Your prospect portfolio is one of your most powerful tools as a fundraising professional, but are you managing it to its full potential? This session explores the mindset and acumen needed to approach portfolio management with confidence and purpose. We'll then dive into the mechanics of organizing, prioritizing, and moving relationships forward. Whether you’re new to portfolios or refining your strategy, you’ll leave with practical tools to maximize results and build long-term success.

What does it take to turn a donor’s intent into a clear, actionable, and compliant gift agreement? This session explores the critical collaboration between fundraisers and advancement services in structuring agreements that honor donor goals while protecting institutional integrity. Attendees will learn what makes a strong gift agreement, gain clarity on each team’s role, and hear real-world stories illustrating how shared understanding leads to better outcomes - for donors and the institution.

In this session, you’ll learn how to create and maintain a custom AI assistant that helps you work smarter, scale your impact, and free up time for the human side of philanthropy. You’ll see how it can support your work across annual giving, research, and frontline efforts, with ideas you can adapt to your own context. You’ll leave with clear ways to keep your AI sharp, relevant, and actually useful in your day-to-day work.

Join us for an interactive session exploring current and emerging applications of AI across advancement operations from data management to prospect development and beyond. We’ll demonstrate practical AI tools that can support your day-to-day productivity. Learn how to evaluate and integrate AI responsibly, while navigating the risks and rewards of this rapidly evolving technology.

Campaigns are more than fundraising initiatives - they are organizational exercises that require alignment between strategy, systems, people, and institutional priorities. This session explores practical approaches to campaign planning across advancement, including portfolio readiness, pipeline development, reporting, goal setting, and cross-functional collaboration. Drawing on real-world examples and organizational perspectives, this session highlights how thoughtful planning and alignment across advancement can strengthen campaign execution and improve fundraising outcomes.

Explore how impactful donor reporting can strengthen stewardship, deepen engagement, and demonstrate the value of philanthropy. This session will examine how advancement services professionals can help identify meaningful data and stories that showcase donor impact in authentic and compelling ways. Participants will learn practical strategies for developing effective impact reports, collaborating across campus or organization teams, and creating engaging content that resonates with donors—even with limited time and resources. From storytelling techniques to budget-conscious design and delivery methods, attendees will leave with actionable ideas to elevate their donor communications.

A well-utilized CRM is the backbone of successful fundraising, alumni engagement, and data-driven decision-making. However, implementation and optimization are often easier said than done. Join us as we share hard-won lessons, pitfalls to avoid, and best practices for getting the most out of your CRM. Whether you're transitioning to a new system, struggling with user adoption, or looking to unlock advanced functionality, this discussion will provide actionable insights to drive efficiency and results.

Advancement operations is the backbone of successful fundraising, ensuring data integrity, compliance, and operational efficiency. But how do you balance strict policies with the flexibility needed to drive donor engagement? How do you optimize policies and practices while aligning with aligning with institutional values and principles? This session will equip you to build or refine advancement operations that support your mission.

Based on the British cyberneticist W. Ross Ashby's "Law of Requisite Variety," this session aims to provide ample concepts, tools, and techniques found within data science and operations science to tackle perennial, and perhaps even novel, issues found within Advancement. Beyond describing the concepts of "requisite variety" and "continuous process improvement," this session also details a Data-to-Strategy (D2S) framework (i.e., DARIUS: Data --> Automation/AI --> Reporting --> Intelligence --> Utility --> Strategy), both for common core D2S literacy and for career pathing functional specialties within one or more DARIUS areas. Finally, the creation of the Market Opportunities & Inventory Research & Analysis (i.e., MOIRA) will be discussed as the operationalization and application of the D2S framework for prospect development.