Strategy | Training | Video

The Cambridge Commonwealth, European & International Trust provides financial assistance to international students who qualify for degree courses at the University of Cambridge.

They fund places for around 500 students each year, working with high-profile education champions ranging from the former Archbishop of Canterbury to Stormzy, whose scholarships help more black students study at this world-class university.

At any one time, between 1,100 and 1,400 outstanding young people from up to 85 countries are enrolled on degree courses across the 31 Cambridge Colleges, thanks to schemes supported by the Trust and its partners over an illustrious 30-year history. It’s a history that has helped 19,000 students and counting.

The challenge

Despite doing such great work over such a lengthy period of time, the Trust lacked a central online hub to make the most of their extensive network of alumni. This was limiting potential awareness of the trust among fresh audiences.

It was also hard for existing students to keep track of all the Trust’s workings. Application deadlines, awards, and the latest day-to-day news were awkward to find online, if they could be found at all.

Overall, opportunities were being missed to engage past, present, and future alumni in the Trust’s work and spread the word about their mission to make Cambridge more accessible.

What we did

We produced an end-to-end social media strategy detailing how to build a community of the right followers and engage that community productively. From the audience’s needs and where to find them online to constructing a content mix for long-term engagement, we covered the lot.

This was coupled with hands-on training in web content and social media to ensure the Trust’s communicators were confident in putting it all into practice and measuring the results.

Not only that, we also oversaw the Trust’s entire Facebook advertising campaign, making sure the right content was being delivered to the right people as efficiently as possible.

We also filmed former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams introducing his new humanitarian scholarship, with the video being placed on the Cambridge Trust's website and boosted to an even wider audience through social media.

The outcome

Providing the winning combo of strategy, content and training gave Cambridge Trust the tools they needed to make a big impact.

Embracing digital has let the Trust amplify their work in other areas. Their audience on Facebook has grown by tens of thousands in a tiny space of time, and their reach is up by hundreds of thousands.

Meanwhile, traffic to their website has risen dramatically, so they can be confident that everyone involved is getting the information they need to seize every opportunity Cambridge sends their way.