Al Dea is the Founder of Betterwork Labs, a leadership development & consulting firm focused on helping leaders create organizations where their people can thrive. He is a speaker, consultant, and researcher on the future of work, leadership development, and organizational strategy.

In the past year, the value of a college degree has faced scrutiny, tuition prices have climbed in reaction to inflated operational expenses, and Supreme Court rulings have shaken up the education sector. These challenges have exposed how critical endowments are to institutional sustainability, growth, and financial health. Our work as fundraising professionals in this sector has never been more important, and the need for a strong endowment has never been more significant. Join this panel discussion to hear development and advancement leaders from across District II weigh in on how they are making the case for endowment at their institutions. The group will discuss how their students, faculty, and communities have benefited from endowment-focused efforts and offer strategies to motivate, solicit, and steward endowment prospects.

Quality communications work resonates with a broad swath of constituents and brings everyone into the conversation - it makes everyone feel included. How often, though, have you crafted a social media campaign, a print magazine, an admission or marketing piece, a video, only to hear from your Diversity, Equity, and Belonging team that you shouldn't use it? Or even worse, you didn't ask them for feedback and ended up hearing from a segment of your community that you missed the mark and possibly alienated a group of families or alumni? In this session, we will discuss not only the importance of fully integrating a DEB/DEI lens into your communications work, but best practices for creating a culture that allows both programs to thrive.

Deans and Dollars: Maximizing Dean Partnerships for Fundraising Success In an academic setting, often times, the alignment between the dean and the fundraising team will often dictate its success or failure. Deans can thoughtfully articulate fundraising priorities, work to establish a culture of collaboration and inspire generosity ….BUT they can’t do it alone. In this session, we will share best practices for effectively partnering with your dean to achieve fundraising success.

Learn how the Pitt Alumni Association utilizes student engagement opportunities to emulate the alumni experience for a student audience, strengthening the student-to-alumni pipeline and providing opportunities for alumni to give back. During this presentation, you will learn how the Associate Director of Young Alumni & Student Programs rebranded the student programs under the association’s umbrella and created new opportunities for students to get involved with the Pitt Alumni Association by collaborating with PAA and Student Affairs colleagues.

The communication function across university campuses is generally classified as centralized or decentralized with both having their share of pros and cons. Does the communication function need to be described as one of the other? What if we dissolved these terms in favor of a more collaborative model? The advancement communications team in the Development and Alumni Relations division at Howard University was created less than three years ago as a model to extend and expand the communication function, not replace the university communications role. Learn how the new team was built, overcame challenges and addressed concerns to become a top partner of the university communications office while also fulfilling primary needs of the development division.

Join us for a dynamic and interactive workshop designed to outline a DEIB program created in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, that has sustained and expanded efforts to engage the development and alumni relations staff at Johns Hopkins University in their personal journey, create opportunities to learn from colleagues at regional educational institutions, and build a pipeline of underrepresented college students to consider a profession in development. We will discuss the evolution of DRIVE (Diversity, Race, Inclusion, Vulnerability, Equity) from 2020, how we engage development executive leadership in the process, and some of the challenges of sustainability.

In a year when Barbie is breaking major records at the box office, more women are holding the highest political positions globally, the female labor force rate is historically high, and entertainers like Taylor Swift and Beyonce have boosted economies worldwide, the collective power of women should not be underestimated. As the fastest-growing charitable group globally, women are earning more educational degrees than men, holding many leadership positions in the workplace, and making the majority of consumer decisions in the home. Yet, most universities have not revised their antiquated fundraising practices to reflect this new certainty. This presentation inclusive of facilitated discussion will focus on the different motivations and patterns for giving between genders. By not embracing these differences, advancement shops are leaving money on the table and losing out on valuable insights, passion, and power with those who identify as women, a critical market segment that all we should all be talking about. Schools large and small can learn valuable information, discuss strategy, and hear compelling case studies about women’s philanthropy while learning how to implement a new philanthropic paradigm that embraces women's authenticity, empowerment, leading to impressive increases in philanthropic investment.

This past year, members of Rochester Institute of Technology’s advancement team launched a highly innovative approach to building a comprehensive engagement plan with the ultimate goal of matching strategy across teams.
This divisional approach to understanding and prioritizing both individual and university fundraising priorities transformed a simple fiscal year calendar into a robust plan of dynamic and creative engagement strategies that extend beyond traditional events.
Learn how the realignment to shared goals and purposeful activity can propel your entire team through a year’s worth of high-value engagement opportunities that strengthen the donor pipeline and unite your organization within a shared strategy.