Did you know the oldest elementary school in America is a Boston public school? The school, Mather Elementary, has made history again with an incredibly successful social media campaign to raise funds for their school supplies — The Classroom Champions for the Mather School.
The two-month long campaign has raised over $22,000, 80 percent of which came through Facebook and Twitter. The campaign leveraged social sharing tools to enable teachers and students to reach out to their personal networks to raise funds. Just how much did this campaign raise compared to their average annual fundraising efforts? A lot. More than five times the annual average, a number they flew by within the first week of the campaign.
The Mather currently serves 580 students in grades K through 5, and students and faculty celebrated the campaign’s success last night. Here are some stats that will paint a picture of the students benefiting from the funds:
- Over 90 percent are minority
- Nearly half consider English their second language
- Over 80 percent are low income
- Nearly a fifth receive special education services
Mather’s Principal Emily Cox led the innovative charge in the campaign, and BostInno had the opportunity to ask her a few questions about her success:
BostInno: When did the campaign “go viral”?
Cox: Within the first week of the site going live, we’d already surpassed the previous year’s total fundraising – so, from our perspective, this went viral instantly. Actually, one of the founding committee members celebrated his 40th birthday the day we launched the campaign. He sent a note to friends asking for donations in lieu of gifts, and brought in a lot of money – it really gave us a huge jumpstart.
BostInno: What do you believe made the campaign the success it was?
Cox: By enabling teachers to reach out to their networks, it really encouraged the social nature of the campaign. Given the demands on teachers’ time in general, doing it this way easily enabled a very efficient way for them to reach out – the “friend to friend” connection is invaluable. By enabling teachers to their networks, that encouraged the social nature of the campaign.
BostInno: Aside from social media, how else did you get the word out about the fundraiser?
Cox: We relied heavily on word of mouth via the teachers. We had some fantastic support from the corporate world, too – Staples has a whole marketing group that works with one of the classrooms. They actually put donation jars in their cafeteria, and with 3,000+ employees they brought in around $6,000. Kel & Partners helped us concept the initiative and helped us get the ball rolling with their employees and connections, too – and the PR outreach they’ve done has brought us some great attention!
BostInno: What donation software did you use and were you happy with it?
Cox: We used Active.com. We were very happy with it – it was flexible from a design perspective, and they had great customer support.
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With its online format, Mather is extending the campaign for a few more weeks – especially now that more people are aware of its success. The campaign has presented a low cost, low effort way for the school to raise funds. You can check out much of the activity around the campaign on the Mather Elementary School Facebook page here.
