KDG's Crowdfunding Platform Helps Florida Tech Exceed Expectations for Inaugural Day of Giving
Florida Tech's online crowdfunding campaign on #GivingTuesday broke all records and expectations. Developed by KDG, the online portal was gamified, made for mobile, and deeply tied into social media for crowdfunding success.
ALLENTOWN, Pa., Dec. 14, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Thanks to a custom-built crowdfunding site developed by KDG, Florida Institute of Technology kicked off its first #GivingTuesday in a major way on Dec. 1. The school's inaugural campaign attracted an impressive 1,499 donors—almost three times the initial goal of 500 donors.
"What a day!" says Dan Stover, User Interface & User Experience Manager at KDG. "It's tremendous to achieve those types of numbers for a first campaign."
Now in its fourth year, #GivingTuesday is a global nonprofit day of giving observed on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. The campaign continues to catch fire each year attracting more and more higher education institutions like Florida Tech to participate. Dubbed the Black Friday of philanthropy, the global day of giving encourages individuals everywhere to give back and then use the power of social media to spark the same spirit of generosity in their online social circles.
Knowing that participants had just 24 hours to make their gifts, KDG built Florida Tech a mobile-friendly crowdfunding platform that appealed to busy donors on the move. This proved invaluable as mobile phone donations accounted for more than 25 percent of the day's total.
Intra-institutional competition also helped fuel the record participation. KDG developed a space-themed interactive online donor portal with "Mission Control" widgets that updated in real time to allow Florida Tech's colleges to compete against each other. The portal's vivid space graphics captured the university's proud space heritage as a school founded for missile men at the dawn of the Space Age.
In that same spirit, the campaign was "gameified" to allow donors the ability to collectively "rescue" the deans of all the colleges from the solar system.
"Our goal was to make the crowdfunding site as engaging and interactive as possible so donors would have a compelling reason to stay connected to the campaign throughout the entire 24-hour giving period," Stover says.
The site achieved that and more. It attracted more than 100,000 page views during the day–with donors from 63 countries participating. Social media referrals also played a major role in the campaign with 12 percent of donations coming in from social media referrals. Even after donors made a contribution, real-time emails kept them on the site playing the game to rescue the deans.
As a leader in technology solutions for higher education clients like Florida Tech, KDG is no stranger to helping colleges and universities launch successful crowdfunding sites that can handle extreme traffic demands and process thousands of transactions per second. The firm recently helped Muhlenberg College break their record for online fundraising.
In addition to working with higher education clients, KDG builds custom online giving sites for nonprofit organizations.
SOURCE The Kyle David Group, LLC
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