Crain's Chicago Business Features SAIC's Social Media Campaign

Social media campaigns have proven to be an effective way of raising funds and attracting user engagement according to the results of campaigns run by SAIC and local nonprofit, Working in the Schools (WITS). These campaigns were able to raise significant amounts of money for little or no cost thanks to social media platforms like Instagram.

SAIC used social media to help raise funds as part of the Beautiful/Work: The Campaign for SAIC. According to Crain’s Chicago Business the campaign asked alumni to donate $5, share words of advice for new graduates, then tag the post with ­#SAICgivingday2018. Alumni responded with a total of 48 posts resulting in $3,000 from 165 donors, 89 of which were new donors and 143 of whom were alumni. “When people see peers from their network publicly pledge their support to certain causes, they’re more likely to feel connected to the cause, rally behind them and encourage others to do so as well,” said Rachael Samuels, social media manager at Chicago-based Sprout Social. Working in the Schools’ summer book campaign used a similar social media tactic to ask their followers for donations to help buy students bags of books to take home for summer reading. Their campaign was also successful and resulted in 105 repostings of their original post. This was the first time using social media to raise funds for both SAIC and WITS.