Here's the thing: alumni volunteers are basically a goldmine of talent, energy, and genuine love for your institution. But how do you make sure you're channeling volunteer enthusiasm and leveraging their work for long-term positive impact?In this session, we'll dive into defining strategic objectives for engagement, volunteer recruitment and training, and successful volunteer management. If you're brand new to this and wondering where to even begin—or if your volunteer program needs a refresh—we've got you covered!

Modern advancement shops use metrics and quantitative data to inform decisions. Simply having a good event isn't enough, we are are responsible for developing a pipeline for fundraisers to have success. This session reviews how we can create the opportunities our partners want, communicative what the opportunities are, and then capitalize collaboratively to make progress on fundraising goals.

Attendees will meet daily with curated advisory small groups led by expert faculty members to debrief from the day’s learning and problem solve in real time.

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.

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.

Effective fundraising goals can serve as a planning exercise that illuminates the path to success - clarifying priorities, strengthening portfolio strategy, and improving follow-through across the year. This session offers practical approaches for strengthening goal setting with fundraisers through clarity, collaboration, and structure. We establish shared language around key concepts - metrics, targets, and goals - to support consistent understanding and reduce misalignment in practice. We then explore common approaches to individual fundraising goal setting and the organizational supports that make them effective, including structure, technology, portfolio management practices, historical context, and institutional priorities. When designed well, goal setting becomes both a system for organizational alignment and a tool for fundraisers to gain clarity, focus their efforts, and engage more meaningfully in planning their success.

The future is here, but are we ready for it? Digital transformation is all the buzz within the higher ed Advancement industry, but very few organizations are successful in implementing comprehensive digital strategies. Applying a digital lens over traditional development work can help organizations reach further, faster and make donors feel well taken care of. Come discuss some of the industry trends around digital transformation and how this approach can fit into relationship-based work.

Strong fundraising pipelines are built long before a proposal is written. This session explores how advancement services, alumni engagement, communications, fundraising, and related teams can work together to build a healthier long-term donor pipeline across the institution. Using examples grounded in behavioral science and prospect development, attendees will examine how engagement signals help identify future donors, how organizations move constituents from engagement to philanthropy over time, and how advancement services professionals can support sustainable donor growth beyond short-term fundraising outcomes. Participants will leave with practical ideas for thinking more collaboratively, strategically, and institutionally about pipeline development.

All of our institutions are either preparing for, in the midst of, or transitioning out of a campaign. There is no absolute truth about whether to integrate your annual fund and alumni engagement goals into the campaign, but there are some important considerations to address before you make your decision. And you may even discover mid-way that you want to go in a different direction. This discussion will explore some of the pros, cons, and factors to consider in deciding how, when or if to use your campaign to promote annual giving and alumni engagement.

Your head is full of everything you've learned about advancement. Now what? Where do you start? How do you pull together all the pieces for a successful program? How do you get the greenlight for a great new idea? We'll discuss ways to plan for success, whether you're managing an office, a program, a staff-or just yourself. We will cover the why, approaches for ensuring ROI, managing outcomes, aligning resources, and lead an interactive exercise to support the development of meaningful roadmaps.