Venture funds are no longer just the domain of institutions in wealthy tech areas. From independent, return-driven vehicles to university/school-operated, mission-aligned programs, institutions of every size are exploring how institutional venture funds, and more broadly the associated institution venture ecosystem, can transform alumni engagement, fuel philanthropic giving, attract entrepreneurial students, and retain faculty talent. This hands-on pre-conference workshop brings together practitioners running real programs — at large research universities and small liberal arts colleges alike — to give advancement leaders an honest, practical map of the landscape. Participants will leave with:

1. A clear understanding of the spectrum of fund structures and how to match them to institutional goals
2. Practical knowledge of gift vehicles, legal considerations, and policy constraints (including DAFs and private company equity)
3. Frameworks for integrating venture ecosystems into alumni engagement and fundraising strategy
4. A peer network of colleagues exploring similar programs.

Whether your institution is just beginning to explore the idea or looking to deepen an existing program's integration with advancement strategy, this session delivers actionable frameworks and peer dialogue.

The advancement sector is undergoing significant disruption. Traditional funding streams are shifting and institutions are being challenged to rethink how they engage with their communities, communicate with the public, fundraise and demonstrate impact. Alongside this, there is considerable movement of people across the profession. New talent is entering advancement, while others are stepping into leadership roles - often moving from leading within functions to leading across teams, stakeholders and systems. This workshop is designed to develop the mindsets and approaches needed to navigate change with courage and confidence. It will explore what it means to lead courageously in today’s advancement landscape, drawing on Common Purpose’s expertise in Leading Beyond Authority and Future-Ready Leadership. Participants will be invited to reflect on:

1. How to lead and influence beyond formal authority
2. How to navigate uncertainty and complexity with confidence
3. How to take action and create momentum, even without all the answers

Get your Summit off to a perfect start by taking some time for you to reflect on your leadership – and take it to the next level.

Imagine a pipeline of 250,000 people ready to volunteer to be engaged. That is exactly Amanda Litman has created – a cadre of people eager to stand up and do something to make their communities a better place. Her experiences through Run for Something and as a professional political campaign staffer led her to understand a lot about what next generation leaders – Millennials and Gen Z – want and expect from their workplaces and their institutional relationships. This session will take a deep dive into the generational change unfolding in our workplaces, with our alumni, students and across society, and will explore how we all might think a bit differently about our leadership of multi-generational teams, and what might need to change.

People born after 1980 now create virtually all of the world's "new wealth" and between 2020 and 2050 tens of trillions of dollars of the world's "old wealth" will be transferred to them. How much of this wealth they choose to give-and how and where they choose to give it-will define philanthropy for the next 75 years. But only 1 in 18 graduates from the last twenty years gives to their alma mater. If we don't change that, the prevailing pattern of "dollars up, donors down" will soon morph into "dollars down." In this session, leaders from different vantage points across the advancement industry will make the case for a genuine industry-wide transformation to meet this moment. They will describe why incremental change won't be enough and share how artificial intelligence makes more significant change possible over very short periods of time. This will include several case studies of AI-enabled transformation from inside and outside of the advancement sector. This session will challenge long-held assumptions, push attendees to rethink everything from operating models and organizational structures to metrics and incentives, and provide attendees with a framework for designing, driving, and managing change.

What alumni say they value – and how we attempt to engage them – doesn’t always align. That gap can reveal both opportunities and potential risks for as institutions consider engagement strategy and pipeline growth. Howard Heevner and Jenny Cooke Smith connect attitudinal findings from the National Alumni Survey with behavioral benchmarks from CASE Insights on Alumni Engagement to show engagement and philanthropic opportunities. They will also share practical examples of how leaders are using this data to rethink outreach, assess pipeline strength, and build more effective long-term strategies.

Fundraising challenges rarely start with the ask. They begin years earlier, when trust is either quietly built or unintentionally eroded through misalignment between marketing and advancement. This session makes a clear case that donor confidence is downstream from institutional trust, and that trust is shaped jointly by marketing and advancement, whether leaders intend it or not. The session focuses on leadership choices that influence trust long before a campaign begins. Participants will leave with six leadership strategies to strengthen collaboration, reduce risk, and protect institutional trust.

The profession you entered is not the profession you lead today. Institutional revenue drivers have changed; in many cases they are more fragile. Our relationships with constituents has evolved – and the ways we engage with them, by necessity, are evolving as well. Public trust in higher education has eroded. And the advancement leader's role has expanded well beyond any single discipline, pulling us into address questions of institutional identity, political pressure, and societal relevance that our predecessors' predecessors never faced. In this candid conversation, Paul Rucker sits down with outgoing CASE Board Chair Fritz Schroeder and incoming Board Chair Rachel Sandison to explore that tension directly. Fritz and Rachel have arrived at the top of this field by different paths. That difference is the point. What have we gotten right as the landscape shifted? Where have we been too slow to change? And what does it mean to lead well (not just effectively) from here?

Advancement operates at the intersection between the institution and its constituents, and the institution’s CEO is its most visible champion. Advancement leaders need a window into the CEO’s perspective and the pressures leaders face. In this plenary session, CASE President and CEO Sue Cunningham will engage with three presidents about their goals, challenges, and how advancement leaders can best support them, particularly in times of unprecedented pressures and change.

We will explore how legalized revenue sharing and escalating athletics costs are fundamentally reshaping the higher education business model in athletic departments public and private, with a focus on the implications for advancement strategy, donor expectations, campaign messaging, and cross campus leadership. This session explores how these shifts force advancement leaders to confront uncomfortable questions: - What happens when donor dollars increasingly support compensation rather than aspiration? - How does fundraising strategy adapt when athletics looks less philanthropic and more transactional? - What stories can advancement teams tell that preserve institutional trust while acknowledging this new reality?

AI is no longer a pilot program or a future consideration, it's actively reshaping how advancement offices are structured, how goals are set, and how leaders think about capacity and growth. But the conversation most leaders are having hasn't caught up to where the leading edge already is. This panel brings together advancement leaders from institutions of different sizes and structures who are already navigating this shift in real time. They'll share how Autonomous AI has changed the way they think about staffing plans, performance expectations, fundraising, and organizational design – not theoretically, but based on decisions they've already made and results they've already seen. The conversation will move across three dimensions: how goals and success metrics are evolving when AI is a productive contributor; how leaders are rethinking staffing and capacity; and what the future org chart of an advancement office actually looks like when Autonomous AI Fundraisers are a permanent, productive part of the team. This is a peer-level conversation for leaders who are ready to move from experimenting with AI to building a strategic model of human and AI contributors.