Wednesday, March 30, 2022

11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Conference Registration

1:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Conference Kick-Off: Finding the nerve to lead in higher education
Former UBC President Martha Piper, former University of Alberta President Indira Samarasekera, and Whitman College President Kathleen M. Murray share something in common: all shattered glass ceilings to become the first women serving as presidents of their educational institutions. Piper and Samarasekera, who have also served as corporate directors of some of Canada’s largest companies, shared their professional and personal experiences and insights in their new book Nerve: Lessons on Leadership from Two Women Who Went First. 

In addressing leadership from an equity, diversity, and inclusion perspective, Murray will moderate a talk with Piper and Samarasekera about the nerve that’s necessary to lead higher education in transforming society.  
Moderator: Kathleen M. Murray, President, Whitman College
Speaker: Martha Piper, Former President, UBC; and Indira Samarasekera, Former President, University of Alberta

2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Panel Discussion: Making DEI a top priority in institutional decision-making
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has become essential in everything that educational organizations do. But what can institutions do to ensure that DEI remains at the forefront of all decision-making? Taking an in-depth look at this issue, UBC President Santa Ono will moderate a discussion with senior DEI leaders from educational institutions across District VIII to delve into each institution’s DEI approach and the challenges they face. How does this work align with fundraising and alumni engagement? Find out from each panelist, as they also share their views on how DEI decisions at educational institutions impact society.

Moderator: Santa Ono, 15th President & Vice-Chancellor of the University of British Columbia

Panelists: Sundeep Hans, Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, University of the Fraser Valley; Moussa Magassa (Ph.D.), Principal Strategist, EDI, Anti-Racism Education and Community Engagement, University of Victoria; Scott Vignos, J.D., Interim Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Oregon State University; Handel Kashope Wright, Senior Advisor to the President on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence, Director of the Centre for Culture, Identity, and Education, and a professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia

Sponsored by:

3:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Refreshment Break in Exhibit Hall 

4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Elective Session (choose one)

Sponsored by:

• Alumni Relations Value Proposition 
  Create a heightened role of the alumni office as an asset that is vital to the University’s institutional advancement priorities. How Queen’s University created a comprehensive, well aligned and strategic alumni relations organization.  By re- defining its purpose and mission and embracing a cultural of philanthropy there is no question of Alumni Relations responsibility in engaging and in mobilizing Queen’s alumni base to elevate the University.
• Get Out of Your Head and Listen: Flipping a Top-Down Approach to Creating Content 

  How do you create content that is guided by diverse perspectives? In a film and corresponding event to celebrate women in engineering, we disrupted the standard top-down approach to creating content. The concern was that women in engineering often feel tokenized by institutional marketing that portrays them as one-dimensional. We changed our processes for the development of both projects in order to better represent the many voices of women in the college. 

  We used a research-based approach, interviewing several women to create an unscripted, authentic narrative for the short film, “Rooted in Community.” The film featured six faculty, all women, who represented the themes that emerged from the interviews, as well as a diversity of backgrounds, areas of study, and stages of career.  

  The film premiered at the “2021 Celebration of Women in Engineering” event. In a similar grassroots style of development, the program for the event was guided by a committee of women from across the college. 

  These approaches took more effort to coordinate across several groups, but resulted in thoughtfully created, authentic works that received broad exposure. The film has more than 15,000 views on YouTube, and the event was attended by more than 600 people

• Building Infrastructure & Growing Gift Officer Capacity With a Smaller Team <,br />It’s 2022. Our advancement shops look similar to the way they did in 2019, but under the hood, they operate quite differently. Many shops have fewer gift officers supporting the institution’s philanthropic mission. Rather than lamenting the loss, leaders like Hannah Palpant and her team at the University of La Verne have reenvisioned how they can commit to infrastructure and grow gift officer capacity so fundraising outcomes meet revenue expectations. In this session, Hanna Palpantt and Megan Sanko will examine how La Verne has grown fundraiser capacity and is laying the groundwork for the university’s advancement strategy for decades to come.
  
  Come learn how Hannah and her team at La Verne are cracking the code to:
  • Managing all existing portfolios with 100% saturation 
  • Make sure portfolios of prior gift officers are managed and the donors within are engaged
  • Expand beyond the group of current managed donors to build the mid-level and future major giving pipeline

• A New Roadmap for Constituent Engagement 

  At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and changing landscape in higher education, Praxis Labs published a white paper entitled Strategies for Winter which aptly described this season as an economic and cultural ice age – “a once-in-a-lifetime change that is likely to affect our lives and organizations for years.” The paper challenged organizations to write a new playbook that honored the mission and the communities we serve, but also capitalized on existing trust and social capital. If we were to survive this blizzard, the paper asserted, we must learn how to advance the mission under new constraints. 

