DePaul University
Mission: Forward — The Campaign for DePaul University
The Challenge
Through its $650 million campaign, DePaul aspired to lead the way in restoring higher education’s impact as a catalyst for societal good. With brand work in progress and a looming launch deadline, DePaul needed integrated counsel to build unified messaging and organizational fluency—fast.
What we faced:
- Brand evolution ready for campaign anchor
- Launch timeline driving organizational focus
- Eleven units requiring unified yet distinctive voice
- Stakeholder readiness primed for fluency transformation
$650M
Campaign Goal
5
Mission Pillars Institutionalized
11
unit cases developed
5
fluency training sessions
200+
fluency training participants
Setting the Stage
The Starting Point
As one of the nation’s largest Catholic universities, DePaul had the scope—21,000 students, 219,000 Chicago-area alumni, and a 125-year Vincentian mission calling for service to urgent human needs—to achieve its ambition. But translating that institutional complexity into campaign rationale that every stakeholder—from the president to individual gift officers—could articulate with confidence required more than brochures. It required strategic discipline, message integration with existing brand architecture, and a methodology for building permanent organizational capacity.
The Strategic Work
Strategic Discoveries
Higher Education Must Pivot from Individual Benefit to Societal Good
Universities have been critiqued as vehicles for personal career advancement—a framing at odds with DePaul’s Vincentian mission. The campaign leaned into DePaul’s true cause: to reassert higher education as a lever for collective transformation, reclaiming its heritage as a public good that solves urgent challenges.
The Rising Generation Craves Purpose, Not Just Credentials
Seventy percent of college students are motivated by social justice; 73% say meaningful impact will be crucial to their happiness. DePaul had committed to five mission pillars addressing societal challenges, and Foster Avenue wove that commitment into a campaign rationale that lifted donors’ sights.
Organizational Fluency Would Determine Campaign Success
With 11 colleges and units and a complex philosophical positioning, DePaul’s ambassadors were challenged to internalize and articulate the campaign rationale for many audiences—making capacity-building as critical as creative deliverables.
Our Framework Applied
The Heart of DePaul's Campaign
Foster Avenue’s “Why Now? Why Here? Why This?” framework became the architectural foundation for the Mission: Forward campaign, providing DePaul with a systematic methodology to connect external urgency, institutional credibility, and philanthropic opportunity into one coherent argument.
Why Now?
Our society’s need for able, accountable leaders has become profoundly urgent.
Tackling complex challenges like poverty, sustainability, ethical AI, and health disparities requires leaders who blend technical skill with principled humanity. More than ever, our society needs career-builders who are also community-builders—graduates equipped with interdisciplinary problem-solving abilities and driven by commitment to collective welfare, not individual gain alone.
Why Here?
DePaul is harnessing humanity and intellect to address society’s greatest needs.
Anchored by Vincentian values that call the community to act in the best interest of others, DePaul is organizing itself as an incubator for solutions. Deeply integrated into Chicago—with alumni constituting a major portion of the region’s professional workforce—the University is a uniquely powerful lever of change for communities that need transformative leadership most.
Why This?
DePaul will lead in restoring higher education’s impact as a catalyst for societal good.
Through Mission: Forward, the University will ensure its ability to equip graduates with both how and why—so they can solve society’s toughest challenges as servant leaders. Campaign resources will help prepare ethical, engaged citizens who understand what it means to look beyond themselves and create a multiplier effect for Chicago and the world.
Strategic Foundation
How Strategy Became Story
Foster Avenue navigated a sophisticated creative ecosystem where institutional brand architecture had been established by another agency partner. Strategy-level discovery interviews not only identified core tensions but helped institutional leaders clarify their own thinking about the campaign’s true purpose. The original scope expanded organically to include additional training sessions, Ovrture integration, and comprehensive proposal templates as strategic value became clear.
Engagement Highlights
5
Strategic Discovery Interviews
President, advancement leadership, cabinet, and board volunteers
5
Fluency Training Sessions
Four virtual, one in-person; 20–75+ participants per session
11
Unit Cases Developed
College and unit priority-specific cases extending institutional vision
3
Proposal Suite Formats
Template system enabling independent, on-brand proposal creation
The Work
Strategy Made Visible
Leadership Case for Support
A high-gloss campaign wrapper designed for principal gift conversations, providing an elegant overview of the Mission: Forward rationale while functioning as a modular system. The piece delivered sophisticated visual impact that communicated campaign magnitude while serving as a “shell” for unit-specific content, enabling gift officers to customize presentations for individual donor interests without fragmenting the core message.
