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Global and Cultural Competence: bringing cultural literacy into your alumni relations and fundraising
Alumni relations and fundraising are universal. It may take different forms and it will be constantly evolving, but they are common to all cultures.
Culture is real. Navigating your way through different cultures is complex and challenging. Yet, cultural literacy is a must-have not a nice-to-have. You will be a better person – as an individual, as a member of your community and as a professional, if you develop your cultural literacy.
This session will focus on cultural competence with the emphasis on cultural intelligence and understanding bias, looking at these through the lens of advancement. Flo and Maarten will address questions such as: how to be an active, attentive and authentic listener; starting with curiosity and humility, understand and be comfortable with your own culture; use it as the platform to understand others. The session will be a presentation liberally interspersed with a mix of video and real-life examples from the speakers and an invitation to all participants to share theirs.
Boosting alumni engagement and development opportunities through university collaboration: best practices from Oxford and MTU
Taking a collaborative approach can add tremendous value to alumni relations and development - whether that collaboration is between the two functions, or with the wider institution. This session will explore collaboration ‘best practice’ from MTU Munster Technological University and from the University of Oxford.
Developing capacity across the University is key to delivering an alumni engagement programme. Whether you have a one, two or 10-person alumni function, you are eventually going to run out of capacity to support the tens of thousands of alumni, unless you collaborate.
Glynis Gardiner from MTU Munster Technological University will share how she developed alumni engagement programmes by collaborating with colleagues and units across the university. The initiatives and programmes that were developed will be discussed and the impact of these programmes will be shared.
From an advancement perspective, the move to online events and engagement over the past 18 months has brought many challenges, but has also created unprecedented opportunities to connect with our alumni audiences. How can we ensure we are making the most of these?
Reflecting on her experience of joining Oxford's Department of Physics six days before the start of lockdown, Lisa Willmot will share how she leveraged its alumni relations programme to create space to talk about development - across major gifts, legacies and individual giving. She will explore how, by connecting different teams and activities across the department and wider University, an alumni relations programme which traditionally has never had advancement as part of its remit can be adapted to create opportunities for philanthropic gifts.
Future of Fundraising - (Almost) everything we learned about fundraising has changed: Adapting to the new reality
Have you been trying to imagine a new-normal, or just impatient to get back to the old-normal? Maybe you’ve taken some time to interrogate what normal was, and wonder whether Advancement in 2019 was really serving our institutions and our communities - or were we just going through the motions? While the public asks fundamental questions about the value and quality of Higher Education and our institutions are shaken by repeated financial, social, and health crises, can we really keep doing what we’ve always done?
Joshua R. Newton serves as Senior Vice-President, Advancement and Alumni Engagement at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Josh is known for his disruptive approach to fundraising and engagement practices, often challenging long-held beliefs and truisms in pursuit of a better experience for Emory alumni and better results for the university. A champion of people, relationships, and insightful strategy over the traditional Advancement playbook, Josh will share his thoughts and vision for our sector in a post-pandemic world and try to help us imagine: what happens now?
Breakfast Roundtable: How LinkedIn Can Lighten Your Load and Support Alumni Engagement
Are you using LinkedIn to its best advantage? Is it predominately used for tracking down alumni in certain locations, or for sharing your university’s latest ranking position? If so, register for this session and pick up tips on how to become more proactive and creative with LinkedIn, so that it becomes an invaluable tool, helping you develop an engaged community of passionate and eager supporters.
Taking the form of an informal workshop, the topics covered will include:
- Personal vs professional
- The power of nostalgia
- Generating pride and celebrating success
- Getting to know your alumni better
- Supporting recruitment, student outcomes, fundraising & research
- Future-proofing
- Reaching a larger audience
Breakfast Roundtable: Managing Burnout: How to Best Support Your Team and Yourself
Are you or your team lacking the drive and motivation to support your alumni community? Are requests met with frustration or annoyance? Has it been increasingly difficult to manage work and family/friends? It is likely you are feeling the effects of burnout. Burnout can be weighing on your mental health however is both preventable and manageable. Learn the telling signs of burnout, how to address it, and maintain a healthier work environment for you and your team.
Breakfast Roundtable: Tantrums, Tumbles and Treats: The New Parent’s Guide to Managing Major Gifts
Being a fundraiser is surprisingly similar to being a parent or carer: from helping a donor to take their first steps in philanthropy to celebrating their graduation and creating special memories along the way. Join new mum Hannah Langford as she reflects on lessons learned from her first year as a mum including how to manage difficult personalities, expectations, and boundaries, treating everyone equally, explaining differences and doing your share of the chores...and all without tears before bedtime!
Breakfast Roundtable: Networking: Health Research Fundraising in Higher Education Institutions
COVID-19 has given HEIs a new urgency to fundraise for health research causes, and with many institutions looking to convert donors onto other causes as the pandemic, questions will start to arise as to where those donors move to. But health research is a tricky area where HEIs need to assert themselves as drivers of research while respecting the roles of charities whose sole focus is health research (and who often provide hundreds of millions of pounds of funding to HEIs). This session will encourage health research fundraisers to come together and network, sharing their challenges and strategies and moving towards a consensus of how HEIs could (and should) work with and around other health research charities in the marketplace.
Breakfast Roundtable: US Fundraising: Ask Anything or Share Everything
Whether you are being encouraged to ‘tap the goldmine’ of alumni in the States or you have been fundraising there for years, let’s get together to share our expertise. During the hour, I will open the floor for your questions, share my war (and success) stories and encourage other attendees to make their recommendations too. Whether you want to learn about tax-efficient giving, ask about trip planning, or just hear about an established programme, this session will be a safe space for you to join others and ask anything or share everything related to US Fundraising. Let’s connect and support each other on this exciting mission.
Breakfast roundtable: Adopting digital-first scholarship & stewardship practices post-pandemic
How has the pandemic impacted your scholarship and stewardship practices? In this special roundtable, we’ll be discussing the challenges, trends and opportunities facing institutions, as we shine a light on what’s holding many back from creating impactful stewardship practices and improving student access to awards. Pre-pandemic, 82% of institutions stated their current way of managing awards did not meet their needs, and over half said their processes were not well organised. As a wave of digital evolution sweeps across higher education institutions’ out-dated and inefficient practices, how can scholarship and stewardship follow suit and embrace a digital-first experience?
Just Another Donor Wall...?
Donor walls are a critical part of successful stewardship that help to build strong connections between you and your most generous donors. Whether you love getting creative to bring these to life or you spend time worrying that you’ll spell a name wrong, there’s no avoiding them.
We're now seeing inspiring examples of forward-thinking design, where recognition is central to capital projects from the start. But what about when you're starting from scratch? This session will share UCL’s journey to the 2019 unveiling of a donor wall recognising its Circle of Benefactors. From running a student design competition, to personally involving each donor in fabrication, hear how Advancement worked with Public Art to create something unique and meaningful for donors, but also authentic to UCL.