Your next generation of alumni volunteers and donors is already on campus. Cultivating relationships with current students can lead to a lifetime of alumni engagement and dedication to giving back. At Fairfield University, the partnership between our alumni engagement and annual giving teams has resulted in underclassmen volunteering and giving at a pace that is leading the charge among our peers. We’re excited to share some “insider info” as to how we achieve our goals. Join us as we discuss how to educate, engage, and empower the students of today into becoming your institution’s leaders of tomorrow.

Creating more inclusive and equitable environments for staff and constituents in our field gained focus after the George Floyd murder. In light of efforts to deprioritize DEIB work around the country, it is necessary to ask how these efforts can be focused on in our work and institutions today. During this interactive and moderated panel discussion, hear from colleagues leading these efforts in their respective institutions as they reflect on what they have accomplished thus far, what barriers exist, and how to keep the momentum alive. Attendees will gain insights on how they can impact this work as individuals, as a team, and as an organization.

Have you been tasked with starting a new giving society? Have you inherited a giving society whose energy has fallen flat? Are you looking for ways to re-energize certain constituents within your donor base? This session will share tips and tricks for creating new giving societies whose mission it is to engage often overlooked groups, like women and parents. It will also include strategies to infuse new energy into an existing planned giving society, to successfully increase the giving threshold of your leadership donor society, and to establish a lifetime giving society.

Join Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Major Gifts Leadership Team for an energetic discussion on aspirational thinking through a significant reorganization (during a pandemic!). Five leaders discuss the merger of two fundraising teams and how a focus on culture building, content fluency, and consistency led to increased aspirational thinking. Throughout, we strived for best practices but found out a little cow bell and laughter go a long way toward success! We’ll share tools we created and dive into tactics that got us through. We invite your best thinking and discussion as you prepare for an interactive session.

This discussion will focus on the lived experience of BIPOC, and especially Black, advancement staff in higher education. Organizations all over North America tout the importance of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) in their work and workplace, but how does that feel for BIPOC staff? What is their experience like in workplaces attempting to be more diverse? How can we learn from these (our) lived experiences to make stronger teams, with less turnover and thus a stronger donor base?