Advocates are an integral part of the GiveCampus experience. Including and educating Advocates from the start of your campaign planning positions you to succeed— and share your success— from day one! Advocate engagement features are a defining experience of the GiveCampus platform that allow your volunteers to increase their impact by spreading awareness, encouraging their peers/network to join them in giving in the process. Active Advocates are a key indicator to a campaign’s success.
The first step to becoming an Advocate is to sign up for a GiveCampus user account by clicking ‘‘Sign Up’ in the top right of any page on GiveCampus. Advocacy is all about taking specific actions to inspire others to support a specific campaign, so just creating a GiveCampus user account won’t make someone become an Advocate-- they’ll have to do a little work for it, but don’t worry, we make it fun and easy!
Once a supporter is signed up for and logged into their GiveCampus user account, they can become a campaign Advocate by taking one-- or better yet, all!-- of the following steps:
1. Consider their own gift! Great advocates lead by example and they can leverage their gift to encourage others to give! Offering a Match means that an Advocate will give a number of dollars for each dollar or donor that the campaign receives up to a specified maximum gift amount. Matches can be restricted to only apply to donors from an affiliation group, class year, or even a specific group of friends by email address. Offering a Challenge means that an Advocate will make a gift only if the campaign receives a certain number of donors or dollars after the Challenge is created. Challenges cannot be restricted to specific donor groups. For further reading on Matches and Challenges, check out this resource.
2. Create a Personal Video. A Personal Video is a video in which an Advocate tells their community why they’re getting involved with the campaign and why others should set up, too. The most popular format for Pleas is simply a short selfie video recorded on a cell phone-- no need to get fancy! Personal Videos can be uploaded via the campaign ‘Advocates’ tab. After an Advocate uploads their Personal Video, it will be reviewed by a member of the GiveCampus team before it is approved and posted. A button to watch the video will appear next to Advocates’ names on the campaign’s Advocates tab.
3. Share the campaign link. The built-in sharing buttons (located underneath the campaign video and on the Advocates tab) generates a campaign link that is unique to the Advocate that clicks on it. When an Advocate uses these buttons to share the campaign link, the number of clicks, gifts, and dollars generated by their outreach will be tracked on the Advocates tab. It’s important to make sure that Advocates know that they need to be logged into their GiveCampus user accounts for their impact to be tracked next to their name. If someone uses the sharing buttons without being logged in, their impact will be tracked in the ‘Community Advocates’ group on the Advocates tab. We encourage Advocates to share early and share often!
Ready to reach out? Linked here is a customizable, one-page “how-to” guide to share with your supporters. To customize this template:
- If you have a Google account:
- Sign in to your Google account > Menu > click 'File' > Click 'Make a copy' > Customize
- If you don’t have a Google account:
- Menu > click 'File' > Click 'Download as Microsoft Word > Open the document in your computer's 'downloads' folder > Open the document in MS Word > Customize
Want to become an Advocate all-star? Check out The Steps to Becoming an Advocate (With a Backstage Pass!) for an administrator-only guide to become an Advocate insider, getting ahead of Advocate FAQs, staying savvy with pro tips, and more!