If you are new to community colleges and/or educational advancement, where do you start? It all begins with solid planning. This pre-conference, designed specifically for people with fewer than three years of community college advancement experience, will give you a solid foundation to help ensure both your success and that of your college. You will learn how to develop an annual plan, key elements of stewardship, and – most importantly – how to build and nurture relationships internally and externally. You’ll leave with practical examples, thoughtful questions to consider, and insights from three experienced advancement professionals. Plus, you’ll be connected with a new group of professional colleagues who will be friends and fans for the rest of your career. 

Frustrated by a lack of clarity about the role of the board in relation to your college’s and your foundation’s mission? Tired of the 80/20 rule describing your board? Ever wonder, "Do we have the right board to achieve our audacious goals?" or “How can our board be more engaged in our annual fundraising or capital campaign?” Come explore how you can define the relationship with and the responsibilities of your board and increase board engagement at all levels. Led by the Dutchess Community College Foundation and Community College of Aurora Foundation, participants will dig into topics like Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs), board commitments, board on-boarding, strategic planning, board engagement and self-assessment, and easy-to-use hands-on activities to expand your board’s fundraising capacity. NOTICE: this is not a passive session! Come ready to reflect, reimagine, plan next steps, and unleash the potential of your board. HIGHLY ENCOURAGED to bring at least one board member with you.

From the One Big, Beautiful, Bill to Executive Orders to funding freezes, the Trump Administration and Congress have taken a flurry of actions with significant implications for community colleges. The conference will open with a conversation on the latest legislative and regulatory developments affecting community colleges, what is on the horizon, and how colleges and their advancement teams can support the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and CASE’s advocacy work.

Have you ever wondered how you can deepen relationships with donors while raising more money for student scholarships? Do you want to better engage your board and donors in more meaningful connections with the scholars they support? The Community College of Aurora Foundation will unpack its multi-faceted approach to leveraging Student-Donor relationships to strengthen Donor Stewardship and Engagement. No matter your role - advancement, scholarships, alumni, or communications - you will walk out of this session with new insights and ideas for creating stronger connections among students, donors, and alumni, and for leveraging these connections to increase donor and student participation in fundraising. Come ready to engage in a thought-provoking conversation about the strategy, events, systems, tools, and stewardship activities that can increase scholarship dollars for students and meaningful connections for donors.

In this focused discussion, participants will learn best practices for engaging your President/Chancellor in fundraising and donor engagement. Hear from two seasoned professionals about ways they’ve successfully worked to ensure the president/chancellor are set up for success in donor relations, even when the leader of the institution has little or no background in fundraising. Then join with your colleagues to share stories – good and bad – and come away with practical ideas and activities you can implement immediately!

In 2023, the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) received a transformative $5 million gift from the Bally’s Corporation—the largest private donation in the college’s history and one of the largest philanthropic gifts to a community college in the nation. This unprecedented investment has propelled workforce development initiatives focused on equity, economic mobility, and industry alignment. In this session, hear how CCRI built the case for support, fostered a bold corporate partnership, and structured the gift to generate long-term, mission-aligned impact. Presenters will share strategies for aligning workforce innovation with philanthropic goals, leveraging institutional storytelling, and securing major gifts in a community college context.

Whether you're building your first corporate partnership or looking to scale existing relationships, this session will offer replicable insights into how philanthropy can catalyze transformational change especially for underrepresented and underserved learners.

You can have the perfect campaign plan, compelling case statement, and slick donor materials, but without a supportive campus culture, fundraising efforts will stall. This session explores how internal culture, from cabinet-level leadership to frontline faculty and staff shapes your advancement outcomes. Learn how to assess your institution’s current culture around philanthropy, identify cultural roadblocks, and implement strategies that foster shared ownership of fundraising success. We'll dive into real-world examples from a community college campaign that forced a shift in mindset and, as a result, increased engagement, pride, and giving.

How do you take a board that is narrowly focused on fiduciary oversight, trespassing on staff responsibilities, or skittish about fundraising and engage them in growing major-gifts in support of your college? This session will provide an overview of some of the governance practices and tools that can raise the bar for board philanthropic leadership. We will discuss: -Establishing and elevating standards for board engagement; -Creating a culture of shared leadership in which foundation board members challenge themselves; -Leveraging the power of individual and collective board self-assessment; -Developing individual engagement and board succession plans. Throughout we will share examples, insights, and outcomes from two foundations that have built and empowered boards widely recognized for the excellence of their governance and their success in growing philanthropy.

Learn how a small- to mid-sized community college transformed their inefficient internal foundation grant process from a slogging misuse of board meeting time into a model strategic fundraising and external grant idea pipeline, allowing the board to focus on its primary role of fundraising. The session will focus on how our team got campus buy-in, revamped the foundation board, developed processes and procedures, communicated the plan campus-wide, and piloted the process over two academic years.