Session Description: Seoul Foreign School (SFS) celebrates its 16th year of the Annual Giving program, marking significant progress in building a philanthropic culture. After overcoming early challenges, the school focused on community engagement, launching initiatives like parent challenges, giving weeks, and annual campaigns. These efforts led to significant increases in donations and participation. This session will explore SFS’s strategies, successes, and lessons learned, inviting other institutions to share their experiences and ideas in building impactful giving communities. In this session, I would like to share some of the strategies used, successes and lessons learnt during our philanthropic journey and open the discussion to other educational institutions sharing similar experiences, new ideas and approaches.



Learning Outcomes : - Strategies for a successful community challenge - Preparations for a giving week/campaign - Lessons learnt and challenges - Impact of philanthropy

What is the key takeaway from this session?: Taking challenges to overcome obstacles and creating a culture of giving. The key role of community in philanthropy.

Session Description: A Fundraising campaign can be a pivotal tool to achieve a greater financial goal, build and foster community, deepen engagement with alumni and enhance the brand and reputation of your organisation. There are several reasons why you might choose not to run one from the intensity of resource, reputational risks, donor fatigue and lack of planning and clarity of its purpose. This session will explore assessing readiness for a campaign, the different phases of a campaign and what is required at each stage and alternatives if not thinking about a campaign.

Session Description:Drawing on insights from a comprehensive benchmarking study of advancement practices in leading Australian independent schools, this session will explore how strategic alignment between advancement functions and school leadership can drive sustainable growth and deeper engagement. Dr. Paul Teys, a leadership consultant with extensive experience in educational advancement, will present evidence-based strategies on how schools have successfully used benchmarking data to refine alumni relations, fundraising, marketing, and community engagement. The session will highlight how schools have increased donor engagement, improved campaign success, and strengthened leadership collaboration by adopting data-driven approaches and aligning advancement efforts with broader organisational goals. Delegates will gain actionable insights into building productive partnerships with school leadership and enhancing community engagement. This session will be particularly valuable for advancement professionals and school leaders seeking to optimise engagement strategies and drive measurable outcomes.

Session Description: Alumni engagement must meet graduates where they are—online. This session explores the ANU New Alumni Welcome Program, highlighting innovative digital strategies to build strong connections with new alumni in their first year. It will cover audience profiling, segmentation, and personalised content to enhance engagement and long-term participation.

Session Description: This session will engage attendees in a dialogue around the universality of data, technology, and AI, and their applications and benefits for educational institutions across the world. Presented by Greg Hagin, Principal & Managing Director, CCS Fundraising, Ashutosh Nandeshwar, Executive Vice President of Data Science and Analytics, CCS Fundraising, and Kapil Kaul, CEO, IIT Kanpur Foundation, we will address the truly global nature of data and its consistency across all cultures and countries, as well as the nuance associated with laws and customs. Attendees will benefit from tactical recommendations on identifying where their institution is in its data journey, what data is available, and applications of AI and data science for schools and universities of all levels.

Session Description: Every organisation is subject to a variety of data privacy and other laws intended to protect the individuals you engage with. Software compliance – making sure the systems you use to run your advancement follow industry and security best practices – is a critical guide to ensuring that you are abiding by these laws and standards in a digitally driven world. Of course, if you’re actively working to keep your institution compliant, you already know this can be more complex than it sounds. Legislation grows increasingly rigorous each year, with a patchwork of national and international standards to follow, and your stakeholders’ expectations around privacy, payments, accessibility, security, and AI are rapidly evolving. Keeping up with and ensuring adherence is far from a small task. But there are big things at stake. As you navigate this environment, this session will address five key questions to help you have a conversation with your colleagues and vendors to assess how you’re doing on software compliance – with tips and tricks that propel your ability to meet changing needs as you focus to raise resources, deliver programmes, manage operations, and measure impact. The outcome? To embrace cloud software and compliance as strong partners – and take the lead through clear and transparent adoption.

Session Description: At the heart of transformational philanthropy is a well-crafted gift proposition that connects a donor’s passion with an institution’s vision. But developing compelling, high-level propositions that inspire action requires more than just stating a need. This session explores a framework for creating “big idea,” high-level gift propositions that attract big gifts. Through real-world examples and practical strategies, participants will learn how to, and how not to, articulate transformational opportunities that emphasize vision, impact, and urgency—whether they’re seeking support for capital projects, endowed positions, innovative programs, or anything in between.