Connecting with others is foundational across all advancement disciplines. These connections form powerful networks that enable us to learn from one another, leverage our work together and advance education to transform lives and society. In this plenary session, CASE President and CEO Sue Cunningham will engage in a conversation with a panel of District I and II leaders who occupy different advancement roles. Hear their key learnings, advice, and approaches to ensuring meaningful connections.

From regional clubs to facebook and linkedin groups, alumni communities have evolved at a blistering pace. In this session, we'll discuss the future of online community building including a summary of the past decade, what needs to be left in the past, what to invest in and what your technology should/should not have if you're looking for high participation and deep engagement.

This session will focus on results from the recent Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey. We will also get a high-level view of the survey and how it relates to the Global Reporting Standards. The Alumni Engagement Metrics (AEM) survey, now in its fourth year, will also be covered.

Hear how Advancement officers at two of Canada's largest universities--the University of Toronto and York University—worked to propose and launch strategic, concrete, sustainable actions to create a better sense of belonging and agency more reflective of diverse, pluralistic communities. From fostering psychological safety and creating brave spaces to thinking through committee structures and policies, Annette Paul (formerly of the University of Toronto) and Cynthia Foo (York University) share their stories about chairing their University’s first ever Division of Advancement’s EDI committees. Bring your questions, comments and experiences in this highly interactive, thought-provoking session.

Don't fear the reaper! While some planned gifts require complex legal and financial planning, the vast majority come as bequests (gifts made in wills or trusts) or by naming the organization as the beneficiary of a retirement plan, life insurance, or other account. Aging Baby Boomers, the Great Wealth Transfer, a global pandemic, and volatile stock markets combine to make now the best time to market these types of planned gifts. This session will address recent trends, offer insight on how to identify your best prospects, and equip you with easy steps you can take to attract more legacy gifts.

Those of us who work in communications often focus on our creative selves; we are storytellers, designers, writers, and editors. And while we may have compelling, beautiful and important stories to tell, if those stories do not resonate with our audiences or help us achieve our institutional goals, then they are ultimately not successful. During this interactive session, Allyson Irish will draw on her years of experience to discuss why data is important, how it can be used strategically, and–importantly—how we can identify key metrics to measure from a variety of communications platforms and vehicles.

The Game - Yale vs Harvard is a 138-year-old institution. In a COVID world, we had to pivot, and pivot again to reinvent this long-standing and beloved tradition. Join us to learn how we created The Pep Rally, a distinctive and innovative approach to hybrid programming. More than just a football game with a webinar component, the Pep Rally invited alumni to connect and interact with each other offering a variety of methods to do so and in ways that suited any comfort level. We'll share tools and tips to implement for any alumni engagement activity that needs a pivot.

A Unique Model for a Small Shop In turbulent times many smaller institutionally-related foundations (IRF’s) are seeking alternative economic models to be fully self-sustaining. The Kean University Foundation’s economic model is unique and cutting edge. Now in our fifth year under this structure, the Foundation employs all staff and absorbs the associated costs (benefits, human resources, information technology, legal, etc.) This presentation summarizes the funding/spending plan for the Kean University Foundation and the organization’s competitive cost per dollar raised. While all conference attendees are welcome to attend, this session is geared toward the smaller shop (assets less than $100M).

Making it easier for donors to give may just be the most effective strategy in the savvy fundraiser’s toolkit—and we’ve got the conversion metrics (and science!) to prove it. In this session, we’ll show you how applying classic principles of persuasion science to your everyday fundraising challenges can dramatically improve donor engagement and move the needle on dollars raised. Using the Fogg Behavior Model as a framework for understanding donor motivation and ability, Deidre Swords from Loomis Chaffee and Melanie Simmons from GiveCampus will share the simple strategies their teams have implemented to achieve impressive real-world results.

Recently, millions have left their jobs as changing life circumstances, declining unemployment, and a tight labor market empower them to search for something new. In response, Aspen Leadership Group has developed, “The Great Rethink,” a series that explores the greatest challenges and opportunities facing employers and job seekers today.

Employees, and employers, are rethinking what work means. We've all faced pressures that force us to rethink how the personal and professional knit together. That rethinking has spawned new attitudes across the employment landscape. Its impacts are necessitating conversations about hiring, retention, staffing, and the size and design of physical offices.

Your next generation of alumni volunteers and donors is already on campus. Cultivating relationships with current students can lead to a lifetime of alumni engagement and dedication to giving back. At Fairfield University, the partnership between our alumni engagement and annual giving teams has resulted in underclassmen volunteering and giving at a pace that is leading the charge among our peers. We’re excited to share some “insider info” as to how we achieve our goals. Join us as we discuss how to educate, engage, and empower the students of today into becoming your institution’s leaders of tomorrow.

Love has everything to do with alumni and their healthy lifelong relationship to their alma mater. What happens though, when the love alumni have for the relationships developed in college, the professors who guided them through their academic work and the co-curricular activities stays casual and informal? This session explores how to identify, amplify and cultivate alumni experiences that align with their life cycle and that of the institution. The session will detail how strategic planning, processes and programming focused on alumni affinity; directly translates to annual, endowed and perpetual gifts.

The average American attention span is down to a measly 8 seconds. You may live and breathe your institution, but your audience doesn't. That means you need to be smart and strategic to catch (and keep) your audience’s attention—whether you’re a professional writer or another Advancement professional who does a lot of writing. In this session, you’ll learn the 4 C’s of good content, as well as tips and tricks for breaking through the noise of our hyper-connected, Tik Tok-obsessed world.