peer outreach can make the invitation feel more personal because it comes from someone alumni recognize.

Cornell University’s 2026 Giving Day shows how peer activity can strengthen a short campaign window. In 24 hours, the campaign brought together 17,011 donors and raised $11.3 million. Cornell also had 704 Giving Day champions. Their personal outreach helped bring in more than 4,037 gifts.

To build momentum, every campaign element should give alumni a reason to act:

• Use the fundraising goal to show what the campaign is trying to fund
• Use the deadline to make the timing feel urgent
• Share donor counts when participation starts to build.
• Ask classmates or ambassadors to make the appeal feel more personal.
• Use milestones to show progress before the final push.

4. Encourage First-Time Alumni Donors

First-time donors help institutions grow alumni participation beyond the same group of regular contributors. A first gift may be modest, but it gives the institution a real starting point for a longer donor relationship.

Institutions can encourage first-time alumni donors by:

• Using smaller suggested gift amounts
• Creating young alumni challenges or class-year goals
• Using peer outreach to make the first gift feel easier
• Connecting the ask to a specific student-focused outcome

Campaign framing also matters here. If the message only emphasizes dollars raised, smaller donors may feel their gift will not make a difference. A better approach is to frame the campaign around participation as well as revenue.

For example, instead of only saying “Help us raise $100,000,” the campaign can also say “Help us bring 500 alumni donors together for student scholarships.”

5. Use Matching Gifts And Giving Challenges

Matching gifts can make the impact of a donation easier to understand. When alumni know their gift can go further within a specific window, they have a stronger reason to act. Giving challenges work in a similar way by giving alumni a clear goal to rally around.

Good challenge structures include:

• A match that doubles gifts during a set period
• A class-year goal based on donor participation
• A department goal tied to a specific fund
• A milestone that unlocks an additional gift
• A short final push during the last hours of a campaign

The challenge should be simple enough for alumni to understand quickly. They should know what the goal is, what their gift helps unlock, and why taking part now makes a difference.

6. Promote Recurring Giving Options

Recurring giving helps institutions build steadier alumni support after a campaign ends. It gives donors a simple way to continue contributing without waiting for the next appeal.

Recurring giving works best when donors understand why it matters:

• Offer monthly and annual options where donors already choose their gift amount
• Show what a recurring gift can support over a semester or year
• Make the recurring option easy to select without adding extra form steps
• Recognize recurring donors with updates that reflect their continued support

That message should continue after sign-up. Regular updates, thank-you notes, and impact stories help recurring donors see that their support is still active and appreciated. This gives them more reason to keep giving over time.

7. Show Alumni The Specific Impact Of Their Gift

Alumni are more likely to give when the outcome is clear. Institutions should show how donations are used in practical terms. The more specific the connection, the easier it is for alumni to understand the value of giving.

Impact communication should help donors see what happened because they gave:

• Explain the specific fund, program, or student need the campaign supports
• Use student or alumni stories when they make the outcome easier to understand
• Add visuals only when they clarify progress or show impact
• Send updates while the campaign is active and after it closes
• Thank donors with details about what their participation helped make possible

Follow-up matters just as much as the appeal. After the campaign ends, alumni should hear what happened. Share the result, thank donors clearly, and explain what comes next. This closes the loop and gives alumni a stronger reason to participate again.

8. Use Data And Digital Tools To Improve Alumni Donation Campaigns

Data helps institutions see how alumni are responding to a campaign. It can show where interest is building, where follow-up is needed, and which parts of the campaign are helping alumni take action.

The most useful signals often come from activity the institution already tracks. Event attendance can show which alumni are already involved. Email engagement can show which messages are getting attention. Giving history can help teams separate new donors from lapsed or repeat donors.

Digital tools make these signals easier to use. Institutions can:

• Segment alumni by engagement level
• Send reminders when an alum has shown interest but has not given
• Track campaign progress while there is still time to adjust
• Automate donor follow-up
• Identify messages that lead to participation
• Manage engagement, events, and giving in one place

Platforms like Almabase help institutions streamline alumni donations and improve visibility into donor engagement. They bring the work around alumni giving into one connected system. Teams can see engagement, event activity, and online giving in one place, which makes follow-up easier to manage.

For example, Archbishop Riordan High School used Almabase to improve its giving day experience. The team could customize campaigns with less dependence on IT and see gift activity in real time. The school reported a 550% increase in giving day donations, from $60,646 to $338,724.

How To Plan And Execute Alumni Donation Campaigns (Step-By-Step)

A good alumni donation campaign starts before the first appeal goes out. The team needs to know what the campaign is trying to achieve. It should also be clear which alumni groups matter most and why the timing feels relevant.

