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The days of the outdated “telefund” or “phone bank” are long gone.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.

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.

Your giving day just broke another record. Time to do it again. So, what’s next? How do you amplify engagement and excitement for something we’re all doing every year? Join us for this panel discussion of how to “level up” your giving day with things like social engagement, new giving methods, multi-tiered challenges, competitions, and elite level volunteers to keep excitement high. We will also share key pivots and changes institutions made during the pandemic- and what worked. And, we'll take a look at data on over $500M in results across higher education to see key benchmarks, metrics, and new tactics are as you take your giving day to the next level.

Movies have a way of bringing people together and broadening our perspectives which is why they can be an incredible tool to engage alumni, students, faculty and staff in important conversations. This presentation will outline how a movie club centered around DE&I and social justice topics can add value to any alumni strategy looking to reach disengaged alumni. By the end of the presentation, participants will learn how to implement an online social justice movie club with zero cost and only a few hours of staff time each month.

Can university fundraisers and donor relations officers adapt the goats and chickens model to scholarships and professorships? Okay, so we’re a university. We don’t have chickens. Or goats. Or cows. But you’ve probably heard or received those solicitations from other charities. Sure, you know your money may not actually be going to purchase THAT specific goat for THAT particular family, but the illusion is a great way to ask you for a gift, and it gives you an idea of its actual impact, whether large or small.

We are embarking on the largest transfer of wealth in human history. As baby boomers age, the number of elderly donors to higher education likewise increases. The need is great to develop an ethical framework of guidelines and best practices to support advancement staff when dealing with donors that may have cognitive impairment. Tony Pomonis, CFRE, from the University of Illinois Foundation and Tara Adams, Ed.M., JD, from the University of Illinois College of Law will share their odyssey of developing and implementing advancement guidelines for the cognitively impaired.