This session will explore building relationships with those families who have the capacity to be our biggest and most important donors. These critical prospects are essential the success of any campaign, but navigating our work with them can be tricky and complicated. As a front-line fundraiser, you hold a pivotal role in fostering connections and securing vital support. Gain clarity on how to identify these donors. Understand the challenges and opportunities or working with these families, as well as the psychology behind some of their giving. Learn strategic approaches to engage these donors, whether for leadership annual fund gifts, major gifts outside of a campaign, or ultimately cultivating support for a big campaign ask.

Join our conference Chair, Eli Goldsmith of Harvard-Westlake for a conversation will exploring the current pressures and opportunities for schools in the current (and ever evolving) landscape with our CASE and NAIS Presidents who will share their perspectives on what schools need to consider for external relations, philanthropy, governance and leadership.

Discover how The Paideia School turned a ho-hum event into a memorable, mission-aligned experience for new families. In this session, you'll learn how a standard welcome dinner was transformed into a fun, engaging event that uses trivia and teamwork to teach school culture, spark connections, and build long-term parent engagement and philanthropy. Walk away with creative ideas, practical takeaways, and inspiration to reimagine your own new parent programming. *Tacos not included*

Informed by an analysis of the data on recent trends in annual giving, this session provides an opportunity for advancement leaders to take a step back and reflect on annual giving's evolving impact on independent school finances. Grounded in the context of larger philanthropic and financial changes, this session will allow participants to think about the role of annual giving in their school's financial model and how changes in their school's financial health might impact annual giving. This session will include detailed data trends that can serve as benchmarks for annual giving goal setting. Participants will take away thought-provoking and actionable questions to pose to their school leadership about the role of annual giving in their school's finances and ideas to strengthen the finance and advancement partnership.

Traditional events like galas and auctions have long been cornerstones of independent school development efforts. However, these labor-intensive initiatives often yield diminishing returns while consuming valuable staff resources. They also often run counter to our school’s commitments to equity, inclusion, and belonging. This session will use real world examples from both a K-8 school with a team of three people and a 9-12 school with a team of twelve, to demonstrate how teams of any size can strategically pivot to a major gifts approach within their annual fund, creating sustainable growth while reducing reliance on event-based fundraising. Attendees will leave with a playbook of practical tools and confidence-building strategies to elevate their annual fund and increase engagement while freeing staff to focus on building the meaningful relationships that drive transformational giving.

Alumni are more than a network—they’re a school’s hidden engine for community, mentorship, and innovation. Yet even strong alumni associations can drift from their potential: traditions dominate, engagement wanes, and opportunities to connect purposefully get lost. It all starts with a strategic plan. In this session, we’ll show how a clear, phased strategy can guide your school from intention to impact.
You’ll learn how to create a strategic plan that aligns alumni engagement with school priorities, then redirect alumni associations to bring that plan to life. We’ll explore how to clarify leadership roles, design programs that connect alumni through events, mentorship, and online communities, and celebrate contributions in ways that resonate across life stages. Using real-world examples, we’ll show how to measure outcomes, refine initiatives, and turn activity into influence.

What if your school could raise $1 million in one day—and have fun doing it?

At St. Michael’s Prep, we replaced our gala and months-long campaigns with something bold and wildly effective: Operation 10-4, a single-day giving event built on strategy, spirit, love for our school, and full community engagement.

Held every year on October 4 (10/4—"I've got your back"), Operation 10-4 turns fundraising into a high-energy celebration. From cheerleaders at morning drop-off to QR-code treats and a volunteer “war room” making personal outreach, the day is joyful, inclusive, and impossible to ignore.

In just four years, more than $5.8 million has been raised, growing from $1 million in Year 1 to $1.9 million last fall—all through a seamless donor experience using GiveCampus, PayPal, Apple Pay, and more.
This year, we launched our inaugural Alumni Day of Giving, centered on reconnection and mission. Alumni Class Captains in person, and virtually from around the globe, lead with heartfelt outreach, boosting engagement and sparking 75% first-time gifts—all while building endowment and honoring our school’s legacy.
This newly imagined and strategic approach to a solid culture of philanthropy:
eliminates donor fatigue,
empowers volunteers,
provides major donors opportunities to support the school’s strategic priorities for growth,
and most importantly unites the entire community around one powerful message: Giving is belonging.
And it’s working!

In the next two decades, an estimated $84 trillion will be passed down from Baby Boomers to their Gen X, Millennial and Gen Z heirs, as well as to charities. Since the average age of a US donor is 65—and donor counts continue to fall nationwide—this means the philanthropic landscape will look much different in 20 years than it does now.

How can non-profits begin preparing today for a future dominated by Gen X and Millennial donors?

In this innovative and insightful panel, we’re bringing together Gen X and Millennial leaders from independent schools across the country. Spanning major gifts to donor engagement, this diverse panel will share research, personal behaviors and professional guidance about how to drive the future of philanthropy.

Learn what’s most important to pay attention to with these upcoming generations, and how to set up your fundraising program now to cultivate this growing donor base.

The way people discover and decide to give is changing fast. Now, AI is at the heart of these decisions. Whether it’s ChatGPT, Gemini, or other large language models (LLMs), donors are increasingly turning to AI tools for recommendations, research, and decision-making. If your institution isn’t part of those answers, you’re invisible to a growing audience.

In this session, the Ubiq team will demystify how LLM “seeding” works and how schools can ensure their causes, campaigns, and giving opportunities are represented when AI tools generate results.

We'll discuss:
How LLMs source, rank, and “trust” information about organisations
Practical steps to optimise your digital presence for AI discovery
How to feed accurate, compelling narratives into the AI ecosystem to shape what’s shared about your school
Future trends in AI-driven philanthropy and how to get ahead

You’ll leave with a clear action plan to future-proof your advancement strategy, increase donor reach, and ensure your story gets told by humans and by AI.

Crises are coming faster than ever. Are you ready? Whether it’s a disgruntled employee acting out, an unexpected student death, or disclosures of historical sex abuse, there are core mindsets and skills that will make your team and school crisis-ready and resilient. Drawing from personal experience and public examples from across the country, two seasoned communications and marketing professionals and a crisis communications consultant share their advice for preparing for, working (and living) through, and making meaning from crises.