June 26, 2018 | Read Time: 6 minutes
Here’s what can happen when your nonprofit workplace has a highly developed culture of philanthropy: You can wind up eating a scorpion. Encased in a lollipop. For money.
Such bizarre stunts were commonplace for the marketing and communications staff at Drake University as they labored, over the course of five years, to raise $25,000 to endow a scholarship. The Drake M&C Scholarship Fund inspired creativity, commitment, and — in the case of the scorpion snack — courage among the institution’s employees.
The fundraising effort helped the marketing and communications staff build relationships across the Des Moines, Iowa, campus, says Niki Smith, Drake’s associate director for communications and marketing.
Colleagues on campus “are really proud of us,” Smith says. “It showed that we put our money where our mouth is.”
‘Let’s Give It a Shot’
It all started in 2012 with Tim Schmitt, a former colleague of Smith’s. While writing an article for Drake’s alumni magazine about the cost of higher education, he thought about the students featured in his story who struggled to stay in school — or dropped out — because of financial difficulties. He wondered if he could do more to help.
“I talked to our annual-fund coordinator and asked if there was a possibility that our department could start a scholarship fund,” says Schmitt, a digital-communications specialist whose position at Drake was eliminated in May. “She said sure, what the hell, let’s give it a shot.”
The university was in the middle of a capital campaign; the minimum amount to start an endowed fund was $25,000. At the time, the communications staff totaled 16 members. “I thought, we can do that over five years,” Schmitt says.
The communications team hit the goal in the spring of 2017 and continues to raise money, with about $26,000 raised to date.
200 Chicken Nuggets
When Schmitt proposed creating a fund endowed by Drake’s communications department, his colleagues jumped on board with the tenacity of the institution’s mascot, the bulldog. Staff members set aside a small portion of their paychecks for the fund.
Smith, who joined the staff in 2014, pitched in right away. She and her husband made an initial donation, and then she started developing her own fundraising ideas.
“I even have a change jar on my desk,” says Smith, who eventually took charge of the fund’s social-media marketing. “When I was going to the bank, I would walk around and make everybody update that tray that’s in their office that fills up with random pennies. I would make them bring them from home.”
Those collections routinely added up to another $100 on each trip to the bank, she says. “Those would always surprise us.”
Her colleagues also got creative in raising money.
“I played in a band with a guy from the IT department here,” Schmitt says. “We put together a couple of concerts with other members of the Drake community.” Bands with members from departments around the university helped raise a couple thousand dollars.
“That was nice because it brought everyone physically together — faculty and staff — to sort of gel around this idea,” Schmitt says.
A series of garage sales, and a sidewalk sale outside the communications office, also raised money. Most of the items came from staff members’ homes, but not all. “We one time cleared out the basement of our building,” Schmitt says. “We found some old marketing materials, some great old athletics posters from the 1980s, some ridiculous-looking photos.”
Those items — and others, including a quilt Schmitt made from old Drake T-shirts — were sold and auctioned off. Other colleagues offered services for auction, such as dog sitting or making a mixtape of favorite songs.
And then there were the food challenges.
“Someone had bought a Groupon for a whole bunch of chicken nuggets,” Schmitt says. He and Aaron Jaco, then Drake’s assistant director of public relations, “took pledges for each nugget we could eat. It was disgusting. We knocked out a couple hundred of them. We were sick for a couple of days, but it was all in good fun.”
Which brings us to the scorpion pop. Smith took up that challenge herself. Like most of the campaign stunts, it was streamed on Facebook Live. Small gifts streamed in: $10 from Smith’s elementary-school librarian, $20 from a former co-worker.
The scorpion, Smith reports, wasn’t too bad. However, “the lollipop was disgusting.”
The challenges, aimed more at raising campus awareness of the scholarship fund than in raking in big bucks, brought in total of $300.
‘It Wasn’t That Difficult’
Schmitt says he regretted not starting an internal fundraising effort earlier in his 13 years at Drake. “It wasn’t that difficult. Collectively, we could all give what we could give, and make something happen.”
He and Smith offer a few tips for other nonprofit employees who want to start an internal campaign for their cause:
Check in with likely partners first. Make sure the timing is right, Smith advises. “The stars aligned for us. We knew the right campus partners to ask.”
Make the commitment, then worry about tactics. “Just go for it,” Schmitt says. “If it’s something you and a core group of employees are committing to doing for your institution, you can make it happen.”
Lean on social media. The Drake marketing and communications team created a Facebook group for the scholarship fund, sending out invitations to followers when fundraising events were coming up. The employees shared the page with all of their personal contacts. When the group conducted a silent auction to raise money for the endowed fund, people outside the university, and in other states, could easily participate.
Designate a point person. Because the idea was Schmitt’s, he became the fundraising effort’s go-to guy in the beginning; later, Smith took up the mantle. When new employees started in the department, Schmitt jokes, “I gave ’em a week or two once they were here before casually mentioning it to ’em.”
Don’t make it mandatory. “We were very careful to not make it seem like this was an expectation or anything along those lines,” he says. The soft sell worked. “We had universal buy-in. People thought it was a great idea.”
Share the campaign’s impact. When the first marketing and communications scholarship was awarded, to first-year marketing major Tiara Jackson, the staff was thrilled. “We were really nervous,” Smith says. “Is she gonna come see us if we ask her? We had her over for doughnuts one morning.”
Now that they’ve met, Smith pronounces Jackson “amazing,” and staff members have developed an ongoing relationship with the student, who has expressed interest in a potential internship, to work alongside her benefactors.
Says Smith proudly, “We’re creating another bulldog.”
