Mind your Mood — Philanthropy for student mental health at Ulster University
Background
The Mind Your Mood fundraising campaign was led by Caroline Armstrong, Head of Fundraising, and Kathy Morrow, Development Officer, in close collaboration with the Student Support team who manage the student-led Mind Your Mood programme.
In 2016–17, the campaign’s first year, Ulster University raised £35k from staff, students, and alumni, who participated in the Belfast City Marathon, a 100-mile cycle between the University’s four campuses in Belfast, Jordanstown, Coleraine, and Derry) and a football tournament, which included participation of Santander staff.
The story so far
With a new fundraising team established in 2014, and new Vice Chancellor and subsequent change in leadership in 2015, the fundraising team were being encouraged to secure more staff and student donations to their Annual Fund. As a very embryonic development office, with a limited culture of philanthropy across the institution, and bearing in mind the University was undergoing a significant period of transition, they identified that, while staff and students were not ready to be asked for a gift directly, they could and should begin work to raise awareness of the impact of philanthropy and identified a community fundraising initiative as a way to begin this process.
With the rise of mental health issues generally and related awareness, and taking into consideration particularly recent research on student mental well-being as well as the fact that Ulster University has a strong track record in mental health research and Psychology teaching, they decided to focus their first year’s activity on raising money for Mind Your Mood, designed and delivered by students who have lived experiences of mental health illness to help:
- build resilience to avoid mental illness
- provide support at the earliest point to avoid progression of mental illness to something more serious and threatening
- build resilience and awareness and provide support to help students with already diagnosed mental illness.
This presented an easily articulated case for support i.e. this is a rapidly rising need (backed up by research), and the more money they have, the more they can do to support their students.
To launch the campaign, they developed a video asset with their Chancellor Dr. James Nesbitt. The video broke the University’s social media records within weeks of being made public:
Their aim for the first year was to secure 50 participants with a fundraising target of £10k. 220 staff, students and alumni participated in the first year, raising £35k, exceeding all expectations and targets. Notably, their Vice Chancellor and other senior leaders participated in relay teams.
In 2017–18, its second year, £25k via similar activities as in year one, including a series of student and staff-led events such as spinathons and coffee mornings.
In its current and third year (2018–19), as well as the marathon and cycle, they added Santa Runs (bringing in local schools) at all campuses, a 26m abseil off their Belfast campus, a sponsored yoga event and donation-only yoga classes, and a sponsored tennisathon with the aim of beating the record for the longest professional tennis match in history!
Their Student Support team also worked with their Sports Services team to launch ‘26–4–26’ — recruiting 26 staff and students to undertake the full marathon providing them with a package of nutrition advice, a training programme, performance analysis and physio training thus responding to the University’s wider objectives and research into holistic approaches to mental well-being and highlighting benefit of exercise, nutrition, support networks and rest, to maintaining mental well-being. Randox Laboratories also made them one of its ‘Charities of the Year’.
In 2018–19 so far, they have raised £45k from staff, students, staff and students’ families and friends, and graduates which includes £10k+ raised via Just Giving in memory of a student who was signed up to undertake the 100-mile cycle in April 2019 but who unfortunately died one week before the event.
Not only has this campaign raised money and donor numbers, two key objectives of the Fundraising team, it has undoubtedly significantly raised awareness of the DARO and the power and impact of philanthropy. It has increased the DARO’s networks across the university, raised their visibility at a senior leadership level and sent out a clear signal to all stakeholders about their commitment to their students.
This campaign was part of a wider strategy focusing on building a culture of philanthropy at Ulster University, on recruiting donors and on increasing income and has played a role in supporting this strategy in its entirety. It also importantly brought staff and students together in a shared goal, building team work and collegiality across the institution, as well as raise awareness of their Student Support team and the Mind Your Mood programme, contributing to increased numbers availing of these services.
The Development Fundraising team won a Distinguished Staff Award for these efforts in its first year. DARO and Student Support submitted a joint application for the campaign and was shortlisted in the recent What Uni Student Choice Award 2019.
The campaign has demonstrated how teams across the university can work together to realise and maximise each others’ objectives.
Lessons learnt
Diversifying the activities in 2018–19 has proved very worthwhile, with the abseil raising £9,554.
The video asset was successful at getting people to sit up and take notice. It was a slick production which no doubt demonstrated the quality of work that the DARO was capable of.
An outdoor campaign was undertaken in the first year, which included bus adshels and billboards, but the DARO does not believe it was worth the investment and played no role in driving participation or donations. Internal communications (online staff news pages, emails, on-campus plasma screens) were all that was needed to support the campaign’s objectives.
Looking back, such a campaign has huge potential to enhance wider University brand but the DARO cannot lead this and they would consider working with the public relations and communications team to leave a wider footprint of the campaign.
Top tips
- The project must be a strategic priority for the University — the case for support can then be clearly articulated as supporting a priority area in which the University has invested and to which the University has committed
- Identify projects which have the potential to resonate with majority of your institution’s stakeholders
- Secure stakeholder buy-in to help drive participation e.g. Vice Chancellor, senior leaders, human resource staff, Students’ Union, student representation, public relations and communications staff, website team
- If running a similar programme for the first time, identify an established event to test the water rather than going to effort of creating an event
- If adding any new activities, request expressions of interest initially to gauge interest
- Start small and slowly build up over time
- It inevitably takes a significant amount of administration time
- It is worth it — not only for money; for awareness -raising institutionally and externally; to build awareness of DARO and impact of philanthropy; increased collegiality between staff and students and increased staff morale
You can hear more on well-being and mental health from a line-up of speakers at this year’s CASE Europe Annual Conference in Birmingham on 27–29 August 2019. View the full programme here.
Caroline Armstrong, Deputy Director (Fundraising), Ulster University
