On this year's STAGiving Day, Fairfield University orchestrated a scavenger hunt during our 24-hour giving day that aimed to boost student participation and philanthropy. The approach involved merging a scavenger hunt with the inclusion of matching funds from an anonymous donor. Here are a few of the highlight!
• We created and stuffed 25 “mystery” boxes with some easy swag from our offices.
• We then partnered with locations all around campus to “hide” them, allowing our partners to put them out on Giving Day. We were intentional about giving them to partners that were working with us/had funds represented on that day (our schools, the library) but also in high traffic areas as well.
• Upon discovery, each box revealed Fairfield University merchandise and a notecard with a QR code guiding students to select a campus cause that would benefit from the anonymous donor's gift. Each box was numbered and worth $25 to a fund they could choose.
• Through a Google form, students claimed their chosen cause -any fund across campus. Out of the 25 boxes, 23 students did the extra step of scanning the QR and selecting a fund.
• Extra bonus: the partners who got to put the boxes out were encouraged (and did!) to use social media and put extra signage around the box to encourage giving to their funds. It created a ton of talk on social and our campus partners gave lots of fun feedback about how they loved being involved in this way. This was a win for us in creating some chatter in places that had been hard to do so.

It was available only for students. Less about having them make a gift of their own (although it was encouraged that they could double their own gift with the matching donor’s gift) and more about creating something memorable for the students that aligned with Giving Day.