The annual BHSU Giving Day event came to an official conclusion on Feb. 28. After twenty-four hours of social media campaigning and fundraising, the event has raised more money than ever before.

Held on BHSU Founders’ Day, which celebrates the establishment of the school in 1883, the Giving Day event stands as one of the larger social media fundraising campaigns – complete with game-like awards and giveaways to incentivise members of the BHSU community to give back to the school and its students.

“In my opinion, [Giving Day] is mostly important for our students,” Meeker said. “The support the alumni give is really being directed toward the students.”

Although some funds that are raised during the annual BHSU Giving Day event are allocated for operational purposes such as equipment for the various colleges and athletic teams, the main focus is to bring in money for scholarships that can be awarded to students.

“Only one in five students at Black Hills State get a scholarship,” Meeker said. “We’re trying to do everything we can to change that so more can receive financial help.”

Since the official establishment of the BHSU Giving Day as a social media event in 2020, the total amount of funds raised has been on a steady increase from year to year. Between 2024 and 2025 alone the event has raised over $30,000 more with a current total of nearly $174,500 – a new financial record for the event.

However, the Giving Day event stretches back further than the last five years. Prior to 2020, Giving Day was a phone-a-thon event where members of the Department of University Advancement worked their way through contact sheets and phone books, calling every BHSU alumni they could to ask for donations.

“The phone-a-thon used to raise around 50,000 dollars,” Meeker said. “And the social media event raised 174,000 dollars, so it was a good move for us. It almost tripled what we were doing on the phone.”

With the age of phone-a-thons coming to an end, the BHSU Department of University Advancement felt that diving into the social media world would be a much more effective method of spreading awareness about the fund raiser.

“For the most part, we use Instagram to try to reach the younger crowd, and Facebook for people my age,” Meeker said. “But the demographic is constantly changing, so I hired a guy named Rylan Bruns because he represents the younger alumni. I need guys like him to help us be able to reach those younger people.”

Bruns, a recent BHSU graduate, was hired on as the Director of Digital Development and Revenue Generation and is responsible for creating and executing ideas to better promote and spread awareness for each of the BHSU fundraising events throughout the year, which has been somewhat of a weak point in the past.

“I didn’t even know there was a Giving Day through the four years I was a student here,” Bruns said. “That’s the thing I really want to accomplish is to make everybody aware of it which is tricky, but I think having a social media presence definitely helps spread the word a lot more.”

Aside from raising awareness of the fundraising event among the students, the social media campaign is also designed to improve the connection with older alumni who have been out of school for some time, but are still online.

“When people think about donors, they don’t typically think about alumni in the twenty-five to thirty year-old age range,” Bruns said. “But that’s actually a larger part of our following online, especially on FaceBook.”

With the amount of effort the Department of University Advancement puts into setting up and executing each fund raising event, the employees feel it’s important for students who receive scholarships from the school or donors to fully understand the meaning behind the money.

“Donors send in money because Black Hills State means a lot to them and they want to help students,” Meeker said. “Students need to understand that these people are donating their hard-earned money just because they want to help.”

BHSU hosts a number of events to provide students the opportunity to meet the people who’ve donated funds towards the scholarships they earn.

“Donors love to see who their money is going to, and they absolutely love to meet those students face to face,” Bruns said. “That’s why we always host the Scholarship Luncheon during swarm week.”

The Department of University Advancement plans to continue to brain-storm new ideas to improve its fundraising events coming later this semester and in the future. To learn more about upcoming events, visit the events page on the BHSU website (www.bhsu.edu).