Colby College Advancement
We need to evolve and maintain momentum.
In 2016, Colby College worked with several of T&C’s partners to name and launch their comprehensive campaign, Dare Northward. Four years and over $500 hundred million dollars later, Colby needed a way to continue the momentum and take the small liberal arts college in Waterville, Maine to even greater heights.
Campaign Art Direction & Design: Dan Kent
We recast our work with an updated narrative that positioned the continued progress of the campaign as the next ascent for Colby. The client got misty about it.
And seriously, congratulations on today. That was a memorable response (I had tears in my eyes…).
We created excitement for the next phase of the campaign with a video we wrote and Colby produced. We even had one of their board members narrate the piece.
With so much success over a short period of time, Colby needed to connect donors to the investments they were making. We did so by creating a sub-campaign called Dares Come True where we featured the individuals who were directly impacted by giving.
Be ready to flip the switch on the website.
In conjunction with a new institutional website, we revamped the advancement site to communicate the impact of the campaign and a new goal of one billion dollars. That’s billion with a “B.”
Need to go with the long sleeves when you’re in central Maine.
We also created a premium campaign highlights report that served as a retrospective of where the college was prior to the campaign as well as the institution-altering progress they’ve made since its inception. This was achieved through both infographics and stories of impact.
Results
The Dare Northward campaign is one of the most successful fundraising campaigns in the history of higher education. The evolved Dare Northward work we created helped propel Colby to raise its fundraising goal to $1 billion. Colby saw a 200% increase in applications from 2014 to 2022. The percentage of incoming students in the top 10% of their high school graduating class changed from 65% in 2014 to 86% in 2021. There has been an increase of 155% in the number of students receiving Pell Grants and a 32% increase in first-generation college students.
Colby can’t stay out of the news (and we mean that in the best way possible).
PRESS
