This year we are putting your feedback into action and are shaking things up at the CASE Leadership Summit! Since two is always better than one in the world of advancement, we are thrilled to bring you an exciting double-header for our opening session.

Our surveys are always filled with comments about the value of the connection and conversations that emerge when we are together. To open this session, we have invited Chad Littlefield, bestselling author of Ask Powerful Questions: Create Conversations that Matter, to kick off the conference with an engaging and thoughtful connection experiment. He will also be joining us throughout the summit to facilitate creative and thoughtful conversations and meaningful interactions.

Following Chad, Daniel Pink, international bestselling author of Drive, To Sell Is Human, and The Power Of Regret, offers some answers on how to navigate what’s next for higher education. From deepening political turmoil to rising artificial intelligence, the world of higher education has never been more tumultuous. How can key decision-makers in fundraising, alumni relations, and communications and marketing navigate this new terrain? In this entertaining and provocative session, Dan will offer an array of specific, actionable tips to help you find your footing and inspire you to work smarter and better.

The working landscape in 2023 is dramatically different than it was when today’s leaders were beginning their careers. The speed of innovation alone requires many of us to adapt in ways our mentors were not able to prepare us for. We are reminded of ongoing change almost daily while leading colleagues from multiple generations who have very different life and workplace experiences from our own. Key to being able to unlock the potential of ourselves and our teams is to dial into and grow our individual skillsets of empathy and self-awareness.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming how we work, live, and learn. In this session, we will explore how for-profit industries have embraced AI and how advancement teams can learn from their experience. We will elaborate on the ways AI will fundamentally alter fundraising by enhancing efficiency, streamlining donor engagement, lowering costs, and giving institutional leadership real-time insights for better decision-making. Using case studies from institutions at the forefront of leveraging AI in their philanthropy efforts, we will highlight best practices and use real-world examples to demonstrate how AI is beginning to help universities identify and prioritize prospects, increase gift revenue, and ultimately build better donor and alumni relationships. And, we will discuss the challenges and ethical considerations that come with integrating AI into advancement for higher education.
(Thanks to ChatGPT, the AI-driven natural language processing tool, which helped write this session description.)

Learning Objective 1: Increase understanding of how AI will support the efforts and effectiveness of your advancement operations and learn how to begin leveraging AI for prospect discovery and one-to-one donor engagement.

Learning Objective 2: Increase awareness of the ethical and data implications of embracing AI for fundraising in higher education.

The American Council on Education, in partnership with the University of Southern California, produced a series of reports that provide critical information for understanding, implementing, and being successful in Shared Equity Leadership. As we know, institutional transformation occurs when leadership emphasizes the critical role of centering equity as a priority and connecting practices to structures and processes, especially during times of uncertainty. Shared equity leadership provides advancement leaders a unique opportunity to scale their equity work by organizing teams across the division to take collective responsibility for developing and moving diversity and inclusion priorities forward. This session will describe how Brown University's Advancement Division pivoted when our nation faced a worldwide health crisis and organically applied shared equity leadership to achieve its diversity and inclusion fundraising priorities and goals.

Learning Objective 1: Assess the needs of your division, opportunities for collaboration, and identify who will take responsibility for the collective work.

Learning Objective 2: Establish a process to move goals forward and evaluate how to improve and elevate projects.

Philanthropically engaged women have swagger, invest for impact, and expect to be in dialogue with your institution. Colleges and universities that have focused on women’s engagement and giving are experiencing huge wins. Women historically build community, collaborate, and care about the welfare of others. Understanding these characteristics and motivations are part of the key to unlocking the potential impact women’s philanthropy can have on your institution. This panel of experts with perspectives grounded in research will share how they have applied the principles of successful women’s philanthropy to increase engagement and giving at their institutions. Women have tremendous resources and are poised and ready to be influential, strategic, and engaged investors for your institution. Join us to learn how to position your shop for successful engagement with this critical group of stakeholders.

Learning Objective 1:Upon completion participants will deepen their understanding of the philanthropic motivations and unrealized impact of women that could be applied to their university advancement programs.

Learning Objective 2: Upon completion participants will gain insight into the invisible and unintentional barriers that inhibit or neglect to maximize women’s giving.

In the past five years, the number of institutions with marketing and communications leaders that sit on the university cabinet or report directly to the institution’s president has grown by more than 30 percent. There is a good reason for this positive development. As the author of How to Market a University Terry Flannery explains, "marketing strategy must mirror institutional strategy".

In recent times, institutions have been challenged by significant marketing problems including poor public perceptions of higher education, questions about the value proposition for parents and students, brand management through mergers and acquisitions, digital marketing and marketing technology growth, brand and the customer experience, transformational state investments and political challenges, athletic issues, and more. Leading your institution to success requires both institutional focus and commitment, as well as leaders who know that institutional challenges require more than a good story.

Learning Objective 1: How to build a case for support among university leadership using industry trend data around the maturation of marketing and branding organizations and leadership.

Learning Objective 2: Awareness and understanding of new research on public perceptions of higher education including an interesting disconnect between how alumni opinions of their own experience differ from a broader decline in public trust.