  Borrowing from the technology industry’s model for continuous delivery, Whitworth’s Connect 2020 Project incorporated new tools: roadmap design, prototyping, sprints, etc. and focused engagement through four primary portals: student success, diversity, equity & inclusion, women’s leadership, and Christian faith & learning. 

  The intent was to accomplish 3 objectives utilizing these portals: retain existing donors & alumni, drive new engagement, and bridge internal program needs with the animating passions of constituents. 

  This session addresses both strategy and execution for a new playbook and provides a framework to design a roadmap that serves both our institutions and our constituents in new ways.

5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Opening Reception with Sponsors & Exhibitors

Sponsored by:

6:00 pm onwards 
Evening Meet-ups

 

Thursday, March 31, 2022

7:30 am - 8:30 am 
Breakfast 

8:30 am - 9:30 am 
Talent & DEI: Tackling Advancement’s most pressing issues
As we head even further into the throes of the “Great Resignation”, numerous employees continue to rethink their jobs and plot out how to make career moves. What’s more, this has all been occurring just as diversity, equity, and inclusion issues have taken centre stage. Here’s an opportunity to hear what advice experts have to offer about managing advancement talent during this period while a “Great Reshuffle” is taking place — on multiple levels.

Moderator: Chelsey Megli, Senior Director of Strategic Talent Engagement, University of Oregon

Panelists: Tahsin Alam, Associate Dean of Advancement, Foster School of Business, University of Washington; Christoph Clodius, Vice President, The Discovery Group; Kirsten Nicholson, Executive Director, Development, University of British Columbia; Jason "JT" Thomas, Associate Director, Talent Management, Oregon State University Foundation

Sponsored by:

9:45 am - 10:45 am  
Elective Session (choose one)

Sponsored by:

• Pouncing on the Audio Wave: Attracting and Retaining Students with Podcasts and Audio Integration 
  Have you been curious about starting a podcast for your institution? Now would be the right time to get started. Join Raysean Ricks, digital content coordinator at Augusta University’s Communications and Marketing and host of In the Wild, AU’s official podcast, as he shares how to integrate podcasting and emerging audio platforms in your institution digital content strategies to attract, retain and engage students, employees and alumni.
• Building a Better Workplace 
  Learn how Queen’s Advancement partnered with Queen’s Organizational Development initiative, using an inclusive, appreciative inquiry change management approach, to engage staff and other key stakeholders in reimagining Advancement’s post-COVID hybrid working environment and footprint on campus.
• Recent Alumni Engagement: Using Survey Data to Inform Your Strategies 
  Recent alumni engagement is critical to keeping this key group engaged with their alma mater. In this session, we'll share results of our national survey on how recent alumni expect to engage and discuss the link between involvement in student organizations and engagement after graduation. We'll then share examples of how Whitworth University engages students while on campus and connects with recent graduates to foster and grow their engagement and support. Participants will leave this session with data to inform their strategies and ideas of next steps to grow recent alumni engagement.
• Polite Persistence at Boise State University: How DXOs are booking more meetings 

   On average, 98% of alumni do not have a 1:1 relationship with your institution. 

  Boise State University is ready to change that. They’ve recently launched a Donor Experience Program to deliver high-volume, completely personalized outreach to thousands of donors without a direct relationship to the university.

  Donor Experience Officers know how difficult it can be to book a meeting with a new prospect. In fact, we’ve learned that it takes 6.6 touchpoints to book that first meeting. 

  This session will feature Donor Experience Officers from Boise State sharing their most creative and effective strategies to book donor meetings. We’ll talk about building touchpoint plans for prospects, personalizing outreach at scale, how to incorporate video into your outreach, and why email alone isn’t enough. 

  Attendees will leave with an understanding of how to be “politely persistent” with donors to book more meetings and build better relationships, as well as a clear path to testing a cadence on a group of 25 of their next-best prospects.

11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Intentional Networking

12:15 pm - 1:45 pm 
Awards Luncheon

Sponsored by:

1:45 pm - 2:45 pm 
Elective Session (choose one)

Sponsored by:

• Communicating Our Values: A Refresher on Inclusive Language 

  As diversity and inclusion education becomes mainstream, many communicators find themselves apprehensive about how to address gender identity, religious affiliation, race and ethnicity, disability status and other identity-related topics.