Step 1: Set Clear Fundraising Goals

Start with the result the campaign needs to achieve. A financial target sets a revenue goal, while a donor target indicates whether the campaign is increasing alumni participation.

Past campaign data can help keep both targets realistic. If one class year, department, or program performed well earlier, that group can receive a focused goal rather than being treated like the entire alumni base.

Setting clear fundraising goals helps the team decide what to measure before the campaign begins and what to improve after it ends.

A useful goal plan should answer five questions:

• How much does the campaign need to raise?
• How many alumni should participate?
• Which alumni groups need focused outreach?
• What stretch goal makes sense if momentum builds?
• What past campaign result should guide the target?

Step 2: Segment And Target Alumni

Segmentation helps institutions avoid sending the same appeal to every alum. The message should reflect what each group already knows, values, or has done with the institution. The question is simple: what does this group already care about, and what would make this campaign feel relevant to them?

Institutions can group alumni by relationship stage and recent activity:

• Recent graduates: Use a smaller first-gift ask and connect it to student impact.
• Reunion-year alumni: Build the message around class participation.
• Past donors: Show how their continued support can move the campaign forward.
• Lapsed donors: Give them a clear reason to re-engage.
• Event attendees: Follow up while the institution is still fresh in their minds.
• Volunteers: Invite them to extend their involvement through giving.
• Department-affiliated alumni: Connect the ask to the program or academic area they know best.

Step 3: Choose The Right Campaign Type

The campaign format should make the goal easier to act on. A participation-focused campaign needs urgency. It also needs visible progress so alumni can see others getting involved. But if alumni attention is already close to an event, the giving ask should connect naturally to that moment.

Here are a few ways to choose the right format:

• Giving day: Best suited for broad participation within a short window.
• Crowdfunding campaign: Works well for scholarships, student aid, athletics, department projects, or other specific initiatives.
• Event-based appeal: Fits naturally around reunion, homecoming, auctions, or regional alumni gatherings.
• Class or department campaign: Useful when the institution wants to activate a smaller alumni group.
• Matching gift or milestone campaign: Helpful when the campaign needs urgency and a clear reason to act soon.

Step 4: Promote Campaigns Across Channels

Promotion should build attention before the ask becomes urgent. Alumni may not give after the first message, so the campaign needs a steady rhythm across the full timeline.

Email can carry the main story. SMS can support short reminders. Social posts can show progress, and peer outreach can make the ask feel more personal.

A simple campaign timeline can include:

• Pre-launch: Introduce the purpose
• Launch: Share the goal and donation link
• Mid-campaign: Show progress
• Final push: Remind alumni before the deadline
• Post-campaign: Share results and thank donors

Conclusion

Stronger alumni donations come from the work institutions do before the appeal goes out. Regular engagement keeps alumni connected before the appeal. Clear campaign goals give the ask a reason to exist. A smooth giving experience helps donors complete the gift.

Each campaign should also improve the next one. Teams can look at which alumni responded, which messages worked, and where follow-up was needed. That insight helps institutions make future campaigns more relevant instead of repeating the same appeal with a new deadline.

Over time, this builds a healthier alumni giving program. First-time donors have a clearer path into participation. Repeat donors see why continued support matters. Recurring donors stay connected to the impact their gifts make possible.

Almabase helps institutions bring alumni engagement, fundraising campaigns, and events into one connected place. For teams trying to grow alumni donations without adding more manual work, that connected view makes it easier to focus on participation and results.

Book a demo today to see how Almabase can support your alumni giving strategy.

‍

FAQs

1. What is the best way to increase alumni donations?

The best way to increase alumni donations is to keep alumni engaged before the campaign begins. A donation request is easier to act on when alumni already understand the institution’s priorities and feel connected to its community.

2. How do you engage alumni for fundraising?

Start with regular communication that gives alumni a reason to stay involved. The message should not always be about giving. It can share student stories that show impact. It can also invite alumni into events, mentoring, or other ways to stay involved before the next campaign.

3. What are effective alumni donation strategies?

Effective alumni donation strategies give alumni a clear reason to participate. A giving day works well when the campaign needs urgency. A matching gift can help donors see how their contribution goes further. Recurring giving gives alumni a way to continue their support after the campaign ends.

4. How do giving days help increase alumni donations?

Giving days work because they focus attention within a short time frame. Alumni can see the campaign’s progress as it unfolds, which makes participation feel more active and easier to join.

