Great stories aren’t just nice to have, they’re a strategic advantage to better connect with your audiences. This session explores how you can move beyond feel-good narratives to craft purposeful stories that directly support institutional priorities like recruitment, retention, and advancement. Attendees will learn how to identify the stories that matter most, align them with key goals, and deploy them across channels for measurable impact. This presentation will equip you with a framework to turn storytelling into one of your most powerful tools for driving results.

Regardless of how an advancement shop chooses to structure alumni relations and development, there are often natural opportunities for alumni teams to collaborate with development teams to engage prospective and current donors in meaningful ways. In this session, you will hear relevant examples of alumni professionals partnering with development officers to cultivate donors in the major gift cycle, while also providing alumni audiences with unique and special experiences. You will gain insight into the win-win opportunities that you can create in your advancement shop that lead to major gifts while also engaging alumni with impactful, alumni-centered programming.

Good ideas rarely succeed on their own. In advancement organizations, meaningful change depends on how people interpret information, respond to risk, build trust, and navigate competing priorities. This session explores how decisions really get made inside institutions and how advancement professionals can increase their influence at any level of the organization. Grounded in principles from decision science, organizational behavior, and change management, attendees will learn practical strategies for communicating ideas effectively, building credibility across teams, and helping new initiatives gain traction. Through real-world examples and interactive discussion, participants will leave with tools for becoming stronger strategic partners and more effective agents of change.