Saint Ann Annual Giving

In the next two weeks, you should receive in the mail a St. Ann Annual Giving brochure. The purpose of the annual giving is for parents, grandparents, alumni, parishioners, faculty, and friends to help strengthen and support St. Ann and its educational programs, professional development, community projects, and facilities.

Since I'm big on transparency, I want you to know about annual giving and why this is important to St. Ann.

Annual Giving is a fundraising activity designed to stimulate regular giving. Annual giving is important for many reasons, including it: (from CASE: Council for Advancement and Support of Education)

• Provides income both for specific projects and unrestricted funds,
• Establishes giving habits and enable patterns of giving to be tracked,
• Establishes a donor pipeline, enabling the identification of donors with the potential capacity and propensity to give bigger gifts in the future,
• Increases donor participation rates,
• Helps improve and keep data about prospects up to date,
• Is a great stewardship tool,
• Helps reinforce core messages about an institution,
• Helps identify the enthusiasts who might be leaders or significant volunteers and
• Strengthens the bonds between an institution and it prospects

There are five steps to an annual giving campaign.
1. Case for Support- This is where we have a compelling story for why our organization exists. Instead of telling you why we exist, how about if I show you why we exist! Just check out the pictures in this blog.

2. Database- A good database can help us streamline fundraising, be more donor centered, and raise more support for St. Ann. Our database will help track donations, including annual giving.

That's why we invested in our new Bloomerang database. (https://bloomerang.co/)  Bloomerang's mission is to be the world's best developer and deliverer of tools and perspectives that generate value for nonprofit donor relationships.

3. Direct Mail- We need to have a direct mail campaign to keep our current donors and attract new supporters. Both recurring and new donors are extremely important to the success of any annual giving.

That's why our development committee has been working closely with Jeff Blankenship of Blankenship Creative to develop our direct mailing piece, which will be going out this next week. (http://blankenshipcreative.com/) Jeff produced our direct mailing piece as a donation to St. Ann. I'm anxious for you to see our good work.

4. Website- We are updating our website especially our "Support US" page. We are in the process of linking our support page with Bloomerang to help us better track our supporters. We want to make donating to St. Ann easier for our supporters. We want our donors to be able to designate their gifts for what interests them most. Those areas include scholarships, financial aid, classroom supplies, professional development, athletics, maintenance and upkeep...

5. Support Acknowledgment- The most important part of receiving any gift is saying "Thank You," and doing so right away.

Development is an important aspect of the existence of any non-profit. Non-profits that don't value the development (also called Advancement), will not exist very long.

Look at the websites of successful schools (universities, high schools, and elementary schools). A commonality is of an investment in a development team. The most successful have a development army, not just one or two people.

At St. Ann, we have Angela de Jong as our development director.  As the principal of the school, it is my job to support Mrs. de Jong in moving development forward to ensure that St. Ann will be financially viable and in existence for many years to come. That's why Nick Scully, Lori Locke, and Sr. Connie Tarallo have joined our development team. Development and the future of St. Ann is the reason we have been working hard on the annual giving. Our children deserve a great Catholic School. We want to make sure St. Ann is there for our students and their families for decades to come. If we do not work to make it the best school, and receive support from the thousands of students and families who have walked the halls of St. Ann, it will go the way of the Jubilee Schools, Bishop Byrne, St. Anne Highland, Memphis Catholic,....

As for me, I love Catholic Schools.  I hope to never see another Catholic School in our diocese shut its doors to students and their families. If we do not do the development work that's needed and support the schools, we will only have ourselves to blame if we fail.

For a successful St. Ann both today and in the future, let us work together. Support Catholic Education starting with our own St. Ann Catholic School.

God bless you,
Didier Aur, Principal
St. Ann Catholic School