Inspiring the Largest Gifts of a Lifetime 2022
CASE requires all attendees, exhibitors, and staff to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 prior to participating in-person at any conference in accordance with applicable law.
Refresh and reinforce your understanding of what inspires truly generous individuals to partner with your institution. Review the concepts of donor-centered fundraising, learn how they fit into an overall development program and identify strategies for incorporating them at your institution.
This conference is designed for advancement professionals engaged in individual fundraising with generous donors or who oversee others engaged in this work.
Benefits of Attending
- Evaluate criteria that distinguish fundraising for the largest gifts of a lifetime from annual and campaign fundraising.
- Assemble a toolkit to support a more person-centered, relationship-based fundraising.
- Recognize how active listening and strategic thinking can positively impact largest-gift fundraising initiatives.
- Enhance your interpersonal skills to build strong professional relationships.
Who Should Attend
- Principal and major gift officers
- Philanthropic advisers
- Gift planning officers
- Presidents and school heads
- Deans
- Trustees
- Vice presidents and directors of development
Meet Your Chair
Rebecca Tseng Smith
Rebecca Tseng Smith is the senior executive director of development for the University of California San Diego.
Previously, she served as vice president of development for the University of Hawai'i Foundation and associate dean for external relations at Stanford University's School of Education. Smith believes that the ideas of relational fundraising, as described by David R. Dunlop, provide the best principles to guide our practice, and she has had an opportunity to put these ideas to work at each of the universities she has served.
At Cornell University, she worked in the major and principal gift programs and later served as assistant dean for alumni affairs and development in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Cornell's $1 billion campaign for endowment was launched and completed during her years there and she participated in many different aspects of it, from developing strategies for the solicitations of lead givers and recruiting and motivating campaign volunteers to celebrating in the College of Agriculture when they completed the campaign at 45 percent over goal. In 1997, she joined the major gift program at Harvard University where she worked with alumni in New York City and Washington, D.C., and assisted with Harvard's campaign to raise $2.1 billion. At Stanford University she led the School of Education's participation in "The Stanford Challenge," which raised new funds directed toward solving complex problems, like K-12 school reform.
Smith served on the American Cancer Society's National Blue Ribbon Advisory Committee, which studied and advised the society on its fundraising practices and long-term goals. She is currently a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council of the Boston University School of Theology.
She earned a bachelor's degree in English literature and a master's degree in theology at Boston University. She spent her first undergraduate years at Eckerd College, a small liberal arts college in Florida.