For Giving Tuesday this year I’m focusing on having a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign for students to build support for and around their favorite on-campus student support program. This could include things like our counseling center, LGBTQ+ Student Services, or our amazing Food Pantry.
I am struggling to recruit student ambassadors! The average student age at my university is higher because we are an urban institution with a large number of non-traditional students. I was wondering what ideas I should try to help boost volunteers.
I have already been active with:
- Twitter (posting multiple times/week and encouraging campus orgs to retweet)
- Posting in Class FB pages to encourage students to reach out
- Posting flyers around campus to help with visibility
- Emailed campus groups/leaders to see if they can help spread the word
Any unique ideas would be greatly appreciated!
If you don’t have any currently existing student groups (communities) formed around these affinities, it is hard to create them around something like Giving Tuesday which is a solicitation event. (Some people are unjustly prejudiced against them ;-)!!)
Some suggestions:
- Identify existing groups that meet regularly and ask them if you can speak at one of their upcoming meetings. This can be proper student groups as well as athletics teams.
- Start a group chat channel for the students you start to recruit and post regularly in it with information, updates, and recognition of your students. Recruit students for the group chat as you meet with people all around campus.
- Schedule a weekly group update on Zoom to onboard people, troubleshoot, etc.
- Does it have to be only student ambassadors? Could you include young alumni, parents, or other groups? You can run the same strategy for all of them together, they may even find value in connecting with each other.
This is a community-based approach that has worked for me on giving days and many other types of campaigns.