How to Make Your School’s Campaigns Stand Out From the Crowd

Between promotional campaigns, invitations to local events, business offerings, and the wide range of other emails your school’s families get on a daily basis, your community members are bombarded with requests for their attention and support. This means that schools looking to promote their fundraisers online need creative, outside-the-box strategies for getting noticed.

With the right branding, marketing strategies, and audience targeting, you can elevate your campaign from easily missable emails to a cause worth rallying around.

In this guide, we’ll explore top school fundraising and marketing ideas that will get your campaign noticed online.

Build a strong campaign identity.

Your school’s brand identity communicates your goals, helps you build a sense of community, and ensures that all external messages are uniform and professional. Individual campaigns should also have a unique identity.

For instance, while both your latest library fundraiser and annual Walk-a-Thon should have campaign messages branded to your school, these campaigns should also have separate identities from one another. Use color scheme, logos, imagery, and writing tone to signal what your campaign is about, who it serves, and why your community should support it.

Make your next campaign resonate visually and emotionally with supporters by:

• Choosing a memorable name. While you can call your latest Read-a-Thon, “[School Name] Read-a-Thon,” this approach is far less memorable than a name like “Read-a-Palooza.” Choose a name that will stick out and encourage participation, even if it’s a bit silly or over the top.
• Picking a visual theme. Your branding and visual imagery for each campaign doesn’t need to be complex. Choose a few recurring elements related to your fundraiser—such as shoes for a walk-a-thon or balloons for a carnival—and find creative ways to add them to marketing materials.
• Creating cohesive marketing materials. Once you choose a name and visual theme, stick to them. This ensures supporters remember these brand elements and creates a professional, consistent experience for supporters.

When it comes to creating your campaign identity, some schools might work with professional graphic designers, but you often won’t need to go that far. Free visual assets, a bit of creativity, and a good eye for visual layout can go a long way toward creating cohesive, memorable campaign marketing materials.

Choose the right fundraising idea.

Not all fundraising campaigns are equally engaging. For instance, while your community might want to support your basketball team, they might not want to have to buy cookie dough to do it. With this in mind, a stand-out fundraiser starts with a creative, fun idea that supporters will genuinely want to participate in.

A few popular fundraising ideas that invite wide participation and get supporters personally invested include:

• Read-a-Thons encourage a love of books in students and raise funds for your school at the same time. Parents who want to encourage good reading habits in their children will be naturally inclined to support your fundraiser.
• Team-based fundraisers are a popular choice for schools with established student groups, like sports teams and clubs. Supporters of these campaigns feel a connection to both your school and to a specific team. Plus, team fundraising tools make it easy for participants to fundraise as a group, amplifying camaraderie and friendly competition.
• Online pledge platformsmake it easy for members of your community to contribute to a specific student and check in on your fundraiser at their leisure. With pledge campaigns, supporters make a promise to contribute, often based on how a specific student performs in the upcoming fundraisers.

When selecting campaign ideas, consider both your school’s community and participants. Choose activities that will excite students, subsequently motivating their families to get involved as well.

Tell a compelling story.

Campaigns stand out when they form a genuine connection with supporters. After all, if your community members are emotionally invested in your fundraiser’s success, they’re far more likely to contribute and encourage others to do the same.

To build this connection, create content that tells your school’s story. Getting Attention’s guide to content marketing shares a few storytelling tips schools will likely find helpful:

• Focus on an individual protagonist. While your campaign likely helps a number of students, showing how an individual student is impacted helps supporters better visualize your impact. For instance, rather than discussing how much students like your library, tell a story about how one student discovered a love of reading, what their favorite books are, and how your fundraiser helped them find those books.
• Add specific details. Specific, memorable details make your story stand out. When writing stories, consider the five senses and how they can make scenes feel more real.
• Issue a call to action. Your story should end with directions for what supporters should do next. Ensure your story only has one call to action that’s directly related to your story to keep readers focused.

Additionally, when telling stories, ensure you follow conventional storytelling ethics. This means securing the subject’s permission to share their story, telling stories that are true, and being respectful of the people in them. For schools, this might mean changing students’ names to protect their privacy.

Reach your audience where they are.

Your supporters likely use a number of different communication platforms. To get your marketing content noticed, you’ll need to tailor your message to each platform and audience. A few strategies for doing this include:

• Segmenting your audience. Divide your audience based on their communication preferences. For instance, some parents might prefer emails, others mail, and some text messages. By contacting them via preferred channels, they’re more likely to see your messages and engage with them.
• Tapping your school’s email list. Your school’s email list is one of your strongest tools for reaching your community. Keep subscribers up-to-date about your latest campaign developments by creating a weekly newsletter, sharing important announcements, and more.
• Using print strategically. Paper posters and printed take-home flyers still have their place in school fundraisers! Arm students with informational flyers and pamphlets they can share with their parents. A less tech-heavy approach is especially effective for rural schools and those with less digitally engaged families.

Digital marketing allows your school to reach community members at any time, anywhere. Use these tools strategically by considering what channels your supporters are likely to use, what messages will perform well on those channels, and when traditional media might be useful.

Use technology to streamline and scale your campaign.

Stand-out campaigns don’t just have strong marketing but actually live up to the hype by being modern, easy to engage with, and intuitive. Fortunately, you can achieve exactly this with the right fundraising and event management tools.

Technology can streamline and scale even traditionally low-tech fundraisers. For instance, you might first assume a read-a-thon only needs books and paper pledge sheets. However, 99Pledge’s Read-a-Thon fundraising guide goes into detail about how modern software can transform these campaigns for the better:

• Online reading logs and pledge sheets.Make the process convenient and paperless by using digital reading logs and pledge forms. Students can log in to their accounts to record minutes, and donors can navigate to individual students’ pages to make their gifts.
• Donation processing tools. Avoid having to ask students to collect and keep track of donations by providing an online donation tool. Supporters can input their credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, or other payment method information with ease, and your school will have access to their gift immediately.
• Metrics and data tracking. Encourage students to set reading goals and fundraising goals. With fundraising software tools like leaderboards, progress meters, and fundraising thermometers, they can visualize how close they are to their goals. Plus, your school will get an overview of how all students are performing, letting you track your read-a-thon’s progress from beginning to end.

For large schools, software like tools for read-a-thons can quickly become a must. These platforms allow fundraisers to operate smoothly, even with hundreds or thousands of participants.

School fundraisers need more than flashy slogans and ambitious goals to stand out. With thoughtful planning, a compelling story, and user-friendly tools, your community will first be intrigued and then committed to your latest campaign.