This workshop will address the needs of new and existing managers to grow their skillsets and support their teams. Join us in tackling topics including effective management, performance management, and managing up, down, and across.

Designed for those with fewer than two years of advancement experience, this interactive workshop explores the fundamentals of advancement across all disciplines (advancement services, alumni relations, fundraising, marketing and communications). Featured speaker and CASE DIII Cabinet member, Amanda Trabue, will share her career journey in advancement, how she set herself up for success, and the significant role that the CASE community played. Participants will have an opportunity to meet other newcomers and ask questions.

In higher education today, professionals are navigating challenges like donor fatigue, shifting demographics, and increased scrutiny; all while being asked to do more with less. During this uncertainty, one factor remains constant: the extraordinary power of human connection. In this energizing keynote, Cindy Rowe shows how small, intentional acts of kindness, empathy, and emotional intelligence create ripple effects that extend far beyond the moment, strengthen donor loyalty, inspiring alumni engagement, and building resilient campus relationships. Through compelling stories, practical strategies, and a spark of motivation, Cindy provides attendees with the tools to connect more authentically with the people who matter most. Attendees will leave not just inspired, but empowered to create meaningful connections that fuel trust, collaboration, and long-term success no matter the challenges ahead.

After a financial crisis 5 years ago, Guilford College was on the brink of losing its accreditation. Needing to balance the budget, College leadership set a goal of raising $5M unrestricted cash in 6 months. With a targeted and strategic approach for a small Advancement team, the College was successful in surpassing the $5M goal. This session will focus on the success of the second crisis campaign on which Guilford College embarked in 5 years.

What happens when admissions and advancement stop operating in parallel and start working in partnership? This session explores how independent schools can break down silos and align strategy, processes, and outreach to drive gains in both enrollment and philanthropy. We’ll look at how AI-enabled tools are helping schools surface high-capacity, philanthropic families earlier in the admissions process, and how those insights can be transferred seamlessly across teams to build lasting relationships. We’ll also examine how advancement and admissions can co-design outreach efforts that expand the admissions pipeline with mission-aligned families while simultaneously leveraging those touchpoints to nurture the existing donor pool. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies for enabling low-friction knowledge transfer between teams, building repeatable collaborative workflows, and developing a strategic understanding of how and why advancement and admissions roles are evolving in tandem to support institutional growth.

Across higher education, more than 95% of every institution’s donors sit outside of managed portfolios, receiving only direct mail and mass marketing, leading to increasing lapsed donors, weaker major gift pipelines, and a mounting challenge of earning attention annually. In this panel, institutions of different sizes, College of Charleston and Western Carolina University share how they embraced Autonomous Fundraising to expand one-to-one donor engagement at scale. From under-engaged alumni to mid-level donors and high-affinity community supporters, each school saw an opportunity to deepen relationships by deploying Virtual Engagement Officers (VEOs), AI-powered teammates trained in strategic moves management that Hear how these uniquely different teams and institutions, each at various stages in their journey of reimagined engagement with AI, are measuring ROI, activating new segments of donors, and building stronger pipelines, without adding staffing resources.

As advancement evolves, so does our understanding of alumni and constituent engagement. With six years of CASE data, institutions are redefining how they measure engagement and connect it to strategic goals. Join Jenny Cooke Smith (CASE) along with Heather Ashley (University of Florida) and Kim Bowden (Georgia Tech) to explore shifts in engagement strategy—from leveraging data to measuring engagement across key constituencies beyond alumni. Heather and Kim will share how their institutions are applying the CASE framework, showcasing real-world examples and insights. The session will feature an interactive discussion to uncover practical approaches for planning an outcomes-focused future.

No matter whether you love it, hate it, fear it, or embrace it, the AI genie is out of the bottle—and it’s never going back inside. Somewhere between the breathless praise of the AI enthusiast and the crossed-arms reluctance of the AI refusenik lies the truth of the current higher ed landscape: people are using AI all over campus for all kinds of purposes, if not always wisely. How can you use AI to benefit your institution without letting it delete an entire database or populate your institution’s social media channels with six-fingered, face-melted people? In this session, an admitted AI skeptic will use real-world examples to present and discuss proven strategies and tested principles for getting the best out of AI so it doesn’t get the best of you.

Learn how to turn your alumni volunteers into digital ambassadors who amplify your message and drive real results. This session showcases WKU Alumni Association’s strategy that leveraged peer-to-peer outreach, monthly social media toolkits, and affinity engagement to exceed connection goals by over 90%. With limited budget and high impact, this model demonstrates how volunteer influencers can be your most powerful engagement and marketing asset. Walk away with actionable tools, real-world examples, and a roadmap to elevate your outreach through the voices alumni trust most—their peers.

In an era of increasing expectations and limited bandwidth, what if the key to fundraising success isn't doing more - but doing it better? At the University of South Florida, Development leaders have reimagined their approach by prioritizing focus: aligning team goals with institutional priorities, and fostering deep collaboration between frontline fundraisers, prospect management, and leadership.

In this session, the Vice President of Development and the Senior Director of Prospect Management will share how they partnered to streamline portfolios, clarify priorities, and foster collaboration across teams and leadership.

Attendees will gain practical insights into portfolio optimization, cross functional collaboration, and leadership engagement - offering a replicable framework for transforming development operations through focus.

