Case Study: Camp Kesem achieves $1.4M Giving Tuesday success and scales chapter fundraising with Classy

$1.4 Million in 24 hours, Kesem’s Path to Giving Tuesday Success

Camp Kesem is a national nonprofit that supports children through and beyond their parent’s cancer, powered by more than 5,000 volunteer college student leaders across 100+ chapters. In 2014 the organization debated whether Giving Tuesday would be worth the investment or simply compete with year-end appeals, but a small experiment—an email and program video—brought in nearly $34,000 and showed the potential for a larger campaign.

Kesem scaled by equipping chapters with a turnkey Giving Tuesday toolkit and moving to Classy’s peer-to-peer platform so student fundraisers could launch branded pages easily while the national team kept oversight. By encouraging simple, chapter-led campaigns, iterating each year, and adding corporate matches and workplace activations, Kesem drove rapid, sustained growth: year-over-year increases of roughly 100%, and in 2017, 105 chapters raised over $1.4 million on Giving Tuesday (about 29,946 gifts), making them one of Classy’s top fundraisers.

Camp Kesem

Cristin O’leary Jones

Development Director