Aluminati

The SSE Riga Alumni Association came back for a second scholarship campaign, and this one is a heist. A secret society called the Aluminati has taken a professor hostage and demands a 200,000 € ransom, payable only in donations. Custom WordPress theme, WooCommerce checkout, and a campaign that runs itself once it is live.

Milestones that unlock themselves

The ransom ladder is the spine of the campaign: eight thresholds from 25,000 € to the full 200,000 €, each one hiding a piece of the story. Cross a threshold and that milestone opens on its own - the video, the message, the next taunt from the Aluminati. Nobody publishes anything by hand and nobody watches a total to flip a switch. The site reads what has actually been donated and reveals exactly as much as the money has paid for.

That is the whole mechanic: the more you donate, the more information we reveal. It gives donors a reason to come back and check, and it gives the association a campaign that keeps producing content without anyone touching the CMS.

Three leaderboards, all live

Donations are ranked three ways at once - individuals, companies, and graduation years - so a personal gift competes with personal gifts and a corporate sponsor competes with corporate sponsors. Graduation year turns the alumni body into teams, which is where the competition gets genuinely loud. Every board is built from completed orders, so it reorders itself as the money arrives.

Built to run unattended

Checkout is WooCommerce with preset donation amounts for individuals and corporations, and everything downstream - the progress bar, the countdown, the milestone reveals, all three leaderboards - reads from the same donation data. Once the campaign was live, it ran on its own.

Stack: WordPress on Bedrock, custom theme, Advanced Custom Fields, WooCommerce.