CHALLENGE

The school's 65th anniversary was set to be celebrated during the 2020-2021 School Year. Staffing changes in the Development office that affected the overall progress of the 65th Anniversary planning, the Advancement team sought to refocus the goal from a fiscal one to an engagement goal with alumni.

Sacred Encounters was primarily used as an internal language for faculty and staff to speak to the individual and personalized experience that students, families, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends encounter on our campus. Each interaction has a lasting impact on a person's experience while at the school. Sacred Encounters reflects the importance of meaningful connection in the small, unique, and powerful school that is Providence. With guidance from administration and approval from the Advancement team, Sacred Encounters was selected for the 65th-anniversary theme:

Sacred encounters are not merely ordinary moments — but extraordinary moments that are elevated and deepened by experiences of compassion, dignity, justice, excellence, and/or integrity. As we enter this school year, we celebrate 65 years of sacred encounters as a community. Students, parents, guardians, alumni, and friends of Providence, share your sacred encounters with us.

With the theme, Sacred Encounters, a design was created to reflect on our past and look towards the future. In the background, a drawing of the school's first building on campus is used. This drawing was created and used in the school's first yearbook. In the foreground, the numbers 65 are sleek and modern in style and are used to cut out the background. Floating just outside the circle are the words "Years of Providence" to establish branding and purpose of the logo.

The 65 Years of Providence webpage focused on our first Sacred Encounter in 1955 when PHS opened and welcomed 81 young women to a campus still under construction and where classes were temporarily held in circus tents donated by the next-door neighbor, Walt Disney. This story is fundamentally Providence and a truly sacred encounter. With the use of this story on the webpage, coupled with a letter from the Head of School, links to make a gift, visit the alumni page, read our history, and read our bi-annual publications, the main call to action on the page is a submission form to submit your own Sacred Encounter. The end of the page featured an aggregated feed of the most recent Sacred Encounters post on social media.

During the first week of the page's launch geared towards alumni, Google Analytics reported that 65 Years of Providence page received total 180 views, 163 unique views, and an average time spent of 2 minutes and 7 seconds, a 41.20% increase from our website in total.

The school launched the 65 Years of Providence campaign on September 19, the day that the school opened. An email was sent with an opening letter from the Head of School accompanied by the call to action to participate and submit their own sacred encounter. This email was sent to all faculty/staff, current students, current parents/guardians, alumni, and community partners.

The anniversary launch email saw 44% average open rate, or 1558 opens of the 3636 emails sent with a 6.3% click rate.

I created a teaser video using assets created in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop and animated in Adobe After Effects. The video features our alma mater sang by students from 1965 and a progression from black and white photos from 1955 moving through photos of our students and campus throughout the years to the 2010s.

With engagement from our alumni, faculty/staff, parents, students, and community partners, their submissions and photos were shared on social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for our communities to engage with online. To sustain this campaign for the entire academic year, submissions were shared two to three times using the #PHS65Years. The number of Sacred Encounter posts depended on the flow of submissions at the current time. Additional calls to action have been placed at the end of each post, in the social caption, as well as additional placements on the website and email communications.

Over a six-month period, we received over 30 submissions from 25 individuals. Many submissions came from alumni ranging from the 1960s to the late 2010s.