Unit Case Portfolio
Eleven unit priority-specific cases translating DePaul’s institutional vision into focused philanthropic opportunities. Each collateral piece explicitly connected unit-level priorities to the overarching campaign rationale, demonstrating how investments in computing, business, law, and other colleges directly advance DePaul’s mission to restore higher education as a societal catalyst. Content was simultaneously adapted for DePaul’s Ovrture platform, enabling digital-first sharing.
Major Donor Proposal Template Suite
A three-format proposal system with comprehensive usage guide, enabling DePaul’s gift officers to independently create on-brand, strategically sound proposals. The templates ensured message consistency across hundreds of personalized donor communications while eliminating dependency on external partners for customization. The accompanying guide trained staff on best practices for connecting campaign rationale to individual donor motivations.
Ovrture Platform Integration
Digital content modules adapting campaign messaging for DePaul’s donor engagement platform, enabling 1:1 personalized communications at scale. The integration allowed advancement staff to share unit cases, create custom proposals, and deliver tailored content to individual prospects while maintaining the campaign’s strategic coherence and message discipline—proving that technology amplifies human connection rather than replacing it.
Additional Deliverables
Campaign Message Platform
The internal presentation establishing DePaul’s campaign rationale through Foster Avenue’s “Why Now? Why Here? Why This?” framework. This multi-layer document answered the essential questions driving philanthropic engagement, positioning the campaign as a response to society’s urgent need for accountable leaders rather than DePaul’s institutional timeline. It served as the single source of truth for all subsequent communications and the foundation for organizational fluency training.
Campaign Fluency Training
A multi-session program delivered to 200+ advancement staff, faculty, and leadership across five engagements. The training equipped every campaign ambassador to articulate the campaign’s rationale independently, bridge institutional vision to individual donor motivations, and adapt messaging fluidly without relying on scripted materials. Sessions included interactive coaching, real-world donor scenario practice, and ongoing support to ensure lasting confidence and message discipline.
Campaign Fluency Pocket Guide
A condensed reference document encapsulating campaign key messages for every stakeholder—board members, faculty, volunteers, and staff. The guide provided at-a-glance answers to “Why Now? Why Here? Why This?” alongside frameworks for connecting specific funding priorities to donor motivations, ensuring consistent messaging across all touchpoints while empowering spontaneous, confident articulation.
Public Launch Speaker Script
Message-driven keynote content for DePaul’s October 2025 public launch, ensuring that leadership could articulate the campaign’s rationale with precision and passion. The script demonstrated how Foster Avenue’s strategic framework translates from internal planning documents to high-stakes public moments, providing President Manuel and other speakers with language that connected DePaul’s Vincentian heritage to urgent contemporary challenges.
The Results
Lasting Impact
Mission: Forward transformed how DePaul articulates institutional purpose—building permanent capacity to connect Vincentian values to contemporary urgency in every donor conversation, every faculty collaboration, every board presentation.
Message-Driven Culture
DePaul now leads every funding conversation with strategic rationale—“why now, why here, why this”—rather than institutional needs, fundamentally shifting the advancement team’s approach from transactional asks to partnership invitations grounded in societal urgency.
Curriculum-Level Integration
DePaul’s existing five mission pillars—already institutionalized across all academic departments—gained philanthropic clarity through Foster Avenue’s campaign rationale, giving every dean and faculty member language to connect their discipline to urgent global challenges like economic mobility, ethical technology, and health equity in donor conversations.
Independent Proposal Development
Gift officers can now create strategically sound, on-brand proposals without external support, using template systems and fluency training that eliminated dependency on consultants for customization—a permanent efficiency gain that will serve DePaul long after the campaign concludes.
Scalable Digital Personalization
Ovrture platform integration enables 1:1 donor communications at institutional scale while maintaining message discipline, proving that DePaul can delight individual prospects with personalized content without fragmenting the campaign’s philosophical coherence.
Validation & Credibility
What They Said
“Foster Avenue strengthened our work and benefited our entire team through their deep nonprofit experience and understanding of DePaul’s institutional goals—transforming how we articulate our purpose through Mission: Forward.”
Sarah Wagoner
Associate Vice President, Development & Campaign Operations
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