One of the joys of fundraising is cultivating relationships with volunteers who care deeply about your institution. This session explores the complete volunteer lifecycle, including identifying potential leaders, effective recruitment strategies, training methods to maximize effectiveness, and management techniques to drive results while keeping volunteers engaged. We'll also address how to properly celebrate volunteer contributions and maintain meaningful relationships even after formal service concludes.

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.

Join us for an engaging presentation that explores the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) in the realm of educational fundraising. Uncover the potential of AI to revolutionize how institutions connect with alumni, build relationships, and secure vital financial resources. Come learn how AI can empower your institution to achieve new levels of fundraising success while fostering lifelong relationships with donors.

Strengthen your development strategy through intentional, collaborative goal setting. This session offers practical approaches for working with fundraisers to set data-informed, realistic, and aspirational goals that align with organizational priorities. Explore strategies for driving shared ownership, building accountability, and using goal conversations as a tool for motivation, coaching, and continuous improvement. Whether you're refining an established process or building a new framework, this session focuses on aligning people, data, and purpose to maximize impact.

Effective multimedia experiences leverage technology to “show” stories in new and interesting ways. Whether it be audio, video, animation, augmented reality, virtual reality or [insert technology not invented yet], none of these will resonate with your audience unless they have an authentic emotional story at their core. Ravi invites all around the proverbial campfire to unpack the primordial hooks and motivations of enduring storytelling. Collectively, we will examine how new and existing technologies can be integrated to serve content to emotionally engage both new and old audiences. In this session, you will:

• Learn how to identify core story forms within their brand and institutional messaging.
• Consider how time-based media can offer a new perspective on an existing story.
• Get inspired by how new media vehicles can be leveraged to support and extend an established advancement strategy.

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.

From “annual fund in a campaign”: 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.

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.

In this craft workshop, we’ll break down an award-winning magazine feature story, discovering how a topic—a sizable grant to support digital scholarship (institutionally important, yes; scintillating to the reader, um, no)—evolves into a deeply reported, emotional narrative that tells a story that is not only difficult to ignore, but one readers will likely never forget.

You may be asked to assist with or lead media relations efforts for your institution—be prepared to own earned media! This session will prepare you to talk about the importance of earned media, provide necessary context on today’s media landscape, and present you with the tools to prepare yourself, faculty, or administrators for media opportunities. Teresa will share how to assess an inbound media opportunity or pitch a proactive story, outline the information to include in a briefing document, and discuss how to provide resources to those who will be interviewed (including you!) so that the experience is positive, and tips for increasing speakers’ chances of being included in a reporter’s piece. Finally, the session will cover how to report earned media successes.