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.

What are you called to be? For Georgetown’s Advancement Communications team, they were called to be nimble and strategic amid a shifting landscape to launch the university’s new $3b campaign. With a digital-first rolling launch that spanned six months and culminated in an in-person celebration, the Georgetown team will share how they changed the traditional approach to campaigns for a post-pandemic world.

We all know engaging prospective donors is a constant challenge. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Development team tackled this challenge head-on during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic through the implementation of a groundbreaking initiative – Pipeline Outreach Day (POD). The team has now executed this initiative multiple times, bringing together a diverse team of gift officers, administrative staff, stewardship, annual giving, alumni relations, and foundation relations colleagues, fostering an "all hands-on deck" atmosphere.

Logging over 2,000 outreach attempts, this proactive approach resulted in over 200 qualification conversations and visits with potential donors, and 50+ gifts and pledges. Leveraging various communication platforms with an eye ever toward innovative new strategies, including using LinkedIn and ThankView, this initiative has now become a regular fixture, serving as a valuable pipeline development and team-building activity for the Bloomberg School. Learn about some of the challenges we encountered in this approach and how we evolved to test new methods and continue to grow and deepen this work.

In a constantly changing and global Advancement world, how can we lead our teams with meaning and with purpose to execute a comprehensive campaign? Especially a campaign that has never been attempted before, with ambitious goals that have never been tested? How can we take fundraising and alumni engagement to the next level when there is such a diversity of stakeholders involved? At Niagara College Canada, we have an incredibly large international student population (more than 50 percent of our overall 2023/2024 intake), and we are currently planning for the largest comprehensive campaign in College history (launching Spring 2024). Our two primary campaign goals? To raise $60 million+ and engage 50,000+ alumni over 5 years. This will involve a huge increase in active fundraising and trailblazing alumni outreach unlike anything seen before in our landscape. In this session, come explore key questions and issues with us as we share how the College is devising/executing our strategy while also building out its team resources and community connections to maximize success.

SUNY Geneseo, a small liberal arts college in Western NY, has doubled their annual Reunion attendance since adding affinity anniversaries and celebrations into their Reunion programming. Learn how the addition of alumni affinity programming contributed to the largest Reunion in their college’s history (in 2022) and how your Reunion program can benefit (and grow) by adding alumni affinities.

Your next wave of volunteers, ambassadors and lifelong supporters are in your admissions pipeline now – are you engaging them with the big picture in mind? Parent involvement at school is critical to your institution’s enrollment and development goals, and building a culture of parent participation starts with every family’s first inquiry. In this session, learn how Penn Charter cultivates relationships with new parents, beginning with the application process and continuing throughout a family’s first year. We’ll discuss the ways we’re building a solid partnership between our Admissions and Development teams by centering the needs of incoming and new families, leading to increased parent giving and continuously strong enrollment and retention rates.

Go big or go home! That was how Syracuse University's team approached how they'd bring attention to the annual “Boost the ’Cuse” Day of Giving in 2023. The best way to do it? A full-day LIVE broadcast featuring a big-name host, live hits from across campus and the country, and more than 75 featured SU guests.
In a post-pandemic world, SU saw a need to make folks feel engaged and part of the action. Using a live broadcast, including guests in the studio, in the student center, all over campus, and remotely, SU used the “Boost” broadcast as a way to ensure its Day of Giving didn’t exist in an advancement vacuum, but instead included a celebratory vibe from all over campus and beyond.
In this session, the Syracuse staff responsible for the Boost the ’Cuse Broadcast will walk attendees through the process - from concept to completion - of how this ambitious project came to be. The session will include tips and tricks about tactical planning for a live broadcast, ideas on leveraging existing relationships to help build out an interesting show, ways to use a live broadcast as a vessel to showcase great content from across your institution, and lessons learned to save you time in your own efforts.
Whether you work at a large university or a small independent school, you’ll leave this session with concrete next steps to integrate rich media and an element of live engagement into your institution’s next fundraising drive.