Culture can be an afterthought in advancement. We hire mission-driven, self-motivated fundraisers for autonomous, competitive jobs and expect them to buy into our existing culture. Yet, in a post-pandemic workforce, culture matters more than ever. To attract, grow and retain top performers, we must build and rebuild a powerful, sticky culture. In this session, you'll learn how and why to foster trust, belonging and celebration to create a magnetic culture where top performers want to stay.

Nothing about Annual Giving is simple in the modern area. Do you have an idea for a campaign or a strategy? Are you struggling with an aspect of Annual Giving? Or just looking to steal good ideas from peers?

Join the experts that have grown and built Annual Giving programs to engage in fun conversations around your topics! You bring the ideas we will brainstorm approaches as a group to tackle those ideas. What's that crazy idea you have been thinking about that you want to dig into with your peers?

Session Description: At Owl Nation, we help new hires acclimate quickly to support Kennesaw State University’s (KSU) fundraising goals. The University Advancement onboarding process equips new fundraising hires and other Advancement employees with a 30-day checklist to help navigate the first month of employment (and beyond). Our efforts are focused on acclimating new hires to the KSU mission statement, brand, values, and our division's organizational structure, culture and goals. Through successful onboarding, new hires acclimate quickly so they can focus on metrics, moves management, donor research, and donors enhancing the office’s capacity to meet its fundraising goals.

Ever wondered how to get an internal DEIB committee started? Wonder if it is needed or how to get support for growing DEIB initiatives. Join us as we discuss the process of creating a DEIB committee, what is needed and if adding this professional development will impact your employee retention efforts.

Despite the many benefits diverse voices and backgrounds bring to fundraising teams, universities often struggle finding talent that reflects the communities they serve. While leaders believe it’s critical to encourage diverse, young voices to become advancement professionals, they do not always know the best ways to recruit, retain, or evaluate employees whose lived experiences are different from their own. This session offers a blueprint to cultivate homegrown fundraising talent through fellows’ programs and apprenticeships and provides first-hand advice from young fundraisers on what works and what doesn’t to help them want to join and stay on your advancement team.

Hear from two universities that implemented a new strategy for increasing leadership annual gifts and major gifts. Donor Experience Officers manage portfolios of 1,000 prospects they primarily engage with digitally. They are responsibly for highly personal outreach to 50+ prospects every day. Western Kentucky University and the University of Memphis launched their DXO programs a couple of years apart and have implemented in ways both similar and different. Hear from staff at every level of the program - VPs, a program manager, and a practicing DXO about the program and the results.

The Ask should be a creative experience and journey. We, as fundraisers, are representatives, advocates, researchers, storytellers, guides and connectors who navigate and help shape, mold a sandbox of options for a donor. Preparation and practice as a listener and creative partner, with your organization's priorities in mind, will allow you to a provide be a compass for a conversation about support. This also helps with an approachable and enjoyable solicitation experience. Participants will review the elements of an ask and explore an approach to acknowledge and build as a portion of fundraising through discussions and exercises.

We created an aggregation of different dashboards that get delivered to the development officers by email with analytics, reminders and highlights of areas needing attention related to their assigned prospects. This dashboard provides the DO with key information so they can be proactive and take actions based on the items displayed. For example, birthdays, pledges due soon, pledges past due, recent write offs, gift from their prospects coming from any source online, an event, etc.), actions entered to someone in their portfolio by another development officer, prospects attendance or registration to an event. Details on prospects in the solicitation stage.

Making it easier for donors to give may just be the most effective strategy in the savvy fundraiser’s toolkit—and we’ve got the conversion metrics (and science!) to prove it. In this session, we’ll show you how applying classic principles of persuasion science to your everyday fundraising challenges can dramatically improve donor engagement and move the needle on dollars raised. Using the Fogg Behavior Model as a framework for understanding donor motivation and ability, Birmingham-Southern College and GiveCampus will share how their partnership, and a few simple strategies, have achieved impressive real-world results.

Today donors want to give with a single click of a button. Annual Giving teams are working to meet donors where they are. As such gift processing teams find themselves supporting several giving avenues across various platforms including traditional donation pages, social media, gaming systems, and much more. Plus they must be able to accept the traditional gift and the new age gift, from checks to cryptocurrency. What impact does this have on a Gift Processing team? How can you support your giving teams and donors but still keep high rates of efficiency?