Catlin Gabel Newsletter

Challenges

When Covid-19 cancelled a beloved and long-standing event, Grandparent and Special Friends Day, the school still wanted to reach out to this important group of family members and friends. We knew many grandparents who supported their grandchildren financially or with after-school care, and we were all disappointed for them to miss this event.

The advancement team needed to find a way to connect with this important group of supporters and do it in less than a month.

Solutions

​We created a targeted, bi-annual newsletter written especially for grandparents and special friends. Every article was freshly written for that audience, and we were careful to include stories from every age group.

We timed the newsletter to go out about 2 weeks before Thanksgiving, roughly 3 weeks before Giving Tuesday.

The newsletter was well-received based on the messages received from grandparents and special friends. In addition, Giving Tuesday gifts that year went up a huge amount: In 2019, grandparent giving totaled about 6% of Giving Tuesday gifts. In 2020, they contributed 20% of the total gifts.

As an additional bonus, the articles were repurposed and shared more broadly after the newsletter went out.