Chosen because Sheboygan Christian School won Silver for Fundraising Video In-House in the 2021 Brilliance Awards. InspirED talked with Rudi Gesch, Director of Marketing and Enrollment, about the win.

“Xander did a great job providing a construction update! A lively update showing the improvements from the perspective of a future recipient.”

— Brilliance Awards Judge's Comment

First the Need

In 2015, the leaders of Sheboygan Christian Elementary School and Sheboygan County Christian High School set goals to grow enrollment and be more intentional about education from age 3 to 18 and beyond. So the two organizations merged into Sheboygan Christian School and planned to condense their two campuses into one.

This initiative would allow Sheboygan to be the only private, faith-based school in their area that is P-12 and on one campus. Sheboygan's next move was to add 40,000 square feet for the elementary school to its existing 48,000 square foot middle and high school campus. This was the largest building project in the organization’s past 20 years.

Next the Fundraising

With an overall fundraising goal of $6.7MM, the quiet phase of the “Building Hearts and Minds” capital campaign launched in 2018.

The Marketing and Donor Relations departments collaborated on the communications strategy which included the Brilliance Award winning video, monthly drone construction updates, monthly postcards (pictured below) to sorted lists, and a phone-a-thon — in addition to all of the traditional in-person donor relations that takes place in every capital campaign.

Campaign Postcard

“A global pandemic and supply chain issues, etc. made fundraising and building planning and execution a unique challenge.”

— Rudi Gesch

Get Creative

Rudi knew how to make compelling videos. His first step was to hire local talent — his 5th-grade son, Xander — for a non-equity fee of $20 per video ;-)

Rudi and video talent, Xander, behind the scenes.

“One weekend a month, we’d go to campus, make things up on the spot and do many takes until he got it right. Xander has an insane memory, so if he hears something, he’ll remember it and be able to repeat it back. So the actual shoots never took long.”

— Rudi Gesch

Xander enjoyed seeing his Dad doing post-production including the iMovie editing process, adding music, and pushing them out to the school’s channels. Some of the videos got over 10,000 views which is very large for Sheboygan’s social media presence.

“Xander was definitely originally motivated by the $20 carrot dangling,” Rudi says. “But after we got into the projects, it was just a fun father-and-son thing to do on a lazy Saturday and it allowed him to see a project all the way through.”

Xander got some campus cred with the videos. High schoolers would shout to him, "Hey, you're that kid from those videos!" Xander got a kick out of that.

Break Ground

Groundbreaking took place in 2020 and the community held a ribbon-cutting in 2021.

“This campaign was the culmination of 5 years of strategy, prayer, fundraising, and several starts-and-stops along the way.”

— Rudi Gesch

And you made it, Sheboygan Christian School — and won a Brilliance Award, too!

As An Aside

This fact might be interesting to the InspirED community. Rudi is both the Director of Marketing and Enrollment at Sheboygan Christian School (WI) and the Director of Marketing and Communications for Eastern Christian School (NJ).

“The key is that I have an intimate knowledge of both schools that I work with,” says Rudi. “I was on-site 100% with Eastern Christian School for 7 years. I was able to build up good processes and we have an amazing team that I can rely on. You definitely learn to delegate when 50% of your world is remote (with intermittent flights to work on-site).”

One of the key strategies for their social media channels is that they created a stipend position of "Campus Content Creator" at Eastern Christian School where they have teachers who are naturally good at capturing and sharing content to communicate their brand.

Rudi says, “That allows me to direct the social media marketing without being physically on-site. Other than that... it's busy! :)”

Congratulations, Sheboygan Christian School! You are brilliant.

TEAM
Xander Gesch, 5th Grade Student
Rudi Gesch, Director of Marketing & Enrollment

See All the 2021 Winners

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Liza Fisher Norman

Master Electrician, InspirED School Marketers

Master Electrician isn’t just a fun title for me. It’s how I feel about sparking school marketers to do their best work, connecting them to one another, and helping to make their jobs easier. After working with close to 100 schools in the firm I founded — Turnaround Marketing Communications — I realized that school marketers needed a place where they could find brilliant ideas and brain food and feel supported. InspirED School Marketers was born in 2013 to fill that void, and with the help of my fabulous Best Boy, Rob, we are on a quest to make InspirED a resource you can't live without.

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