For most academic leaders, fundraising is a foreign language. It's up to you to arm your deans and directors with practical, specific tools they can use to truly boost your fundraising results. This is not easy! Join us for proven advice and steps you can take immediately to strengthen your partnership with your academic leaders, to elevate yourself as a fundraising expert, and to train your academic leaders to have more productive donor conversations at any stage.

We know alumni want to mentor. But how do we create a meaningful and scaled approach? The Jindal School of Management (JSOM) at UT Dallas, in partnership with Graduway, has secured a historic number of virtual engagements with their solution, Meteor Mentoring!

In this session, the Jindal School Alumni Relations and Graduway teams will discuss how to create, measure, and scale digital engagement using a digital-first approach. We will share best practices for recruiting mentors, creating personalized marketing, connecting alumni to their peers, current students, faculty, and more!

At a loss for words in solicitation calls? Reframe your thinking about "the ask" and turn your call reluctance into major gift acceptance. Learn how good planning, a positive attitude, practiced technique and realistic expectations contribute to fundraising success. Oh, and we will discuss what to say and when to say it, too.

Carrie Phillips at ATU is a self-proclaimed print perfector, while Trey Laverty at Slate Group is an ideas guy. Together—they’re solving marketing problems one print piece at a time. And doing it on-time and on-budget. This session is packed with tips about working with a budget, finding inspiration, design alternatives, and assessing work.

Plus, we’ll unite to solve print challenges we’ve all faced. We’ll bring tape, glue, and scissors. And you’ll leave with loads of ideas to enhance print marketing.

Here’s what we know for sure: The more valuable, beautiful, useful content your organization puts into the world, the more supporters you’ll attract and retain. It’s a simple formula—but it’s easier said than done. In this lively, example-filled presentation, you’ll learn how to foster a culture of content within your organization—even if you’re strapped for time, money, and resources. Designed for any communications professional who believes in the power of free, helpful, audience-focused content to support your organizational goals, this session is a must.

Our institutions rely on volunteers in a wide variety of settings: as advocates, advisors, decision-makers, donors, and more. Whether you are working with governing boards or advisory councils, there are a number of basic, tried-and-true principles (plus a few crafty "pro-tips") that will help you when forming or managing these groups. Join an experienced and engaging veteran of creating, utilizing, and serving on numerous boards over a quarter-century career in advancement to discuss the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHY, and HOW of volunteer boards and committees and learn how to maximize their positive impact on your institution and your advancement programs.

Here’s what we know for sure: The more valuable, beautiful, useful content your organization puts into the world, the more supporters you’ll attract and retain. It’s a simple formula—but it’s easier said than done. In this lively, example-filled presentation, you’ll learn how to foster a culture of content within your organization—even if you’re strapped for time, money, and resources. Designed for any communications professional who believes in the power of free, helpful, audience-focused content to support your organizational goals, this session is a must.

Wonder what it really takes to be a truly successful fundraiser? In this session, you'll get practical advice and tactical steps you can start using right away to strengthen your skills, be more productive and raise more money. Whether you're new to fundraising, mid-career seeking growth, or a seasoned leader looking for clearer, more specific skills to hire for and measure beyond just the metrics, this session is for you.

Many institutions have seen their phone programs come and go during these unprecedented times. We want to discuss the ins and outs of making these decisions and the repercussion of doing so. As the Phonathon as we know, it has involved into a full Digital Engagement effort, we want to dive into the importance of utilizing text, video, e-mail, in addition to the traditional phone call. We will explore all of these avenues during this session and encourage everyone to be involved in the discussion.

As companies, organizations, and individuals compete to train, build, and model AI to do a number of different tasks. If we do not consider how to insert DEI objectives and check points into those processes, we will find that our own creations will exacerbate many of the issues we're trying to mitigate.