The ability to cultivate a personal relationship is the key to getting someone to give—and it’s something artificial intelligence (AI) knows NOTHING about. So why is AI all up in your business? The short answer is that AI is everywhere, in every industry, including the most human of endeavors—fundraising. Join Evan Lichtenstein who is the Assistant Vice President of Development for Schools and Academic Initiatives at William & Mary and Felicity Meu from GiveCampus as they discuss how to leverage this emerging technology while preserving and enhancing the most important aspect of the work you do—meaningful human-to-human engagement. Session includes an interactive design thinking workshop.

When looking at the traditional fundraising cycle, we have a tendency to only focus on cultivation/solicitation and pay less attention to identification, qualification and stewardship. Join us to discuss the importance of engagement and stewardship as vital assets in your moves management repertoire. Yes, we can talk about the ask too.

Electronic screening, giving habits, and prospect research tools help identify potential donors. Now, how do we get them to engage? This session explores how to uncover connections that generate prospect response, helping you secure more initial individual meetings and build relationships that draw your constituents closer to your institution. The presenters, who have more than 40 years of combined major and planned gift experience, have each joined a new organization within the past year. They will share perspectives on outreach techniques that are effective across institutions and ones that are unique to their current campus, as well as to facilitate idea sharing among attendees.

We want donors to give to capacity, but sometimes programs across campus aren’t ready to implement a major gift level of investment. Fundraisers will learn how to: build the runway beyond an annual fund gift with prospects to get to those major and principal gift opportunities; embrace expertise as a generalist who brings together donors with programs that support university fundraising priorities; manage up, down, and across to move the program forward to meet donors where they can see the most impact; and increase collaboration with development colleagues to amplify smaller programs and maximize dollars raised.

In this all-faculty panel discussion, we will have the opportunity to hear from our faculty about their professional journey, how they decided what type of institute they wanted to serve in, when they knew to make a move, how they determined if they wanted to pursue more of a management or pure fundraising track, and perhaps most importantly, how they cultivated the crucial characteristic of self-awareness. Immediately following this panel, we'll wrap up the conference with an opportunity for final questions from attendees, faculty perspectives and recommended next steps as you go back to your institutions.