Learn how Grinnell College built a bridge between its admission and communications offices by creating new marketing-focused, enrollment-aware positions; reimagining longstanding committees, protocols, and conventions; building pathways to cooperative conversations throughout the creative process; and having cross-departmental colleagues present in each other’s virtual spaces. The result has been a welcomed culture shift among team members who now share a greater appreciation for each other’s challenges. In this year of remote work, the two offices developed collaborative relationships that enriched and streamlined admission marketing efforts, leading to record-setting enrollment metrics.

After a CRM conversion, advancement shops face challenges in system adoption, data integrity, and training all while maintaining momentum in closing gifts. Illinois Real-time Reviews address these challenges using a well-defined process cocreated by advancement services and frontline fundraisers. Conducted in a cross-functional 90-minute sessions, Real-time Reviews bring high priority prospects into focus for fundraisers, outlining next steps and align expectations around data entry.

Learn about the outcomes of the process, including quantifiable progress, improved system adoption, recommendations for additional business improvements and improved working relationships across the advancement enterprise.

The Orchard School had not pursued a campaign in 20 years. Learn how a small development office organized a group of volunteers into a powerhouse campaign cabinet and achieved their campaign goal 18 months ahead of schedule. We will discuss successful campaign goals, improving annual fund challenges, reinvigorating a dormant planned giving program, and how to recruit, train, motivate and retain a top-notch campaign cabinet.

What does making a pisco sour, reviewing scholarships scholarship, and writing postcards have in common? They’re all ways that alumni and friends were successfully engaged virtually that can be easily transitioned into a plan to engage constituent both virtually and in-person. Attend this session to learn how to create a flexible engagement plan that will cater to both in-person and virtual attendees. Participants will also be invited share their successes and failures via virtual engagement.

 

The days of the outdated “telefund” or “phone bank” are long gone. To remain viable and a cost-benefit to your university, it is time to reimagine the possibilities. Using new integrated systems and services, and adding texting and video messaging, you can engage donors in new ways, and more fully utilize your talented student employees.

In an era of declining trust in big societal institutions, higher education is no exception – and you, as an advancement professional used to interacting with external audiences, are well-positioned as a countervailing force to this current negativity. CASE’s Discover the Next campaign builds off local successes and highlights research-tested approaches to showing the value of higher education through individual achievement, economic impact, innovation and scientific progress, and cultural vitality. Learn what tools and resources are available to help your institution connect with all stakeholders, from prospective students to alumni to community leaders.

The launch of the alumni affinity network program at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management came at a difficult time and yet is building the most important relationships we can have with our diverse alumni populations. During a time of virtual work and racial discourse centered in Minneapolis, the Carlson School’s alumni decided to come together to build the community they needed. The program includes unique networks for women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Learn more about the importance of a volunteer-led program, successes and challenges, and next steps.

At Ohio State, engagement professionals and Business Intelligence/Data Science partners have developed a new tool to analyze engagement data that we believe will benefit the engagement industry. Successes from this work include: an inclusive, stakeholder-centered definition of “meaningful engagement” that reflects our diverse and digital world; improved data measurement consistency among engagement professionals across the organization; a key performance indicator process that can be applied to other projects (to ask “Why?” and not “What?”); and a dashboard that provides real-time engagement data to analyze impact. Attendees will learn how to apply a Key Performance Indicator method to determine measures of success at their home institutions, plus gain ideas into tools they might want to build or refine at home to help provide real-time data and insights related to measuring the impact of engagement efforts.

In this opening keynote, CASE President and CEO Sue Cunningham will reunite with  two senior District V advancement leaders and CASE board members and engage in conversation about how they have led their teams and institutions since we were last together in December 2019. In particular, the conversation will explore the momentum they are experiencing now, how they have kept their teams resilient and inspired over difficult times, and their efforts to build and sustain change through renewed calls for social justice at our institutions and beyond.