January

Advancement ends 2017 on high note

Year-end giving was up nearly $1 million over previous year

By Nathan Solheim

January 30, 2018

Giving to MSU Denver was nearly $1 million more in 2017 over the year before.

Dino Hernandez, MSU Denver’s vice president of advancement and executive director of the MSU Denver Foundation, said that year-end giving to the University was $4,045,456. In 2016, the total was $3,126,384.

“I was expecting a strong 2017 but it was stronger than I expected,” Hernandez said. “The last two weeks of 2017 were extraordinarily powerful for the University.”

Hernandez attributed the positive fundraising to hard work on the part of Advancement and Alumni Relations staff and several new marketing and communications fundraising concepts that were implemented during the final months of 2017.

One example was The Roadrunner Development Report, a publication that shares stories of why people give to MSU Denver. Hernandez said two endowed scholarships resulted from that publication alone. Advancement staffers also were active in social media, direct mail and telephone channels through the year’s end and made concerted efforts to thank donors through personal stewardship tactics including small gifts of chocolates to past donors and personal handwritten thank-you notes from our students.

These initiatives yielded extraordinary results. The University received three six-figure gifts all in the last 10 business days of 2017, which included an unrestricted donation of $425,000, high-tech equipment for the Aerospace and Engineering Sciences program and a leadership gift for the new School of Hospitality, Events and Tourism.

“I’m very grateful for how hard-working the Advancement team is,” Hernandez said. “A lot of this work is very strategic and methodical and they each worked collaboratively with the schools and colleges all the way through to the very end of the calendar year.”