Award: Gold

Institution: Saint Francis University

Title of Entry: Student Mailbox Door Auction: Friendly Competition in Fundraising and Engagement

About this Entry: Every year during Alumni Weekend our alumni compete to see who still remembers the combinations to their old student mailboxes, so when the University announced plans to renovate that section of the student center, we knew we had an opportunity to create a unique, one-time-only fundraiser that could engage a wide range of alumni.

We had seen other institutions turn mailboxes into coin banks and sell random postal numbers as a fundraiser. However, we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to get “their” mailbox, so we settled on an online auction. Through the month of August alumni as well as a handful of students and friends of the University placed bids on their targeted mailboxes while reminiscing on our Facebook page about the gifts and letters they received as students and gently ribbing their competitors.

The auction was a success on every level. We raised over $30,000 for our Alumni Association Scholarship endowment with the only costs coming from shipping the mailbox doors and coin banks. Any social posts involving the mailbox auction saw some of our best engagement numbers of the year. Perhaps most exciting, though, were the demographics: 22% of alumni participants graduated within the last decade, 52% of alumni participants graduated within the past twenty-five years, and every class between 1967 and 2021 was represented.