The Story: The University of Manchester is a powerhouse of research, conducting a wide range of high-quality research that is rivalled by few other universities. Each year they carry out a research-focused fundraising campaign in November. Having produced their campaigns in-house for a number of years, in 2023 support of an external agency was sought.
2024 would be the University’s bicentenary and they wanted to mark the occasion with a fundraising campaign that focused on celebrating 200 years of discovery at Manchester and supporting the world-changing discoveries of the future.
The Story: The University of Manchester is a powerhouse of research, conducting a wide range of high-quality research that is rivalled by few other universities. Each year they carry out a research-focused fundraising campaign in November. Having produced their campaigns in-house for a number of years, in 2023 support of an external agency was sought.
2024 would be the University’s bicentenary and they wanted to mark the occasion with a fundraising campaign that focused on celebrating 200 years of discovery at Manchester and supporting the world-changing discoveries of the future.
The Brief: Our brief was to produce an incredibly creative, stand-out direct mail pack to celebrate the University’s 200th year anniversary and encourage alumni to make a gift to support the next 200 years of research discoveries.
Our Response: To create two variants of a direct mail pack, one for high-value alumni and one for mid-value alumni, with variables on asks and acknowledgement of previous support where relevant. Both packs consisted of a 4-page main appeal letter, donation form with mini-appeal, letters from key members of the University’s research team, handwritten complement slips and BRE all enclosed in an outer envelope.
Why it works: The messaging worked by emphasising the magnitude of the issues facing the world like disease, climate change, sustainability and equality, and how funding research teams at the University is crucial to achieving world-changing breakthroughs faster.
This message was delivered in the main letter by the Vice-President for Research, adding gravitas to this peer-to-peer communication. In addition, personal letters from individual researchers showed the passion and emotion they held for their work.
Throughout, the shared pride in the University, its past discoveries and current world-leading research accolades were used to encourage support. To deepen this collective pride, alumni were asked to add a personal message to the donation form about their time at Manchester, how it changed them and what they had achieved since.
research – focused fundraising