5. How can institutions encourage first-time alumni donors?

First-time donors are more likely to give when the ask feels approachable. A smaller suggested gift can help, especially when it is tied to a clear outcome such as student support or scholarships.

6. How can institutions improve alumni donor participation?

Institutions can improve participation by staying connected with alumni between campaigns. When the appeal arrives, the purpose should be clear, and the donation process should be easy to complete.

Giving days are a concentrated burst of community energy that, when done right, move alumni, parents, students, and staff to act together. They’re also some of the most reliable vehicles to mobilize engagement from the community, year-on-year.  But what "done right" looks like isn’t a fixed answer; it keeps evolving and looks different for different institutions.

We’ve put together a few examples of successful giving days that have stood out in 2026 so far. A few shattered institution records. Some took creative risks that paid off. All of them offer a glimpse into what higher education fundraising looks like right now, and what institutions are doing differently for 2026.

What Drives Giving Days in 2026

The general theme of giving can be described as cautiously optimistic. According to CASE's Insights on Voluntary Support of Education report released in April 2026, giving to U.S. higher education institutions exceeded $78 billion in FY 2025: a 4% year-over-year increase. This continued growth reflects donors' sustained confidence in colleges and universities.

These numbers also paint a more complex picture of the alumni donation landscape. The number of alumni donors shrank in number even as total giving went up, which means fewer donors are giving more. This places institutions in a position where engagement, and an effort to sustain and increase it year-on-year, becomes imperative.

Giving days are one of your best tools to address this directly: they widen the donor pool, cultivate first-time givers, and create visible momentum to signal institutional health.

Findings in CASE and Almabase’s State of Giving Days white paper also support this: nearly 40% of institutions said their giving day helped them engage more alumni and boost donor participation. More than one in four reported that these single-day campaigns contributed between 11% and 25% of their total annual fundraising.

The shift we’re seeing in 2026 is in how these institutions ensure that Giving Days work, through the strategies they’re adopting. Student generated content, more sophisticated and widely present gamification features, matching pools deployed with greater precision: these are some of the trends we’re seeing in 2026. And a handful of schools are even abandoning the standard 24-hour flash format entirely in favor of models better suited to their communities. The giving days below reflect all of that.

1. Purdue University: $95.5 Million | 34,454 Gifts

Theme: Boilermaker Heroes: Making Victories Possible

Purdue's Day of Giving (April 29) carved out a league of its own with a staggering $95.5 million from more than 34,000 individual gifts, making it one of the largest single-institution giving day results in higher education history, the second-highest gift count in Purdue's 13-year run with this event, trailing behind only last year's national-record-setting campaign.

They had different units (campus, college, school, program, club, or student organization) participate, with Purdue Engineering tracking roughly $12 million, while the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics pulled nearly $5.2 million, at least a little bit fueled by a patriotic thread tied to America's upcoming 250th anniversary. Purdue Athletics brought in a record $16.1 million through 2,569 gifts, surpassing its own prior record of $13 million set in 2024.

What worked: Purdue has refined its gamification model over more than a decade since its launch in 2014, and it shows. They used real-time leaderboards to put colleges, alumni clubs, and student organizations in direct competition for shares of matching pools. This worked very well for the event because it essentially turned passive donors into active participants who track outcomes and are fully involved in the process.

The hourly match challenges, such as Best Photo Challenge, Best Selfie Challenge, Boilermaker Kids challenge, and the much-loved Purdue Pets Challenge, all of which included posting pictures with their hashtags ‘#PurdueConvos’ and ‘#PurdueDayofGiving’ spread word on social media to a degree that would cost far more to replicate through paid channels.

The campaign also tracked geographic state participation, giving the team a nationwide Boilermaker Pride narrative that resonated beyond campus.

The ‘social feeds’ tab on their Giving Page also documented the student and community generated content along with their campaign hashtags. They also provided a social media toolkit, complete with ready-to-use posts and images, making it much easier for supporters to show up meaningfully.

The deeper lesson here is that consistency is the gift that keeps on giving. The institution consistently repeats strategies that work for their giving days while also taking new initiatives, keeping the experience modern and fresh for attendees. Purdue's cumulative giving day total since 2014 has now crossed $697 million. That kind of institutional momentum is itself a fundraising asset.

2. Cornell University: $11.35 Million | 17,011 Donors, 25,277 Total Gifts

Theme: Nature-Themed Basecamp Exploration

Cornell's giving day 2026 campaign used a custom arcade mini-game in which users avoided obstacles and collected “digital apples” on a virtual campus map. Collecting apples within the campus map gave donors an experience that felt native to the institution and introduced a layer of delight, nostalgia and interactivity that most donors hadn't seen before.

