Creating and growing authentic relationships is the foundation of a strong stewardship program. We often focus our efforts around building these relationships with donors – however it is also critical to engage students in the creation of a true philanthropic community. In this session we’ll seek to reframe the relationship between scholarship donors and student scholarship recipients and discuss ways in which we can engage with students as key members of our institutional communities. Partnering with students in new and more equitable ways not only relives the burden on students who rely on scholarship aid but can be helpful in positioning them as future supporters of your institution.

Looking to add to your team? Wanting to launch a new recognition idea as part of your campaign? Fed up with a complicated system and have a great idea to improve its efficiency? Making the case for new people, programs, or processes requires preparation, prose, and a little bit of patience and positivity. Join this session for a discussion, tips, and examples of strategic requests that resonate in a well-organized and clear way.

If you have been charged with creating a stewardship program for your institution's top donors or are looking to refine your current version, this session is for you. We will demonstrate how to build a distinct high-level stewardship and engagement program framework through the use of creative personalized stewardship and engagement plans. These plans will ensure you are providing one-of-a-kind experiences for your top donors that will have them raving to leadership and ready to increase their giving!

Our faculty hold key content needed to create Phillips Exeter Academy’s dynamic impact reports to endowed fund donors, but cultivating that content is not always easy – for faculty or the donor relations team! Exeter’s Donor Relations team will share strategies they have developed for educating faculty on endowed funds and supporting them through impact reporting, including: Hosting our Storytelling Summit for Fund Administrators where chairs and key staff are educated on Exeter’s endowment, their department funds, the foundation of donor relations, and best practices for storytelling for impact with donors; Working with our partners in Finance to create and deliver Fund Administrator memos with critical information; and Creating a system for developing more than 1,000 customized reports to donors. Phillips Exeter Academy is a coeducational, residential secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire. The Donor Relations team delivers customized impact reports to nearly 2,500 individuals of approximately 1,050 funds annually.

Whether your institution is in active campaign mode, celebrating the conclusion of one, or planning for the next; there is lots for donor relations professionals to be thinking about to be sure you’re ready for where you are and what comes next. This session will share key considerations for planning so that donors understand their impact, are recognized appropriately, and are engaged meaningfully in all phases of your Campaign – and always.

This show and tell style session will highlight custom gifts and experiences that will knock your donors socks off. We will highlight examples from a variety of organizations and keep the ideas flowing by passing the mic for you to share your examples as well. Come ready to leave inspired!

As a writer, what I’m about to say is blasphemous: sometimes the written word isn’t the best way to share impact. While many donors prefer the narrative retelling of their philanthropy, sometimes there’s a better approach. How to tell a given story is just as important as the why or the what and this session will share our techniques and approaches on choosing the best medium for the message. We’ll share how a few reports have evolved over the years, how the pandemic forced us to pivot, and what changes have stayed (and which have evolved further). It will also present an opportunity to share some tools we use to help us steward our donors, including Canva, Piktograph, and Shutterfly. While there isn’t one way to do things, we want to share some of the positive impact we’ve received by switching the medium for certain messages.

The past several years have reinforced what we have always known to be a key competency for donor relations teams. We are resilient, capable of more pivots than a television episode featuring a group of individuals living in New York City. We are a creative bunch that figured out how to deliver impact and gratitude in ways that did not involve hand signing letters or hosting in-person experiences. Our organizations are finding we must continue to support a mix of work options from in person to hybrid to remote in an effort to retain and recruit a workforce that now demands flexibility. This session will provide a framework and myriad of samples to support hiring, onboarding, managing, and thriving on a team that sits next to you in a physical or virtual office.

Professional conferences often double as group therapy for advancement professionals. You not only get to learn best practices and gather new ideas – you also have an opportunity to have your own challenging donor stories validated or hear new ones that dwarf the scale of your own. In this Festivus session you will have a safe space to air your grievances, but also the opportunity to hear ideas and solutions from others that will allow you to return to your institution with solutions for your biggest issues.

Building best-in-class and award-worthy fund reporting can be a multi-year process. In this session we will explore different styles of endowment reporting, how to find out which style is best for your donor relations program, and the steps needed to get there. Additionally, we will layout some of the dos and don’ts of endowment reporting and participants will share experiences on what worked, what did not work, and why.

Honoring donors by naming facilities is a fundamental aspect of philanthropy. However, as time passes, the significance and narratives surrounding these namesakes can diminish. What happens when a building or space is renovated or demolished decades after the name was established? In the absence of a naming rights agreement, it becomes vital to preserve and understand these naming stories. At Southern Methodist University, three teams collaborated, combining the efforts of donor relations, constituent records, and prospect research. Their joint objective was to uncover the forgotten narratives associated with the naming of various spaces and provide informed recommendations to university leadership in preparation for upcoming capital projects. By revealing the lost stories behind each naming, identifying relevant stakeholders, and bridging the past with the present, these colleagues helped the university make well-informed decisions as it looked to the future.