Award: Bronze

Institution: California State University, Fresno

Title of Entry: GradFest and the Pandemic: The story of innovation and celebration

About this Entry: GradFest is a staple event of the Fresno State Alumni Association (FSAA) and the kick-off to graduation season, our first touch point with graduating seniors. Annually, this two-day celebration engages over 3,500 students and offers an opportunity to purchase their exclusive Grad Box. GradFest is a robust on-campus graduation fair with food, music, photo-ops and opportunities to connect with on and off-campus resources that support their days leading up to graduation and life after college.

GradFest is the FSAA's most successful revenue generating event. Each year we sell over 2,600 boxes and raise over $40,000 in profits to fund alumni engagement activities and $8,000 in donations to support student needs.

GradFest was scheduled to take place on March 17-18, 2020 in the midst of the shut-down due to COVID-19. While local and state governments announced changes to safety guidelines and event sponsors started to back out, we made the decision to cancel the event knowing we needed a solution to distribute the boxes. Between March 11-16, our team had to re-imagine, redesign and implement a brand new event to accomplish the following goals: ensure a safe event with social distancing measures, provide a positive experience for our grads in the midst of the global pandemic unfolding and minimize refunds since we sold out during the pre-sale. By utilizing a drive-thru model and extending the event to three days (March 17-19) we executed our initial distribution and then partnered with the campus bookstore, to successfully distribute 98% boxes by July 2020.