More importantly, that mechanic was tied directly to dollars: top-performing departments unlocked portions of a $2.4 million matching fund pool based on participation. The result was over 17,000 individual donors and more than 25,000 total gifts.

The institution had organised as many as 13 different events to make the Giving Day an immersive, rewarding experience for students. They could write thank-you postcards to donors, enjoy snacks, participate in giveaways and so much more.

They also leveraged peer-to-peer giving, with 704 Giving Day champions securing more than 4,037 gifts, which was record-shattering.

What worked: Cornell mixed and matched a few strategies that worked out best for them. The mini arcade game gave donors a reason to stay engaged beyond the moment of their gift. To this they tied in matching fund unlocks, essentially doubling the impact made. Finally, they also had students write thank you notes to donors, showing moments of gratitude in real time. The nature-themed "basecamp" framing also gave the campaign a cohesive visual identity that made it memorable for attendees and shareable across social channels.

3. University of Mississippi : $1.78 Million | 3,223 Donations

Theme: Ole Miss Giving Day

Ole Miss has had a unique approach of baking institutional history into their annual giving day, which takes place every spring. This year too, the campaign window was set at exactly 1 day, 8 hours, and 48 minutes, as a callback to the university's 1848 founding year. It's a small detail, but one that declares intentionality to donors and attendees.

A leaderboard was adopted to track the number of donors from each department in real time, to increase competition among donors. They also live streamed the event for the duration it was active.

Along with this, they also added a physical element. A "Squirrel Scavenger Hunt" was designed to send participants across campus searching for hidden stuffed squirrels, with each discovery unlocking $250 in matching funds directed to the finder's chosen fund.

Donors could also "name a squirrel" for a $26 gift or sign the historic Ventress Hall turret, turning philanthropy into something tactile and campus-rooted.

Department leaderboards and live-streamed updates from university leaders kept the digital momentum going in parallel.

What worked: The Ole Miss team understood that a giving day is fundamentally a community event. The squirrel activation gave students and staff something to do and share, creating word-of-mouth momentum that is hard to replicate through any other channel. Tying the campaign window to the university's founding year added an element of storytelling that is distinctive to the institution’s identity.

4. George Mason University : $2.95 Million | 1,900+ Donors

Theme: Mason Now: Power the Possible

George Mason's 2026 giving day stood out for a metric that rarely makes the headline: approximately 25% of its donors were giving for the first time! That's a significant new-donor conversion rate for any institution, and it signals that the campaign successfully reached beyond its existing base.

The strategy here was to closely tie this giving day to a larger multi-year campaign. By positioning the giving day as a visible milestone within that broader arc of their Mason Now campaign, GMU gave both existing donors and first-timers a clear sense of the mission and their place in the outcome.

What worked: GMU approached their giving day as a donor acquisition vehicle rather than purely a revenue event. This influenced messaging, targeting, and put the event in perspective for everyone involved. The 25% first-time donor rate suggests the team invested in prospecting and outreach instead of a single-day fundraiser, which makes a lot of sense in context.

5. Meredith College : $1,704,966 | 2,568 Donors

Theme: Make It Count for Meredith

Meredith College's giving day ran in parallel with the institution's 135th birthday; a decision that unlocked a layer of storytelling the campaign used well. The Greatest Needs Fund, which allows the college to allocate funds to areas that need it the most, secured $454,672 on its own, reflecting strong donor trust in institutional decision-making.

The most distinctive element, however, was the spread in geographic activation: 11 regional watch parties ran simultaneously across North Carolina and Washington, D.C., bringing the giving day to those who couldn't be on campus. The board of trustees, parents, and alumni groups funded 15 matching gift challenges totaling $460,000, and an "Odds vs. Evens" class-year competition ran throughout the day.

What worked: For a women's college with a deeply relational alumnae community, distributed in-person events turned a digital campaign into a series of local moments. The giving day became a reason to gather : which made giving feel like an act of belonging, not just philanthropy. The birthday framing gave first-time donors a natural reason to act: celebrating a milestone feels different from responding to a need.

6. University of Central Arkansas : $1,204,644 | 3,115 Donors

Theme: UCA Ready to Grow

UCA's March 13 sprint deliberately moved away from broad-message capital campaign marketing toward hyperspecific, fund-level storytelling. Rather than deploying universal matching pools, the team created tailored mini-milestones for individual initiatives: a new Aviation Academy pilot training module, an Athletics Championship Resource sub-pool, and specific tracks for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

This meant donors weren't giving to the larger "UCA", they were funding a specific program they could see and name.

