Texas Tech’s second Day of Giving was a massive success, thanks to all of you, but how does the whole thing come together?
Welcome back to the Mailbag!
Last week, Texas Tech University held its second annual Day of Giving, and once again the Red Raider community came through in a big way.
On a goal of $300,000, Red Raiders from across the country rallied together and ran up a total north of $430,000.
Day of Giving is a chance for Texas Tech to highlight programs and projects across the university that are doing big things but often go unnoticed. The projects and programs could be anything from keeping campus beautiful to unique experiences for students or community support, but they're doing something Texas Tech considers important.
From the outside (and for many of us on the inside) it's a chance to support programs we are passionate about and know our dollars are going directly to helping.
What we don't often talk about is what it takes to organize something like Day of Giving and, as luck would have it, a staffer from another part of the university asked me what all went into pulling it together.
Thus, today's Mailbag is giving you some of the inside baseball on the work that goes into Day of Giving.
“I start planning the next Day of Giving almost immediately after the previous one ends,” said Shannon Wallace, associate director for annual giving. “It's a university-wide effort that has a lot of moving pieces.”
For something that only lasts 1,923 minutes (about 32 hours), Day of Giving takes a lot of work for Wallace and her team.
The most critical element is choosing the projects.
With so many outstanding programs to pick from on campus, narrowing the group down is the hardest part.
“The purpose of Day of Giving is to help programs at our university meet the needs of our students and community,” Wallace said. “With a university as large as Texas Tech, it can be incredibly difficult to select from the countless impactful programs, but we do our best to have a range of projects that are representative of all the different areas of campus.”
But even when that part is over, the work is still just beginning.
Wallace and her team are responsible for making sure every project is part of a communications plan and has the resources behind it to get the word out.
As somebody who works just down the hall, I'll tell you that Wallace is a flurry of activity in the weeks leading up to Day of Giving and can rarely be caught standing still.
Between event planning for happenings on campus, putting together social media assets, ordering shirts, stickers and foam fingers, building websites and coordinating among all the project groups, she has her hands full.
But for the second time in two years, she crushed it.
This year there were 24 featured projects, and nearly all of them reached their individual funding goals.
Wallace, for her part, is already busy building for the next one, which is just around the corner.
The next Day of Giving will happen in the spring, and the planning starts now. Wallace and the Office of Advancement are looking for the right projects to support, and we need help with that as well. If you have a program or initiative you would like considered as a featured project, email Texas Tech's Office of Advancement at ofc.advancement@ttu.edu.
And, as always, we appreciate the support.
“What I love about Day of Giving is seeing the amazing impact Red Raiders can have when we all rally together – whether it is the staff helping to implement Day of Giving on campus or those who are donating to projects,” Wallace said.
“Truly, every effort and every dollar make a difference. Whether it's the dollar that allows a high school student to attend band camp, the dollar that guarantees Raider Red's Food Panty has a meal for a student in need, or the dollar that ensures a student has professional attire for an interview, the collective impact of each of these gifts changes lives.”
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