ACE Recap!

Hello, friends! 

A few weeks ago, I posted about our Alumni Communication Extravaganza (ACE) that I was leading for our Region. We were going to be contacting alumni up to 10 times over 3 weeks, asking them to consider starting or increasing a recurring gift to their alma mater's chapter accounts. We'd procured a $20k matching grant, so every pledge would be matched for the first year. When I last posted about ACE, we had about a week left and had raised just over $10,000. Things were moving but they were moving a little slower than I would have liked. 

Our ACE Coach from InterVarsity National told us that things would look like a step up graph. We'd get a lot of pledges in the first few days, then things would go kind of slowly during the middle chunk before really ramping up the last week, particularly the last 24 hours. Our graph looked a little bit different, as we had a slow start but a consistent middle chunk. I was cautiously optimistic that we'd hit our $20k goal by the 23rd, but I was also preparing for us to fall a little short. 

Friends, God showed up in a big way! Just over the weekend before our Deadline week, we saw our pledges jump from $11k - over $16k. We started the 23rd (Deadline Day) with $18k matched and immediately saw 2 more gifts come in to bring us past the finish line. Praise, the LORD, we'd done it! (Well, God had done it and we got to benefit from that. =0).).

BUT, God wasn't done yet! We passed our $20k goal so early in the day that we were able to find another $5k match to still hopefully inspire alumni. Then we passed $25k and had another decision to make. We ultimately decided that we would just tell alumni that we would guarantee to match any pledges made by the end of the day and go find the money later. 

Praise the LORD, by the end of the day on Friday, we had raised OVER $30,000!!! It was so great to see how alumni were inspired to give and how many connections were made. Our staff team was encouraged and everyone was glad we gave it a shot. 

Saturday, I was in a bit of a stupor all day. I was physically tired from having to hold so much tension for the past 3 weeks. I've definitely been sleeping well since, so glad to see God come through and to see a major project come to fruition. 

Have an excellent day! 

~Adam