The session will provide insights from personal experience working as a Head of the Fundraising Office and later as a Vice-Rector for Strategic Development and Finance at the University. Given the close intercorrelation of these two functions in reference to the university’s development, the session will focus on this issue from both perspectives and give recommendations on achieving greater efficiency in implementing the aims through joint cooperation.

This is a discussion about starting basically from scratch and developing step by step well-functioning alumni structures and accomplishing a vibrant alumni organization with various alumni activities at a university in a year’s time.

How can we create long-term and large-scale collaboration to last over many years and involve all parts of the university?

Please choose one session from the below. The campfire sessions are facilitated discussions.

How to get private (and public) sector donate money for Student scholarships? Who are companies and individuals who donate for scholarships? In what way do private sector scholarships differ from scholarships offered by the University, and how can students leverage these differences to their advantage? How today’s grants and scholarships can increase interest in a particular field among middle and high school students? What innovative approaches are being taken to make scholarships more accessible and impactful for a diverse range of students? What is the value proposition for both sides – to the donor and to the grantee? Should there be one? During the discussion we will look answers to these and other related questions.

Alumni engagement is vital to any institution or university’s long-term success. Strong connections with graduates can lead to numerous benefits for both the alumni and their alma mater. But how do you engage them, and in what activities should alumni be included? In this session we will explore the importance of alumni engagement and discuss strategies for using alumni.

As institutions we take painstaking care in crafting and agreeing our values. We share them. We talk about them. But how often are we actually checking in on ourselves with how we are living them in our every day interactions? In the choices we make. In the ways that we engage with one another. In this discussion we’ll explore the ways in which we do and do not live and breathe our university values in our every day advancement work, and we’ll share some ideas with each other as to how we might embed them deeper into our work.

The strategy of your institution gives the framework for the alumni engagement and internationalization. Institutions have limited resources to go towards their vision and build wider alumni engagement. Cooperation with other HEIs can give valuable support to reach the goals and build even better engagement for alumni network. Where to start? What to expect? Join us to discuss about the potential of HEI cooperation for alumni relations development.

Our academic colleagues are the people behind the knowledge, programmes and innovations that ensures our institutions thrive. They are often deep in the work of research and teaching. And yet for advancement activities to thrive - from fundraising to recruitment, from reputation management to policy influencing - we need to invite them into partnership with advancement professionals and to support our work, as well as us supporting theirs. In this session we’ll explore ways in which we can build mutual understanding and a true sense of shared purpose with our academic colleagues, get them excited about advancement activities, and design them in such a way in which everybody gets to win.