What worked: Segmented, cause-specific fundraising isn't new, but it was used as the one specific strategy by UCA. By making each fund feel like a distinct campaign within the larger day, they reduced donor fatigue and increased the sense of direct impact. Donors who care about education gave to education. Donors who care about aviation gave to aviation. The $1.2M result across more than 3,100 donors reflects both breadth across different causes and genuine engagement.

7. Creighton University : $1.11 Million | 2,924 Donors

Theme: Going Above and Beyond for Students

Creighton's giving day took a grassroots-first approach, centering community voting as the mechanism through which challenge dollars were awarded. Student-led coalitions : including the Street Medicine program, which provides direct healthcare to underserved populations in Omaha : competed for popular vote tallies, with winning coalitions receiving earmarked challenge grants. The top voted club earned a $2000 gift.
Additionally, there were stickers and socks given out to donors, and the campus therapy dog, Ella, was present in the event for a short duration, adding to the delight factor.

What worked: Incorporating voting into the event gives non-donors a reason to participate in the campaign, creating a layer of supporters who become familiar with individual programs before they give. It also adds a layer of credibility from the voters’ perspective. With the freebies, the socks, coffee, snacks and the free hugs, it is clear that Creighton's $1.11M result from nearly 3,000 donors reflects how participatory design expands reach and impact by considering the experience offered to the attendees.

8. St. John's University : $352,126 | 1,273 Donors

Theme: The Power of Opportunity

St. John's ran one of the more creative low-barrier engagement strategies on this list: small-dollar gift thresholds unlocked on-campus experiential perks. A $10 gift gave donors access to an on-campus food truck dessert ticket; $20 unlocked a full lunch voucher. The campaign was centered on low-income financial aid and the university's Vincentian community mission.

What worked: By pairing small gifts with immediate, physical rewards, St. John's reduced the psychological friction of giving, especially younger alumni who may not have deep giving habits yet. The approach is replicable, and the results suggest it worked.

9. Queens' College, Cambridge: £650,778 | 588 Donations

Theme: Bridge to the Future

Queens' Giving Day runs as a 36-hour online fundraising drive which is already a departure from the standard 24-hour format most institutions use. The 2026 campaign closed with 588 donations and £650,778 raised. 

Donor-count challenges were front and center in the campaign: hitting 400 donors unlocked £4,000, and reaching 500 unlocked a further £5,000. Because these were participation thresholds a donor who gives £10 counts the same as one who gives £1,000 toward unlocking those challenges. This framing lowered the barrier to entry and gave smaller donors a reason to act. A final-hour challenge sweetened the close: raise £25,000 in the last 60 minutes, unlock another £25,000. Both mechanics were fully unlocked by the end of the day.

A matriculation decade leaderboard ran throughout, ranking donor participation by the era alumni graduated; the 1970s cohort led with 106 donors, followed by the 1980s at 94. It's a simple touch, but it works: class-year competition creates identity-driven motivation.

What worked: The 36-hour window gives the campaign breathing room for alumni across time zones to participate without the pressure of a midnight cutoff. Paired with a "give early" feature that let donors contribute before the official window opened, Queens' essentially extended the campaign in both directions without diluting the urgency of the final-hour challenge.
This strategy paired with proven ones like a matriculation leaderboard, the choice of funds given to donors and the donor-count challenges, added to lowering the barrier for participation even further. This campaign was engineered to give itself the best shot.
The result is a campaign that felt inclusive globally but still had a hard close that drove action.

10. George Washington University: $2,047,237 | 3,800+ Donors

Theme: OneGW

GW's 2026 Giving Day ran for just over 24 hours on April 7 and 8 and raising more than $2 million from over 3,800 donors: the largest in the university's history, surpassing a 2025 campaign that had itself set a then-record. Back-to-back records in consecutive years is a sign that they’re doing several things right!

The campaign covered every corner of the university: scholarships, student organizations, athletics, academic programs, and research, and drew support from all 50 states and even overseas, with the farthest gift coming from Singapore. That geographic spread tells you the campaign is tapping into an alumni network that's genuinely engaged, not just locally loyal.

The "OneGW" framing ran throughout the day, with challenge mechanics and peer storytelling as the primary engagement levers. GW has positioned Giving Day as a signature university tradition since its 2021 launch which means donors now come into the campaign with some familiarity and expectation, and the institution matches those expectations through consistency.

What worked: With five years in the game, each year's record becomes the baseline expectation for the next, and GW has proved that this pressure leads to sharpened execution. The geographic reach suggests the team has gotten better at outreach beyond the DC metro area. And the "OneGW" identity, spanning Foggy Bottom and the health system campus, gives the campaign breadth without losing cohesion. The consecutive record years are the clearest signal that GW has figured out the basics and is now building on top of a solid foundation.