What if every fundraiser—regardless of role, title, or portfolio—had the confidence, tools, and support to close a $1M+ gift? At the University of Georgia, that vision is becoming a reality through a bold, university-wide initiative to elevate principal gifts. This session will explore how UGA is building a collaborative professional development program that empowers both central and unit-based fundraisers to think strategically, collaborate with each other, work donor-centrically, act in alignment with institutional priorities, and embrace all aspects of the advancement division in their work.

Through strategic coaching, shared prospect planning, and targeted skill-building, fundraisers across campus are refining their approaches to qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship of the university’s highest-capacity donors. The objective: a strengthened culture of transformational philanthropy and a robust, multi-year principal gift pipeline built on

shared goals and collaborative execution. Attendees will gain actionable insights into how to leverage existing talent, foster cross-campus alignment, and grow big-gift capacity across their advancement of teams.

Faculty Involvement: Igniting Lifelong Learning and Alumni Engagement

Join the University of Virginia’s Lifetime Learning team to explore how they energize constituents with a thought-provoking Saturday morning lecture series. This session will share insights into engaging faculty presenters in your alumni outreach efforts. Learn how to develop educational offerings using your all-star faculty to foster meaningful connections, boost engagement, and inspire philanthropic support. Discover how academic excellence and school spirit can team up to deliver a victory for your institution.

The UVA Lifetime Learning team will share with you the history of their popular 20-year-old program, which has been engaging alumni, parents, and friends with compelling topics such as politics, cutting-edge health research, history, architecture, near-death experiences, electric vehicles, and more. Receive insights into the challenges and rewards of partnering with schools and units across campus for these programs. Return to your institution with a model to create a successful faculty speaker series for your constituents.

Board members should be your institution’s most passionate ambassadors—but how do you inspire them to lead with both influence and investment? This high-impact session shares lessons learned from real campaigns and institutional transformations where Board engagement became a catalyst for launching a successful capital campaign. Discover strategies for setting clear giving expectations, activating peer-to-peer fundraising, and building a Board culture rooted in philanthropy. Walk away with practical tools and inspiring examples to move your Board from passive oversight to powerful partnership.

What happens when you stop designing tools for fundraisers and start building them with fundraisers? At the University of South Carolina, we reimagined advancement reporting by collaborating closely with frontline fundraisers, prospect strategy teams, and leadership to create a dashboard that delivers clarity, consistency, and actionability — all in one place.

By eliminating the need to navigate multiple systems, we built a tool that enhances prospect and portfolio management, clarifies which metrics matter (and why), and fosters trust in the data. The result? A dashboard that empowers users to focus on what truly drives success: building relationships and advancing the capital campaign.

In this session, we’ll share the technical challenges we overcame — and the unexpected benefits of starting fresh with a purpose-built data source. Whether you're refreshing a legacy report or launching something new, you’ll leave with practical insights and real-world lessons to help you co-create tools that work. Attendees will learn how thoughtful design and metric transparency can drive engagement, improve pipeline development, and support campaign goals.

In today’s fast-paced digital environment, brand perception can make or break an institution’s ability to recruit students, engage alumni, and garner public support. But what happens when your institution needs a brand refresh — and your budget barely covers the basics?

This session shares the bold and strategic journey of Virginia State University (VSU) — a historically Black university — as it successfully rebranded itself with limited staff and financial resources. Led by Gwen Williams Dandridge, VSU’s Assistant Vice President for Communications, the rebrand was not just about a new logo or tagline. It was a comprehensive and intentional effort to shift perceptions, engage internal and external stakeholders, and amplify VSU’s unique story in a competitive higher education landscape.

For generations, American higher education has been the engine behind the nation’s progress, driving our economic prosperity, building a skilled workforce, and nurturing a vibrant democracy. But colleges and universities are experiencing a growing crisis of confidence. Once respected institutions whose importance was assumed, they have suffered a steady decline in perceived value. Just ten years ago, 57% of Americans expressed significant trust in higher education. Today, that number has plummeted to 42%. This isn’t just a concerning trend—it’s a wake-up call. There are many reasons this is happening, but a core part of the problem is the narratives used to describe the value of a college degree, which too often focus narrowly on student recruitment and the job-market return graduates receive on the cost of tuition. Left out are countless ways higher education benefits everyone, whether or not they have earned a degree. To combat this erosion of trust, CASE has partnered with marketing firm BVK to create a public service campaign to promote the value of higher education, utilizing research on how to successfully change minds and shaped by the perspectives of those who most benefit from the work that higher education does. Called “College: Proud Sponsor of America at its Best,” the campaign seeks to remind Americans that college is a public good that uplifts every facet of our society, from creating a skilled workforce and fostering economic prosperity to improving our health, promoting democracy, and protecting our national security. This session will introduce participants to the campaign and the various ways their institutions can join the movement.

The Leadership Programs team at Vanderbilt will present a pioneering model for high-end volunteer engagement and cultivation. Vanderbilt has uniquely dedicated an office to elevate and coordinate advisory councils, volunteer leaders, and strategic alumni and parent partnerships. They have developed a robust infrastructure that not only deepens institutional impact but also creates bespoke opportunities for volunteers to contribute meaningfully to university priorities. At a time when institutions are seeking innovative ways to engage their most influential supporters, Vanderbilt has a centralized, strategic approach to cultivating long-term, mission-aligned volunteer leadership. Sharing our model offers valuable insights into how higher education can transform engagement to drive outcomes in philanthropy, strategic advising, partnerships, and institutional reputation.