With print prices skyrocketing and budgets tightening, your college magazine must be better than ever. But how do you know if your magazine's content connects with your audience? You've got to ask them! See how Auburn University's editorial team uses flash surveys and pop-up ads after each issue to improve story curation, change their design mix and deliver a more engaging magazine. We'll go through actual survey results and discuss how flash and online surveys lead to fewer email complaints to the staff as well as allow the team to take calculated risks.

In order to meet scholarship diversity and inclusion fundraising goals, academic deans must understand institutional goals and have strategies for achieving them. A well-crafted workshop can improve success by communicating information, encouraging idea-sharing among peers, and providing dedicated time to plan. This session will describe such a workshop, including suggestions for how to 1) begin the workshop, 2) offer deans diversity, equity and inclusion scholarship fundraising possibilities, 3) give deans tools to work with potential donors, and 4) communicate with deans about respectful stewardship. Session attendees will be invited to share their strategies.

The Ask should be a creative experience and journey. We, as fundraisers, are representatives, advocates, researchers, storytellers, guides and connectors who navigate and help shape, mold a sandbox of options for a donor. Preparation and practice as a listener and creative partner, with your organization's priorities in mind, will allow you to a provide be a compass for a conversation about support. This also helps with an approachable and enjoyable solicitation experience. Participants will review the elements of an ask and explore an approach to acknowledge and build as a portion of fundraising through discussions and exercises.

In this interactive session we'll discuss how to redefine engagement to meet the challenges of today and the future in constituent engagement.

Before legendary UNC Men’s Basketball Coach Roy Williams retired, he and his wife Wanda made their largest gift ever to Carolina by donating $3 million to three scholarship programs. Recognizing an opportunity to amplify the impact of their gift, the Carolina Development Office created Playing It Forward, a scholarship initiative designed to honor the Williamses by creating more opportunities for undergraduate students. In just two months, Carolina donors gave more than $3.6 million through an integrated, multi-channel marketing strategy that included email, social media, digital advertising, branded landing and giving pages, and printed/digital one-pagers. Stewardship included a money-can’t-buy book and a commemorative calendar featuring the Williamses' philanthropy and impact.

In July 2021, UVA's University Advancement team began operating in a remote-first, hybrid work environment, allowing employees to choose where they worked. Fast-forward to today - 20% of our staff lives remotely (as far away as Hawaii!), and only 15% of staff work from the office daily. Is the future of work hybrid? It is at UVA. At this session, you'll learn about the challenges we've faced and the opportunities we were able to take advantage of. Gain insight into our lessons learned and how we've had to adjust our strategies for staff success.

All college and universities "prepare" for crises, but can you ever be truly prepared? Following the on-campus shooting of two officers on February 1, 2022, the communications team at Bridgewater College wishes to share its experiences and lessons learned in the hopes we can assist our colleagues in preparing for and reacting to a crisis. This session will touch on emergency alerts, internal and external communications during and after the incident, and media relations.

As fundraisers, we are on the precipice of the largest transfer of wealth in human history, with Baby Boomers accumulating over $35,000,000,000,000 in wealth that will be distributed over the coming years. As this population ages, the chances of cognitive impairment, such as Alzheimer's Disease or dementia, in donors also increases, which can create ethical and legal issues for fundraisers. Are you prepared to handle this inevitable scenario? This session will teach attendees about the prevalence of cognitive impairment in donor populations and present strategies on how best to handle these situations through an ethical and legal lens of best practices.

From the pandemic to the murder of George Floyd, many relationship managers are faced with challenges as they find themselves in the midst of ultra-sensitive conversations with prospects and donors. This session is designed to unpack advancement experiences, understand the concept of power and privilege and its influence, and the importance of courageous conversation skills.

We created an aggregation of different dashboards that get delivered to the development officers by email with analytics, reminders and highlights of areas needing attention related to their assigned prospects. This dashboard provides the DO with key information so they can be proactive and take actions based on the items displayed. For example, birthdays, pledges due soon, pledges past due, recent write offs, gift from their prospects coming from any source online, an event, etc.), actions entered to someone in their portfolio by another development officer, prospects attendance or registration to an event. Details on prospects in the solicitation stage.