Common Trends Across 2026 Giving Days

Several threads run across this year's standout campaigns.

1. Hyperspecific fund storytelling over broader institutional messaging: 

UCA and Creighton are the clearest examples, but it's visible across the institutions on this list, one way or the other: donors respond to named programs instead of simple department name drops. "Fund the Aviation Academy" seems to generally perform better than "Support UCA's Growth."

2. Physical and digital moments are being designed together: 

Ole Miss's squirrel hunt, Meredith's regional watch parties, and St. John's food truck perks demonstrate that the most engaging giving days create something to do offline that can be shared online. These are the trade-offs being made in place of the more traditional donation link. It may be more effort intensive but the effort pays off.

3. First-time donor acquisition is being treated as its own metric: 

George Mason's 25% first-time donor rate won't be the last we hear of this kind of tracking. As CASE's latest data shows, institutions are navigating a narrowing high-capacity donor base, which makes these entry points more valuable.

4. Events built around the community: 

Meredith's regional watch parties, Ole Miss's campus squirrel hunt, St. John's food truck perks: all of these activities would feel forced at a different institution or a different community. The schools that did the most interesting work in 2026 designed for their own communities, which goes to show how well they know who shows up for them. When the experience itself is worth showing up for, the giving follows.

How to Plan Your Own Giving Day

If you're looking at these results and thinking about what your institution's next giving day could look like, we’ve got some great free resources to help you get started!

Insights and data for giving days and alumni fundraising

• CASE Insights on Giving Days
• The 2026 National Alumni Survey

Strategic checklists and worksheet templates to help you plan

• The Ultimate Giving Day Toolkit
• Giving Day Planning Template
• Donors to Supporters: A Guide to Donor Stewardship After Giving Day

Looking Ahead

The 2026 giving day season isn't over, so we will be seeing more great examples of giving days in the coming months. But even this early snapshot tells us something about the direction of higher education fundraising.

Giving days are getting more intentional and community oriented. The institutions that understand their communities deeply enough to design a day that feels specific, meaningful, and worth showing up for will be the ones driving the best results.

If you are looking for the perfect partner to help you bring success to your next giving day, feel free to book a personalized demo and we’d love to talk!

Alumni still believe in education. They just expect something different from institutions now.

For years, advancement teams have been trying to answer the same question:

Why are alumni participation rates declining even when alumni still seem to care deeply about their college experience?

The 2026 National Alumni Survey, built on responses from 82,000+ alumni, offers a pretty clear answer:

This isn’t a “people care less” problem. It’s a relationship problem.

Alumni haven’t stopped valuing education, giving or wanting community or purpose.

What’s changed is how they expect institutions to show up in their lives.

A lot of traditional advancement strategy was built for a different era, one where institutional loyalty was almost automatic. You graduated, stayed connected, attended reunions, and eventually became a donor.

That path is much less linear now.

Today’s alumni are asking harder questions:

• Why should I stay engaged?
• What impact does this actually create?
• Does this institution understand me?
• Am I only hearing from you when you need something?

And honestly, those are fair questions.

So, what’s actually changing?

The survey surfaced a few patterns that feel especially important right now. Not just as “trends,” but as signals of how alumni expectations are evolving.

1. Alumni still value their education. But many don’t feel emotionally connected to the institution anymore.

This was one of the most interesting tensions in the survey.

Many alumni still see their degrees as incredibly valuable. They’re grateful for the opportunities, friendships, and career outcomes that came from their education. But that appreciation doesn’t automatically translate into an ongoing relationship with the institution itself. And if we’re being honest, a lot of alumni engagement still assumes it does.

For many alumni, graduation quietly became the end of the relationship, except for the occasional fundraising email or event invitation. There’s very little in-between. For example, there’s no consistent sense of community and no feeling that the institution understands what life looks like for them now.

That gap matters more than institutions sometimes realise because people rarely give to institutions they feel disconnected from, even if they once loved their college experience.

What the data shows: According to the 2026 National Alumni Survey, 40% of alumni feel disconnected from their institution, and nearly half feel ill-informed about what it's doing. This isn't minor dissatisfaction — it's a structural gap that shows up directly in engagement and giving rates.

💡 Concordia College built a relationship-first digital strategy specifically to close this gap. Rather than defaulting to campaign-driven outreach, their approach centred on helping alumni feel connected to the institution's ongoing story, not just its fundraising calendar. The result was a community that stayed engaged between asks, not just during them. (Read the Concordia case study →)

2. Alumni are still giving. Just not always back to their alma mater.

One thing advancement teams often interpret as “declining generosity” is actually a shift in where generosity is going.

