Brooklyn, NY -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/05/2018 --St. Andrew's Cathedral School (SACS) in Sydney has been honored with the 2018 "Educate Plus Advancement Award for the Best Fundraising Campaign – Annual Giving" for their June, 2018, Charidy capital campaign. The campaign aimed to raise $120,000 AUS. The school hit this target in just over the first hour of the campaign. In total, the school's 24-hour campaign brought in over $500,000.

"This campaign was a brave new step to embrace change, incite participation and create urgency to give," said an Educate Plus spokesperson of the effort. "Thoroughly and thoughtfully planned and researched, this campaign engaged the community well beyond previous levels with its innovative and well-conceived approach... This campaign produced a remarkable outcome of half a million dollars and a school community left buzzing with excitement. A great payoff for a hard working, clear thinking, innovative team."

Educate Plus is the professional organization for Advancement professionals from independent schools and universities in Australia and New Zealand. Every other year Educate Plus holds an international conference and distributes awards across a variety of themes. Over 80 schools were nominated for the awards.

"We're so honored," says Lyn Jarvis, Director of Community Engagement at SACS. "The whole process was very positive and we are so excited that the funds we raised through this campaign will all be able to go towards creating some amazing performing arts opportunities. We are looking forward to honoring our donors."

SACS was founded in 1885 to educate choristers, and is known today for the high quality of its performing arts programming. The school turned to Charidy to raise funds to equip an outdated building, Chapter House, with light and sound suitable for the school's signature musical performances. "Being a city school, space is a premium, and this would provide so many opportunities for the school including using it for events, meetings, information nights and of course performances," Jarvis recounts.

While the school had introduced traditional annual giving four years ago, it had no history of large fundraising or capital campaigns. As such, school leadership was challenged to find a way to interest their community and engage them with a fresh, meaningful campaign. They sought a solution that would be fun, easy for donors, and create a sense of urgency.

"Charidy met those needs," explains Jarvis. "The 24-hour campaign gave everyone a focus, the all-or-nothing format created urgency, the matching donors provided incentive, and the online donation page was easy to use. The Charidy process allowed us to individualize and build our campaign in a way that our community could make it their own and be really involved."

The school made the campaign extra special by tapping into some friendly inter-house rivalry: the house that donated the most money earned the right to name a gargoyle that adorns Chapter House. "St Paul's house won and the gargoyle was dubbed Salty Griffin. Salty is in honour of our long-serving Head of House, Michael Sahlstrom," Jarvis said.

Charidy, founded in 2013, is a fundraising and crowdfunding solution that has worked with thousands of nonprofits to craft and execute high-impact, high-urgency campaigns.

Caelan MacBeth, the Charidy campaign manager assigned to SACS recalled the root of their tremendous success: "SACS had multiple advantages going into this campaign that culminated in their award-winning The Next Chapter campaign - a passionate and engaged community, a cause that resonated with alumni, current families, former parents and staff alike, and, above all, a development team that gave their all to build a killer campaign. This, combined with a powerful Charidy model which has proven so effective with schools, resulted in an extremely exciting, if a little dumbfounding 24-hour campaign!"

"We were overwhelmed by the generosity of our parents and alumni and students and staff," reflects Jarvis. "We saw their kindness and their selflessness, and their joyous love of the school in the donations that they gave. The community received a lot of validation of who they truly are through this campaign."