Designed for educational advancement professionals with fewer than two years of professional advancement experience, this workshop is designed to explore the fundamentals of advancement and lays the groundwork for a successful career in this exciting profession.

Leading advancement shops in higher education is rewarding work. But it can be incredibly challenging. The list that successful leaders must navigate to support their employees continues to grow. This pre-conference workshop tackles many of those challenges head-on. Self-care, burnout, and managing from all directions are a few of the topics we’ll cover. Then, we’ll open the conversation to learn about industry leadership struggles and best practices from one another. If you’re new to leadership, a seasoned pro who is willing to share, or someone looking for a career leap—this pre-conference will help you address the challenges that leaders must navigate in an ever-changing world.

Join Sue Cunningham, President and CEO, Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and Jeffrey Spoeri, J.D., Associate Vice President for University Advancement, Lamar University; Chair, CASE District IV, 2023 Conference as they welcome you to San Antonio and the CASE District IV annual Conference.

Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, President Emeritus, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, discusses why educators must be ambassadors for higher education in the larger public. Additionally, he will talk about higher education's impact on American society, especially over the past 60 years. He will emphasize analytics, data and stories, and the connection between higher education and the community.

Last Fall, The University of Texas at San Antonio launched the largest fundraising campaign in the city’s history, BE BOLD: A Campaign for Our Future. The multiday celebration was led by UTSA Donor Relations and took over a year of planning involving committee members from divisions across campus. During this session we will bring you along on the Be Bold Launch planning journey, sharing insight into coordinating events across the university’s campuses, engaging every level of donor, encouraging faculty and staff to join the celebration, and strategies for keeping stake holders informed, excited, and making everyone a Be Bold champion!

Learn from an advancement leader and a frontline fundraiser about how they partnered together to re-build a team culture during a year of interim college leadership and high transition to co-create a positive and flourishing team workplace environment that achieved record-high fundraising success. Through personal stories, case studies, and best practices taken from higher education advancement literature, this dynamic duo will provide you with concrete steps and examples that you can bring back to your team to build, re-build, and/or enhance your team culture for optimal fundraising success.

When leaders hire and develop a team for their potential to be a great fit for their organization, everyone wins! At the Oklahoma State University Foundation, the organization has developed a winning strategy to recruit top talent, foster a highly engaged staff, and retain highly skilled employees. This strategy has helped them achieve many awards such as Best Places to Work and NPT’s Best Nonprofit To Work For. Allow OSUF to share its secrets to success and how you too can build an award-winning culture!

Graphic designers and creatives in higher ed are wearing more and more hats these days making it tough to constantly pump out new creative content. In this session Nikki Davis, Senior Graphic Designer at Slate Group, will go through her Survival Guide for Creatives, such as the importance of slaying your dragons before breakfast to remixing ideas and mind mapping techniques.

Print marketing is far from dead. In this session, Carrie Phillips and Trey Laverty will share how they are using print marketing to engage alumni, students, donors, and fans. Whether it’s using print to drive to a marketing website, creating virtual engagement, or building affinity – this session will focus on some of the latest trends and best practices in print marketing. You’ll leave with an understanding of new tactics and some ideas of how to incorporate them into your work.

In 2018, Trinity University’s offices of Annual Giving and Alumni Relations joined forces to better engage their reunion volunteers. Annually, Trinity University celebrates 10 reunion classes which culminates in a weekend of celebrations at Alumni Weekend in the Fall. By expanding the number of volunteers they engage, they have seen year-to-year increases in reunion giving donations and participation as well as attendance at Alumni Weekend. Learn how these teams collaborate - from recruitment, to engagement, and their final celebrations on campus.

Do our current fundraising efforts reach the full spectrum of the community we serve? Are we speaking the language—literally and figuratively—of tomorrow’s donors? A survey conducted by Blackbaud shows that a majority of donors to non-profits and higher education institutions were mostly white. At UTSA, we took that study and conducted an internal review where we found our alumni base was not only more diverse but also younger. Learn how we adjusted our fundraising efforts to resonating with the full body of our constituents and turned our diverse communities into our leading supporters.

Oh the places you will go! The Career possibilities are endless for advancement professionals as the fundraising job-market continues to grow and become more competitive for talent. Before you consider that next job offer, let's chat! Join these three development amigos who started out together with similar job titles 15+ years ago, but took very different paths. Representing institutions that range from small to large and public to private (and a plethora of job titles), we will share experiences and ask questions that may help you avoid a mid-career crisis and plan your path to a thriving career in advancement.

It is often thought that small donors are not a prime source for future major gifts. An analysis of over a dozen higher education institutions found that nearly 30% of major donors started out by giving a gift under $250, and a meaningful number of these converted to a major donor within a few years. As a result of understanding how small donors can become major donors, nonprofits can uncover new prospects for making transformational gifts.

Mass-marketing appeals can’t keep up with alums’ expectations for personalization. So, late last year, the Texas Christian University team swapped out their phonathon program and replaced it with a student-led lead-generation engine powered by personalization. They turned their best student ambassadors into Campus Creators, built a consistent calendar of personalized video content, and are executing multi-touch cadenced outreach to thousands of previously-overlooked donors. Join this session to learn about the ROI of TCU’s Donor Experience (DX) program, including reactivated donors, increased donors and dollars, hundreds of new leads for gift officers, and 100% coverage of more than 20,000 alumni.