£189,252 in Two Days: A Wadham College, Oxford Giving Day Story
Wadham College's 2026 Giving Day raised £189,252 including challenges and matched funding, up from £137,563 the year before. 41% of homepage visitors completed a gift, more than double the sector benchmark, on the back of a 12-drop, 29-version segmented email programme that drove 85% of all traffic.
“Absolutely! The platform is so slick, and the team give great support, practically, technically, and emotionally. We can't wait to work with them again.”
Sarah Davies Wadham College, Oxford The challenge
Wadham College had run successful Giving Days before, raising £169,375 from 458 donors in 2024 and £137,563 from 379 donors in 2025. Building on that track record meant more than repeating the same formula. The college needed to re-engage a broad alumni community, encourage first-time and lapsed donors to take part, and give supporters a genuine sense of the difference their gift makes, all within a tightly defined 36-hour window.
Digital giving days succeed or fail on momentum. Without the personal conversation of a phone call, the college needed its website, emails and social channels to work together to build excitement, encourage sharing, and convert visits into gifts at a rate well above what a typical campaign achieves.
The approach
Hubbub built and ran Wadham’s Giving Day platform, opening with a Coming Soon launch on 6 May 2026 ahead of the main event on 3 and 4 June.
The campaign centred on five donor challenges, designed to give supporters an extra reason to give and a sense of collective progress toward a shared goal. Match funding increased the value of every gift. A coordinated email programme carried most of the weight, with 12 drops and 29 versions sent to segmented audiences before and across the event.
What Hubbub delivered:
- A branded Giving Day platform with a Coming Soon phase ahead of the main two-day event
- Support for five donor challenges, to drive engagement and a sense of collective progress
- A 12-drop, 29-version segmented email programme across the campaign
- A donor wall and interactive donor map, to give gifts visible social proof
- Real-time tracking of donations, traffic and conversion throughout the event
The results
Wadham’s Giving Day brought in 350 donors and £135,451 in online income, rising to £189,252 once challenges and matched funding are included, with all five donor challenges successfully unlocked.
- 350 total donors
- £135,451 in online income
- £189,252 total income including challenges and matched funding
- 5 of 5 donor challenges unlocked
- £487 average gift, with a £100 median and £100 mode
- 278 donors gave online, with gifts ranging from £1 to £25,000
The email programme performed well ahead of sector benchmarks. 74,371 emails were sent, with a 99.52% delivery rate, a 45.20% average open rate and a 1.94% average click rate, comfortably inside Hubbub’s best-practice range of under 1% unsubscribes, 1 to 3% click rates and 35% or higher open rates. Just 124 recipients unsubscribed across the entire campaign, a rate of 0.17%.
Engagement on the day was equally strong. 83% of donors chose to appear on the donor wall, and 23% of those added a personal message. Of donors who visited the homepage, 41% went on to complete a gift, more than double the 20% benchmark for the sector.
Why it worked
Email was the backbone of the campaign, driving 85% of all visitors to the Giving Day site, with social media contributing a further 8%. Careful segmentation and messaging did the work: the first emails focused on each alumnus’s own subject area and were signed off by a relevant contact from the college, which made a mass campaign feel personal.
The donor challenges gave that email programme something concrete to promote beyond a simple ask, converting outreach into a shared sense of momentum that donors wanted to be part of.
The donor wall and donor map turned individual gifts into visible, collective participation, the kind of social proof a telephone appeal delivers through conversation, achieved here through the platform itself. Donors were not just giving, they were seeing themselves as part of a global Wadham community coming together over two days, which helped push conversion rates well past sector norms.
Looking ahead
Most donors matriculated in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, which points to two priorities for future campaigns: deepening stewardship and upgrade opportunities with this core group, while developing new approaches to acquire younger alumni donors.
Hubbub’s recommendations for Wadham’s next Giving Day in 2027:
- Implement strong donor stewardship, particularly for new and lapsed donors
- Review the communications plan and segmentation to sharpen email impact further
- Grow social media presence, to build a more omnichannel mix of traffic alongside email
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