Alumni are donating to mutual aid funds, local nonprofits, climate initiatives, scholarships, community organizations, and causes they interact with regularly.

In other words, the willingness to give is still there, but institutions are no longer competing only with peer universities. They’re competing with every organization that communicates impact clearly and makes people feel emotionally invested.

That’s a very different landscape than the one advancement teams operated in even 10 years ago. And it also explains why vague institutional appeals don’t land the way they used to.

For example, "Support the annual fund” feels abstract.

Change: “Help first-generation students access emergency grants during finals week” feels real.

What the data shows: The 2026 National Alumni Survey makes this stark: only 13% of Millennial and Gen Z alumni gave to higher education in the past year, compared to 32% of older alumni. Meanwhile, 37% gave to individuals through GoFundMe-style campaigns, 34% gave to civil rights and social justice causes, and higher education ranked 11th on their list of giving priorities. They aren't ungenerous — they're directing generosity toward causes where impact feels direct and personal.

💡 The University of North Carolina School of the Arts ditched the "one fund fits all" model and expanded their Giving Day to 40+ donor-choice funds — letting alumni direct gifts toward causes they actually cared about. Participation and giving both climbed. When alumni can see themselves in the cause, they show up.

3. Connection matters more than nostalgia.

For a long time, alumni engagement relied heavily on nostalgia. Such as campus memories, school pride, and traditions. And those things still matter, but they’re rarely enough on their own anymore. Especially for younger alumni.

People stay engaged when they feel connected to something ongoing, not just reminded of the past.

One thing that kept coming up in conversations with advancement professionals this year was that engagement seems to grow when alumni feel like participants, not audiences.

That could mean mentorship, career communities, regional meetups and volunteer opportunities. Digital spaces where alumni can genuinely interact with each other.

The strongest engagement strategies today should feel more like community-building.

💡 Illinois Tech invested in a digital-first strategy — directories, job boards, mentorship, and affinity groups — giving alumni ongoing reasons to show up year-round. The result: 123,000+ engagement activities in a single month. That's a living, active community.(Read the Illinois Tech case study →)

4. Younger alumni expect a completely different experience.

A lot of advancement strategy is still optimized for alumni behavior that no longer exists.

Younger alumni don’t automatically respond to long email appeals, formal institutional messaging, or generic engagement asks. And honestly, that doesn’t mean they’re disengaged. It usually means the experience feels impersonal or outdated.

Younger alumni are used to personalization everywhere else in their lives, from media platforms to shopping experiences to online communities. So when every alumni email feels identical, it creates distance immediately.

They also expect more flexibility in how they engage. Not everyone wants to attend a formal event. Some people want short virtual interactions or mentorship opportunities. Some want to volunteer skills instead of donating money, and some simply want to stay informed without constant asks. The idea that there’s one “correct” alumni journey is starting to break down.

What the data shows: 43% of younger alumni give via digital wallets like Apple Pay or Venmo, compared to just 14% of older graduates. Nearly one in three younger alumni give on an "as-needed" basis — responding when a cause needs support right now — while only 17% give on a regular schedule (vs. 38% of older alumni). Annual fund cycles and fiscal year deadlines simply don't map to how this generation thinks about generosity.

‍💡 Calvert Hall optimized their Giving Day for mobile and added digital wallet options — and saw donations increase 2x over three years. As Joe Baker, Director of Advancement, put it: partnering with Almabase made their annual giving day more successful than ever before. (Read the Calvert Hall case study →)

5. Trust and recognition are becoming bigger factors in Giving decisions.

A quiet theme running through the survey was this: Many alumni don’t feel confident their contribution actually matters.

Not because they distrust institutions entirely, but because impact often feels vague or invisible. And recognition isn’t just about donor walls or public acknowledgements anymore. It’s about feeling seen or remembered or the feeling like participation matters at every level.

A lot of alumni communication still unintentionally feels transactional: “We need support", “Here’s our campaign.”, “Please donate before the deadline.”

But trust is built in the moments between campaigns. Through transparency, consistency, and storytelling. And showing alumni the outcomes of engagement.

💡 Loma Linda University School of Medicine Alumni Association tied every campaign to real outcomes and real beneficiaries — so donors could see exactly who their gift helped. The result: over $1 million in gifts, driven by genuine confidence that their contribution would matter. (Read the Loma Linda case study →)

6. Alumni want clearer answers to “Where will my money go?”

This isn’t new, but the expectation is much stronger now. General fundraising appeals used to work because institutional trust was higher by default.

