What are you for?
Yale’s drive to expand the potential of humanity.
Why give a damn about Yale?
Yale – ever heard of it? We thought you might have. It’s produced Nobel Laureates, presidents, actors, world-class economists, journalists, leading researchers and countless influential individuals to name. Teens on TV want to go there. Many institutions want to be them. You could argue that Yale is, perhaps, one of the OG influencers.
So why did an institution that is already steeped in the cultural zeitgeist need 160/90? Well, there’s a difference between being a household name and being part of a cultural conversation. And when Yale decided to embark on an $7 billion comprehensive campaign, they knew they needed to make a case. And that case was not to be found in the simple answer to the question “Why Yale?” but instead, answering a more pressing question: “Why Yale Right Now?”
And so began our journey to connect Yale to the cultural conversation of today—and to create work that we can all obsess over.
Finding Our Human Connection:
It won’t shock you to know that there are a lot of opinions about what Yale is and isn’t. Yale is arguably the best institution in the world when it comes to the humanities, making them a significant piece of their 300-year-old identity and a critical aspect of the role they play in the world.
But in order to remain relevant in the decades ahead meant that Yale had to broaden the scope of the story they told about themselves. They had to think beyond their impact on the humanities and, instead, own their influence on humanity. True, honest-to-goodness humanity: the messy, complex, beautiful, flawed, ever-changing truth that is the human experience.
Yale, at its core, has looked to ensure humanity not only continues but thrives through the work it does and the people it produces. And in a world where corporations are getting richer, our tech is becoming more about ushering in an AI future than bettering the IRL world, and our institutions seem to be becoming more rooted in self-interest than public good, the need for Yale to exist, grow and impact could never be greater.
What the world needs more than anything right now is to be more human.
And in this focus on humanity, we found our human connection:
Expand the potential of humanity.
Which inspired our strategy:
Making People Feel Something Real:
This, as you can imagine, was a pretty solid strategy to serve as the foundation for creative, especially when looking to raise the (already-high) profile and expand the reach of Yale through fundraising. It’s not very often that donors are able to say they’ve made a direct impact on humanity at-large through their singular giving efforts. But with this campaign, they would, because Yale holds that much influence over the future of the world.
It soon would turn out that this was more important than ever, as humanity would be sent into a tailspin in a matter of days. That’s right, presenting this strategy was our last in-person meeting before COVID-19 hit and humanity was, quite suddenly, the very thing on the line for billions of people across the globe.
Many institutions might have changed course at this point. But, come on, this is Yale we’re talking about – which meant it was time to roll up our sleeves, dig in and double down. It was now time for us to ask the question, “What do you stand for?” and then tell that story in a way that could only be told by this iconic brand.
Starting with the development of their comprehensive campaign, For Humanity, we explored all the ways in which Yale moved the world forward. Across the sciences, arts, humanities, tech, politics, built environment and even forests, Yale has consistently produced the people who go on to make the world brighter, bolder and more vibrant. This campaign’s job was to not just celebrate those accomplishments in equal measure, but to also communicate their profound impact and necessity.
Arts & Humanities for Insight
Science for Breakthroughs
Collaborating for Impact
Leaders for a Better World
But Yale didn’t want to stop there – and neither did we.
So we looked ahead to what was in the works at Yale and how they could be a continuation of the For Humanity story. What we found added more dimensions to Yale’s story of human impact than we had even considered possible:
From solving the greatest threat to humanity
To creating leaders of consequence
From ensuring a sense of belonging
To taking care of our fellow human
And slowly but surely, we found that every new development at Yale was rooted in the human experience and developed with the care that can only be felt by those who feel a deep responsibility to bettering it, furthering it, and ensuring it.
The Cultural Payoff:
Connecting an old world institution to the new world
Choosing Courage over Comfort in a volatile time
Articulating your institutional purpose to better connect and align your community
Results and Specific Progress:
For Humanity advancement campaign
Total giving to For Humanity campaign: $5B (as of October 2023)
Total # of donors: 37,305 and counting
Avg. gift size increase (as percentage)? Or other metrics along those lines
Major initiatives funded – that we had a direct hand in
Planetary Solutions Project
A Campus-Wide Initiative, the first of its kind at Yale
Interviews with 100+ leadership, faculty, staff, students, alumni and donors
A peer and non-profit landscape analysis
Analysis of secondary research of printed publications, industry research and scientific research
Built a communications plan and website to introduce the initiative to the world
Belonging at Yale campus community research
More than two years of research and steering committee participation to help inform strategic communications and engagement for Belonging at Yale, which began amid the pandemic in 2020.
Focus groups with dozens of alumni, faculty, staff, and student participants to equip administration to make more-informed decisions around communicating diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging efforts.
