Traditional thinking around a Board’s involvement in fundraising campaigns may not align with present-day realities. In this session we’ll look at the shifting dynamics and highlight creative strategies to kickstart your next major fundraising effort. A key part of this work is redefining expectations of your Board’s engagement in the effort. Presenters will share candid insights to help you prepare for the important conversations with your Board. You’ll walk away with a clearer vision of your Board’s role and a roadmap to unlock their full fundraising potential.

$100 million campaigns are not the norm at independent schools, but the strategies deployed to execute them successfully should be. Join this session to hear advancement leaders who have led, or are in the midst of leading, these initiatives as they reflect on key learnings and challenges from these transformational campaigns. We’ll explore how these insights fit into the larger campaign life cycle—from the initial planning stages through public launch—and discover the pivotal roles volunteer leadership and Heads of School play in driving impactful educational advancement. From building authentic relationships, to leveraging data, to crafting innovative campaign communications and keeping staff motivated, this group has experienced it all and they’re ready to share their tried-and-true strategies that can help a campaign of any size reach its goal.

We have all heard the mantra, onboarding new families begins the moment they first set foot on campus during the admission process, but how do you operationalize that? Join Director of Development, Abigail Betts, and Director of Admission, Alex Ragone, to learn about their collaboration to create a seamless onboarding of new families, helping each family feel included and part of the community early in their transition. Walk away with actionable takeaways to work smarter and not harder, inspire your new parent onboarding, and increase parent engagement and giving. Come to learn how Abigail and Alex use strategic meetings, events, and communication to build a better transition process for new to Norwood families, that resulted in more engaged and philanthropic families.

This interactive workshop will look at two cases and then learn from you! We’ll look to our constituents and then ourselves as diverse professionals. Firstly, we will look at how we build affinity work that supports our alumni constituencies. Events, mailings, Zooms book clubs. These wins demonstrate to our organizations that affinity based work, has powerful outcomes. For instance, in three years, the Black Alumni Reunion moved from 30 people to a 130 annual destination event! While building affinity for our constituencies benefits the organization, we will next demonstrate how you can build an affinity group that supports you! Make the CASE for your NAIS institution to support affinities across institutions. Learn from the Diverse Professionals in Advancement, a collective made up of individuals not well represented in our field. Born from professional development conferences, grassroots meet-ups, and later supported by a one-time CASE grant, this group gathers diverse professionals across institutions within advancement for the goal of restoring our energy, expanding our network, and elevating the work that we do individually. Come hear how this model can be adapted across the country using your institution as leverage to build professional networks with colleagues. Finally, we’ll close by hearing about you and your institution's DEI wins.

Educational institutions are trying to do it all - improve the student experience and learning outcomes, attract and retain the best faculty and staff, and keep their alumni engaged and feeling valued. Survey research can help schools better understand how their stakeholders are feeling and what is important to them, providing actionable data to drive improvement. Learn how to conduct your own survey research, even with limited resources, to make data-informed decisions that optimize your school's resources and foster better outcomes.

The involvement of parents/guardians can be a key factor in enhancing the success of fundraising and donor engagement efforts. This session will share challenges and opportunities, and provide examples of ways you can boost engagement and help unlock the potential of increased giving from this vibrant group of constituents.

Alumni reunions are more than just a celebration—they’re key opportunities to strengthen relationships, enhance your institution’s reputation, and foster lasting connections. However, they require careful planning, coordination, and alignment with broader cultivation and stewardship goals, without causing burnout or PTSD for your staff. Whether you’re aiming to increase alumni involvement, strengthen your institution’s community, or boost event ROI, this session will provide the insights and tools that can help do the heavy lifting to make your next reunion a success. Create memorable experiences that engage alumni, build meaningful connections, and drive long-term impact.

School Endowments are established to ensure a perpetual source of support to serve this mission. Its funds provide access to an exceptional education for resolute students from all social and economic backgrounds, attract world-class educators and scholars, and support the development of leading-edge educational opportunities. As a reliable pool of funds, the endowment enables independent schools to meet budgetary obligations when other sources of revenue fluctuate.

Gifts to the endowment are particularly vital to every independent school. When donors give to the endowment, they create an enduring legacy—because endowed gifts exist in perpetuity. When the gift is invested, the principal value is never touched, and an established percentage of the income is distributed annually for use by the school. Over time, each gift grows in value, providing increasing resources in future years. The sustained benefit of a gift to the endowment far exceeds its original value. The long-term impact of support is immeasurable.

In this presentation the presenter will explore with participants how to define endowment, drafting a sound investment policy, traditional vs progressive endowment investing strategies. A discussion of spending policy, to understand how a school may stabilize annual spending levels as well as achieve intergenerational neutrality by preserving the real value of the endowment portfolio over time. To achieve these two objectives, it is critical that spending policy addresses a long-term targeted spending rate combined with a smoothing rule to adjusts spending gradually when there are changes in the endowment market value. Transparency of investment policy is critical for today’s donors

Finally, the presenter will discuss with participants a comprehensive look at stewarding endowment donors from working with the business office and communicating to donors both the qualitative and quantitative elements of a donor’s endowment. Additionally, you will gain an understanding marketing strategies to engage donors, development strong gift acceptance polices and discussing different endowment vehicles such as endowed funds vs academic chairs and the pitfalls with different fund vehicles and initiating gift levels to establish an endowed fund.

Managing people is hard work! WIth the busy hustle and bustle of our workdays, we often get bogged down in people management or worse, we ignore it all together focusing only on the fundraising and strategic goals in front of us. Join this presentation to learn more about what it takes to build high functioning Advancement and/or Communications Teams of all sizes. The presenters will not pretend to know everything, but rather share some tactics, stories, highs (and lows), and encourage group participation. This will be a safe space to grow, learn, and share together how to be more impactful managers and how to become even better leaders.

Ursuline Academy's Alumnae Association dates back to 1899; their Alumnae Office to 1982. Longevity does not necessarily equate success though. Under the leadership of Claire Webb for the past decade, Ursuline's intentional and strategic approach to alumnae engagement has seen great success in increasing Engagement Metrics to more than half of their 10,000 living graduates. Learn about the strategy behind their shift in communications, programs, and events and take away concrete examples you can tailor for your own institution.