Award: Bronze

Institution: University of California, Davis

Title of Entry: FY20 UC Davis Annual and Special Gifts Program’s Stewardship Campaign

About this Entry: In recent years, the UC Davis Annual and Special Gifts Program has developed a comprehensive annual giving stewardship program that has increased overall annual donor retention rates to 54.8 percent in FY19, a range well in keeping with national averages.

Today, as the centralized annual giving program for UC Davis, we produce all of the annual giving solicitations for over 17 unit-partners’ alumni, including units on main campus and at UC Davis Health. Our extensive and personalized methodology for both solicitations and stewardship includes unit-specific messaging, as well as unique audiences that include employees, giving society members, and first-time donors. We consistently steward all of the donors that give through our appeals based on where they fall in the aforementioned audiences.
Similarly, because we use a multi-channel approach to our solicitations, we mirror that approach in our stewardship program as well, drawing on video, email and printed materials to thank our donors.

This submission describes our multi-faceted donor stewardship campaign that has resulted in our maintaining a high donor retention rate ranging from 52 percent to 54.8 percent from FY17-FY19 Of similar interest is the impact our stewardship program has on UC Davis overall giving. Donors who received our stewardship materials in FY20 retained at 51.9 percent, whereas those who did not retained at 45.2 percent. The national average for donor retention rate for public universities is 50.6 percent according to DonorCentrics, so we are pleased to be maintaining numbers within and above this zone of success.