Appropriate use of personal information has never been under more scrutiny than it has been in recent times. While communicating with alumni and donors is critical for engagement and relationship management, these communications must be respectful of individual's communication preferences and compliant with information privacy legislation. This can be challenging when managing large volumes of data with limited resources, however it is critical to the success of advancement programs. Join this session to understand more about the principles of Australian information privacy legislation and your obligations as a fundraising organisation, and to explore how you find the right balance in your institution.

Experience Level: Level 1 – Early Career, Level 2 – Emerging Early Career, Level 3 – Practicing/maturing Mid-Career

Topics: Advancement Services

The gift is in – great! – but what comes next? Or rather, what should have come before? This session will outline the fundamentals of a gift lifecycle framework that ensures gifts are implemented and continue to be used in accordance with donor intent. Having a solid framework in place is foundational to the success of stewardship, in particular transparent donor reporting. But, it’s not always easy for advancement to shift institutional-wide practices and implement a donor-centric framework of this nature. How do you onboard institutional partners to support best-practice stewardship?                                      

Join this session to explore how The University of Queensland tackled this shift and the impact it has had – both internally and for their donors.

Experience Level: Level 1 – Early Career, Level 2 – Emerging Early Career, Level 3 – Practicing/maturing Mid-Career

Topics: Advancement Services

It seems that a week does not go by without us hearing of another security or data breach. With most of our alumni and donor data now stored in the cloud, often in an ecosystem of Advancement technology, do we understand our responsibilities and are we doing enough to safeguard our systems and our data? Join this session to understand the world of cyber security and how it pertains to the world of Advancement - more info to come!

It seems that a week does not go by without us hearing of another security or data breach. With most of our alumni and donor data now stored in the cloud, often in an ecosystem of Advancement technology, do we understand our responsibilities and are we doing enough to safeguard our systems and our data? Join this session to understand the world of cyber security and how it pertains to the world of Advancement - more info to come!

Experience Level: Level 2 – Emerging Early Career, Level 3 – Practicing/maturing Mid-Career, Level 4 - Senior/Experienced Mid-Career

Topics: Advancement Services

Whether you have a Prospect Development team or just a single researcher, this session will cover how to build a robust major gift prospect pipeline and set your fundraisers up for success. We will talk about effective research techniques, strategic portfolio management, partnering with fundraisers and key issues in prospect development to allow you to maximise the use of data to inform and drive your major gift program.

Experience Level:  Level 2 – Emerging Early Career, Level 3 – Practicing/maturing Mid-Career, Level 4 - Senior/Experienced Mid-Career

Topics: Advancement Services

The world of advancement is increasingly complex, with a wide range of stakeholders to engage, fundraising goals to meet, and alumni relationships to manage.  Advancement Services plays a critical role in supporting these efforts by providing the systems management, data management, prospect research, gift administration, and reporting and data analytics necessary to run successful fundraising and engagement campaigns.  This panel discussion will explore the importance of Advancement Services in the world of educational advancement.  Our panel of chief advancement officers, all experienced leaders in the field, will discuss the skills and expertise required to succeed in Advancement Services, the challenges facing this function today, and the strategies they use to measure and improve its effectiveness.  Through their insights and experiences, we hope to provide attendees with a deeper understanding of the critical role that Advancement Services plays in the success of their institutions.

Experience Level: Level 5- Expert Seasoned Professional, Level 6 - Leadership/Transforming Seasoned Professional

Topics: Advancement Services

Nanyang Technological University has over 260,000 alumni. In previous years, the university has consistently reached out to their alumni and students to raise awareness and cultivate philanthropic support. However, the team experienced an uphill battle in expanding the alumni donors pool, retaining existing alumni donors, and increasing ROI of emails. Direct mails and Phonathon resources were stretched to the maximum with diminishing margin of returns.

Instead of the previous "spray and pray" approach, the newly formed Data Analytics team partnered with data scientists from Dell Technologies adopted various data-driven strategies by leveraging ML technology to support the annual giving fundraising process, from data collection and classification, model training and testing, AB testing and implementation. Within one year, the Alumni Giving team cut down 40% of outreach to the alumni (with significant reduction in email bombings), while the team achieved a more than 70% improvement in response to the appeals. The alumni annual participation rate increased 28% in the year.

The successful experience has proven that using ML model to improve fundraising ROI is not something unreachable for most of the fundraising organisations, as long as the fundraising organisation sets the expectation, plans for long term development and plans the future steps carefully, and involves the right experts in different stages of the transformation process.

Experience Level: Level 4 - Senior/Experienced Mid-Career

Topics: Advancement Services                               

We’ve all seen a great visualisation that brings your data to life.  Go beyond the pretty pictures with Kerryn and Stef as they share their observations of the power and possibilities of data visualisation.  Drawing on their experience across both fundraising and alumni engagement they’ll share case studies demonstrating how data visualisation is utilised at Monash University to support day to day decision making and is transforming behaviours across the organisation.

Learning outcomes include the importance of identifying primary and secondary objectives, how to use data visualisation to improve data hygiene and data literacy, and understanding and managing both intentional and unexpected outcomes of distributed data visualisation. 

Experience Level: Level 3 - Practicing/Maturing Mid-Career, Level 4 - Senior/Experienced Mid-Career, Level 5 - Expert Seasoned Professional, Level 6 - Leadership/Transforming Seasoned Professional

Topics: Leadership

Implementing a new Advancement CRM is a project that many institutions embark upon at some point, and often more than once. Regardless of the size of your institution, the maturity of your fundraising program or the main driver for a project of this type, it is a significant undertaking and there can be many hiccups along the way. That said, doing your research, understanding what you’re embarking upon and why, making sure you are appropriately resourced and having a plan are all likely to play a significant role in the success of your CRM implementation. Join this moderated panel discussion to learn from the experiences of three institutions who have recently implemented a new Advancement CRM.

Experience Level: Level 2 – Emerging Early Career, Level 3 – Practicing/maturing Mid-Career, Level 4 - Senior/Experienced Mid-Career

Topics: Advancement Services