CAMPAIGN NAME

The SSE500

CATEGORY

Best of Europe: Marketing Innovation Solutions

CLIENT

SSE Riga Alumni Association

LEAD AGENCIES

White Label, McCANN Riga

CAMPAIGN DESCRIPTION

In Latvia, alumni giving is not a cultural norm, yet for SSE Riga, alumni donations are essential to keeping scholarships available to students who need them. With a small, international alumni community, limited disposable income and no media budget, the school needed to find a new way to inspire alumni to give back. The campaign turned SSE Riga’s unique alumni network and its connection to Latvia’s business community into a powerful engine for philanthropy.

THE CHALLENGE

SSE Riga had a powerful alumni network, but it was not translating into philanthropic support. In 2023, alumni donations totalled just €9,500, with an average donation of €17 and only 1% of alumni participating. Previous attempts using emails, events and class appeals had failed to meaningfully increase engagement.

The stakes were high: alumni donations funded 10 scholarships for underserved students, while SSE Riga had no paid media budget and an outdated alumni database, making traditional email-led fundraising increasingly ineffective.

The challenge was to motivate practically minded alumni, who saw giving as inefficient charity, to participate - without paid media or reliable access to the alumni community.

STRATEGIC APPROACH AND EXECUTION

For more than a decade, SSE Riga had relied on obligation, emotion and loyalty to encourage alumni giving with little impact. The breakthrough was to recognise that leaders were more likely to give when their contribution was visible to other leaders.

The solution was SSE 500, a prestige-powered platform that turned donations into a public investment system. Every donation was framed as a stock purchase, donors received a rank, and class cohorts rose and fell on a live leaderboard.

The platform was brought to life as a performance system rather than a traditional campaign. Its interface drew on familiar investment tools such as Bloomberg terminals, crypto dashboards and trading apps, using real-time movement, market caps, rankings and stock prices to make every donation visible.

Every donation triggered an immediate change. Leaderboards shuffled, stock prices moved and donors could see their name and class rise in real time. A planned Wall of Top Investors would bring this recognition into the physical school, while the final leaderboard was shared across alumni social channels.

The launch was introduced by one of SSE Riga’s most respected lecturers through a social media video, establishing credibility from the start.

The campaign culminated in a live event where alumni could donate on the spot and the final leaderboard was revealed. By combining real-time visibility, competition and recognition across the platform, social media and live event, SSE 500 created a self-sustaining system designed to spread without media spend.