Known for creative and innovative marketing campaigns, Ashley Budd is one of the most influential voices in education marketing and fundraising. In her popular creative brainstorming class, Ashley shares how she crafts timely and relevant messages, visuals, stories, and digital content through division-wide brainstorming sessions. Learn her brainstorming framework for bringing teams together and solidifying buy-in for creative projects. Ashley will share how to leverage online tools, create an audience mindset, lean on team member strengths, and make it fun!

Fundraising campaigns are complex, and so is the blueprint for campaign marketing and communications. We have to reach a variety of constituents for a ton of different reasons over a period of years. And all the while we have to tell a coherent story based in our institution’s values, mission, and plans. So where to start? What to produce and why? This is doable.

There’s no shortage of projects and priorities. How do you make sure you’re making the most of your limited resources and focusing on what matters most to your institution? In this presentation, Mike Barzacchini will share a planning process and tools for organizing your marketing, communication, and other advancement efforts to move your institution’s strategic priorities forward. The session will also include tools to help you share your story with internal stakeholders to gain buy-in and support.

No matter the size of your institution or the size of your advancement team, engagement events are likely an important part of your strategy to connect with alumni and donors. Therefore, it is vitally important for you to be thoughtful about the purpose of your events, the intended outcomes and how you will measure success, the data that will be collected, and the affinity that will be created as you advance relationships with your attendees. In this session, we will examine the elements of these strategic conversations, while also looking at the return on investment and the permanent integration of virtual events within our engagement strategies.

What are standard reports? What should they look like? What tools can be used to create them? And how will they help drive your fundraising program forward? How are campaign reports different from standard reports? What do you measure and why? What are the key performance indicators for benchmarking?  

The more siloed the campus, the more common the problem: When there is a change in strategy, you have to get all stakeholders to agree. You need buy-in. You need to turn nay-sayers into advocates. How do you get everyone to agree that the change is right? In this session, you will hear about two significant shifts in email communication strategy: One from admissions at Penn State and the other from fundraising at Cornell. You will leave with an understanding of a proven method to get large, decentralized groups to agree on a shared strategy and become the champions of its implementation. In this session, you’ll learn: How to prepare and present a strategy proposal. Which stakeholders to involve at what times when proposing change. How to use data or charts to help you make irrefutable arguments.

At the route of every successful marketing or communications project is a solid plan where everyone knows their role and has enough time to complete their tasks. How do we find this project utopia? Someone needs to claim the role of project manager, and your team leader is not always the best person for the job. Ashley holds “very good list maker” as one of her key identity traits, and found herself serving as project manager in unofficial capacities for many projects early in her career. Learn how to step into the role of project manager and what each project must have in place to keep your marcomm machine running

When crafting a story, conducting a branding initiative, or planning a campaign, it often starts with an interview

As a marketer or communicator, how well do you tell your own story? To gain support, influence, or just understanding, it's important to share your story regularly and strategically with internal stakeholders.

Each one of our institutions has a distinct voice, a personality that your constituents can recognize immediately. This interactive session will help you identify your school's voice and will show how you can bring that voice alive in the pages of your per iodicals and multimedia efforts