Today, alumni want clarity. They want tangible outcomes. They want to understand the direct connection between contribution and impact. And clearly, this shift is healthy.

The institutions doing this well are getting extremely specific:

• Funding one student scholarship
• Supporting mental health initiatives
• Expanding career programming
• Sponsoring student research opportunities

Specificity creates emotional connection because people can actually picture the impact.

What the data shows: In the 2026 National Alumni Survey, alumni consistently cite specificity as a deciding factor in whether they give. Vague asks like "Support the annual fund" land differently from "Help first-generation students access emergency grants during finals week." The latter creates emotional connection because people can actually picture the impact.

💡 Boyd Buchanan built clear, specific giving opportunities tied to outcomes alumni could understand and rally behind. Combined with leaderboards, donor segmentation, and goal thermometers, they surpassed their giving goal by 201%, brought 60% of alumni onto the platform, and saw a 5x increase in engaged users within five months. (Read the Boyd Buchanan case study →)

7. Student debt matters, but not always in the way institutions assume.

Debt absolutely shapes how younger alumni think about giving. But the survey suggests something important: Debt alone doesn’t fully explain disengagement.

Many alumni with financial pressure still choose to engage in other ways when they feel connected to the institution. Meanwhile, some financially stable alumni remain disengaged because the relationship itself feels weak. That distinction matters. Because it shifts the conversation away from "Young alumni can’t give.” Toward: “Have we created enough value in the relationship for them to want to engage at all?”

Those are very different questions.

What the data shows: 77% of alumni burdened by student debt still give to other organizations. The barrier isn't financial capacity — it's relevance and trust. This reframes the entire conversation. The question isn't "Can young alumni give?" It's "Have we created enough value in the relationship for them to want to engage at all?"

💡 The Almabase blog on younger alumni giving makes a practical recommendation that gets at this directly: acknowledge debt without making it awkward. Frame giving as collective action rather than individual sacrifice. Show alumni what the group can achieve together, and recognize every contributor regardless of gift size, as part of something larger. Institutions that make small gifts feel meaningful see stronger participation among younger alumni, even those carrying debt. (Read the blog here →)

8. Volunteering may be one of the most overlooked engagement opportunities.

This stood out as one of the most practical takeaways from the survey. A lot of institutions still treat giving as the primary indicator of alumni engagement. But many alumni are far more willing to give time before money.

They’ll mentor students, speak at events, offer internships, join panels, and help build regional communities. And in many cases, those experiences become the foundation for long-term donor relationships later.

The mistake is treating volunteering as secondary instead of seeing it as relationship-building. Because often, it’s the first meaningful interaction alumni have had with the institution in years.

💡 Merchant Taylors' built their advancement strategy around non-financial engagement first — volunteer and mentorship pathways that connected alumni to the institution and its students. Giving followed naturally, as a product of the relationship rather than a response to a campaign. (Read the Merchant Taylors' case study →)

9. Alumni don’t want personalization as a tactic. They want relevance.

A personalized subject line isn’t the same thing as meaningful relevance.

Real relevance looks like:

• Receiving opportunities aligned with career interests
• Hearing about causes they actually care about
• Being invited into communities that match their stage of life
• Feeling like communication reflects who they are now, not just who they were as students

The institutions doing this well don’t just “segment audiences"; they build experiences around alumni needs and interests. And alumni can feel the difference.

💡 Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) shifted from broadcast messaging to relevance-based digital engagement using interest data and engagement history to match alumni with the right opportunities at the right time. The result: alumni stopped feeling like they were on a mailing list and started feeling like part of a community. (Read the RISD engagement story →)

What all of this really means

If there’s one thing the survey makes clear, it’s this:

Advancement is more about relationship quality.

Alumni are still open to engagement, to giving, and still looking for connection and purpose. But expectations have changed. People want authenticity, relevance, transparency and community. And they want institutions to earn attention the same way every other organization now has to. That can feel uncomfortable for advancement teams because it requires moving away from long-standing assumptions. But it’s also a huge opportunity.

Because institutions that adapt early have the chance to build stronger, more resilient alumni relationships than before. These relationships are built on actual value.

Want to go deeper? Get the full 2026 National Alumni Survey.

The full report explores:

• Benchmarks across institutions
• Generational engagement patterns
• Alumni giving behaviors
• Practical recommendations for advancement teams

Whether you're making the case internally for a strategy shift or looking for specific benchmarks to anchor your next planning cycle, the full report gives you what you need.

Download the 2026 National Alumni Survey.