Preparing young minds for a different world
“We’re like a family, a structured community. Students who come here know they’re getting educational rigor, but they also have a resource for support in their faculty, people to lift them up when they are down,” says Kimberly Woodard, vice president of institutional advancement at Stillman College. That supportive network also includes the alumni and the Tuscaloosa community, which showed up in record numbers in 2024 to fund student success.
Stillman, one of the country’s 107 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), was founded in 1876 as a Presbyterian seminary and has been conferring four-year liberal arts degrees since 1955. Its long history is intertwined with that of the Tuscaloosa, Alabama community, and its alumni network runs generations deep.
For much of U.S. history, HBCUs were the only option for African Americans seeking a college education. Today, 20 percent of all African American college graduates come from HBCUs according to the United Negro College Fund. HBCUs provide college access to low-income students at a higher rate than other colleges and universities. For example, a higher percentage of students qualify for Pell Grants (57% at HBCUs compared to 30% at other four-year schools.
Despite having a fraction of the endowments that other colleges and universities rely on for financial aid, HBCUs provide affordable education to millions of students, “graduating the majority of America’s African American teachers, doctors, judges, engineers, and other scientific and technological professionals,” according to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
It’s because of these challenges that the leadership at Stillman College had high expectations of its fundraising team in the fall of 2024: meet or exceed last year’s turnout. The students count on that money to achieve their goals. It was a tall order, considering two members of the five-person team had been on the job for less than a month. The fall campaign’s success story is a testament to the support for Stillman students and its partnership with Bonterra.
Maximizing efforts and relationships
At Stillman College, fundraising is vital to student success. Money raised goes toward educational programs, faculty development, research and innovation, and partnership development. It also goes toward facility and maintenance costs, which can be significant given the school’s long history. Many historic buildings on the 105-acre campus are between 75 and 100 years old.
The fundraising team emphasizes that every gift, no matter the size, directly impacts students, scholarships, academic programs, and campus infrastructure. It doesn’t take a lot of money for a donor to make an impact.
But with an understaffed advancement team, maintaining relationships with Stillman’s vast alumni network proved challenging. The school needed to reintroduce its programs, mission, and goals to older alumni but lacked the personnel to provide the hands-on donor engagement needed for successful fundraising. The new team had to carefully prioritize their limited resources.
Partnering with Bonterra
Stillman College partnered with Bonterra (formerly GiveGab) in 2021 and used its Fundraising and Engagement software to run previous campaigns. The team looked to Bonterra as a way to multiply its efforts with technology. The first task was to figure out how to use it for upcoming events.
The Stillman fundraising team decided to combine three different campaigns into one 30-day event that culminated on GivingTuesday. The clock was ticking, and it required setting up the software system and marketing the giving opportunity to donors. With the consolidated approach and Bonterra’s customer service support, the team was able to maximize their limited staff resources effectively.
“We are so short-staffed that we don’t have people who can spend all day trying to figure out a platform, so the customer service we received from Bonterra was undeniably helpful and very much appreciated,” says Kimberly Woodard. “The only way we could meet that challenge was because of Bonterra’s customer service. It was helpful as additional boots on the ground, additional human resources, for an already understaffed and stressed team.”
What would typically take 16 weeks to execute was achieved in two, thanks to the partnership between Stillman and Bonterra. In a heroic effort, the fundraiser was set up and ready to launch by the first week of November.
Consolidating multiple campaigns
The 30 Days of Giving Campaign combined three November events – a fundraising community reception sponsored by Alabama Power, the 1876 founder’s week campaign, and GivingTuesday.
Started four years ago, the 1876 campaign ran for one day, 8 hours and 76 minutes each November to honor the school’s founding year. But as GivingTuesday became more popular, it competed with the earlier event. The team decided to combine them, kicking off on Nov. 3 and culminating in a one day, 8 hours, 76 minutes final push on GivingTuesday, Dec. 4.
Students were encouraged to reach out to 20 individuals on GivingTuesday, especially student athletes, choir members, and band members. Peer-to-peer fundraising is the key to supporting those programs, and Bonterra’s giving platform allows donors to earmark specific programs and departments to receive their donations.
Results: 30 Days of Giving Campaign
While it’s difficult to compare a 30-day campaign to a single-day event from previous years, this year’s campaign matched the best-performing 1876 campaign in terms of number of donations and number of donors. The team is encouraged by this success and is looking forward to their 2025 campaign. They’re already anticipating raising the stakes by setting a goal to have donors from all 50 states.
Stillman’s fundraising yielded more than $3 million during the fall semester, including $1 million in cyber security program scholarships from Google and a $2 million gift to the college’s endowment from Dr. Charles M. Stillman, the great-grandson of the college’s founder Rev. Charles A. Stillman. With both of the large gifts earmarked for restricted use, the more than $110,000 raised through the Bonterra campaign was largely unrestricted and could immediately be applied to needs across campus.
Moving forward together
Stillman College has served as a community center for generations, and its successes are shared by students, faculty, families, and neighbors. Its future plans uphold that commitment.
“The Tuscaloosa Civil Rights Movement went right through Stillman College,” says Chris Megginson, director of strategic communications. “We want Stillman to remain a fixture in the community as it’s been for nearly 150 years.”
He points to recent partnerships with the City of Tuscaloosa, Shelton State Community College and the University of Alabama to support STEM education through the Saban Center, which is scheduled to open in 2027. Other community-centered initiatives include the I Dream Big Academy, a new charter school located on the historic campus that will open in 2025. Additional groups located on campus include Upward Bound, the Girl Scouts, Arts & Autism, and a literacy initiative called The House Tuscaloosa.
Just as Bonterra works to increase overall giving to 3% of GDP by 2033, Stillman College sees fundraising as an important tool for creating change. The school’s impact on the past, present, and future is undeniable.
“I think the legacy of HBCUs is that we take a little and make dreams happen,” says Kimberly Woodard. “Not only the dreams of individuals, but we change generations with the work that we do at our college. That’s a blessing to so many, not just to the individual, but to the greater good.”
Visit Stillman College online to donate and learn more about how it’s changing lives for generations of students.