  This presentation will offer The Associated Press’s current guidance on identity vocabulary so communications professionals in the education space can learn the most appropriate, most accurate, and most up-to-date terminology on these ever-developing topics. Language evolves as culture evolves, and educators and communicators are accountable tokeep up with these changes, even if they're rapid.

  Because many (if not most) educational institutions list "diversity" or "inclusion" as a value – and our students, who are overwhelmingly Gen Z, are one of the most diversity-conscious groups in the country – refreshers like these are crucial to empowering staff to discuss these topics without fear or embarrassment.

• How to Level Up Your Giving Day 
  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 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. Then, 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.
• Rethinking Campus Collaborations During COVID 
   In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic the development team at the University of Texas at Tyler was tasked by the Office of the President to shift focus from major gifts to searching for grant funding. Working collaboratively with the Office of Scholarship & Research and the Office of Community Engagement we created a streamlined process for identifying projects on campus that need funding and the ways in which these projects are integrated into our community. This session shares how these offices worked together, demonstrates the tools created for the project and shares successes from the first year.
• How Prospect Management and Analytics Collaborations Can Tangibly Improve Operational Effectiveness 
  Even though they are part of separate operational units, Prospect Management and Analytics and Reporting at the University of Calgary collaborate intricately on a regular basis to provide accurate and up to date information to Senior Leadership who use that intelligence to make informed business decisions.
  
  Prospect Management has thorough knowledge of what our fundraisers and pipelines need to be successful and marrying this with advanced analytical tools can lead to breakthroughs in prospect assignment, pipeline size and composition, and ways to keep prospects engaged and moving through the pipeline. 
  
  In this presentation, you will learn:
  • How to present your ideas to leadership to get their buy in
  • What collaborations have been the most successful
  • How collaborating makes impossible dreams achievable reality
     
•  Art for All: How Non-Arts Colleges Can Leverage Storytelling Through the Visual Arts 
  After years of publishing its annual alumni magazine, Gonzaga University School of Law's magazine editorial team decided to make a dramatic divergence from its traditional format and incorporate artwork into its 2018 publication. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Thus began a unique and impactful relationship between the law school and local artists, resulting in an annual artist-in-residence program, first-Friday gallery shows, and an entirely new way to connect and build relationships with the greater community. In this session, participants will learn how to leverage the visual arts, even if they are not in an art school environment, to help improve their engagement with marketing materials, facilities, and donors. The case study will also outline the steps that Gonzaga Law took to build their artist-in-residence program and provide a comprehensive review of how these relationships impacted students, faculty, staff, alumni, and donors through strategic events and storytelling opportunities.

2:45 pm - 3:15 pm 
Refreshment Break in Exhibit Hall 

3:15 pm - 4:15 pm
Elective Session (choose one) 

Sponsored by:

• Touch Points: Engaging Alumni Throughout their Lifetime 

   While each student experience can have similarities, no two are exactly the same. These experiences shape a student’s perception of the value they received from their college experience and will influence their life-long engagement and connection with their alma mater. Student experiences do not begin when a student moves into the residence hall prior to their first semester, they begin when a student first hears about the institution, continue through the recruitment process, through their time in school, and then ultimately up to their graduation where the emphasis then shifts to the alumni experience.

  Future alumni engagement may be able to be calculated by the summation of the student experience and how engaged a student was during their student experience. Based on my understanding of the student experience, I created the Alumni Engagement Timeline. This is a visual representation of the different phases an individual goes through in connection with a college or university from beginning to end and the ways in which alumni relations offices can get involved and be a part of the student experience before and after a student graduates.

• Landing as a CAO - Planning Ahead, Surprises and Starting during COVID telework 
   The job hunt in our sector is both fierce and fast - you're in a search, interviews, references, negotiations and acceptance. But then what? How do you prepare for your new job, what should you ask for in advance, how do you plan your first weeks and how do you do all this while working remotely yourself or with remote direct reports? The answer is in a soup of areas from Talent Management, management principles, organizational change and internal/external relationship building before your first day. Come to gain some best practice insights so that you can show up prepared for your first 90 days
• Creative Courage – The Secret Weapon to Turning Your Institutional Magazine Inside And Out 
  Tune in and turn your audience inside out! There’s a long tradition with university magazines to zero-in on a segmented readership (alumni), as well as to tell rather than show who we are (repeatedly telling people we’re innovative is not innovative). In broadening and shifting the underpinning philosophy of our alumni magazine to an outward facing “city” magazine (think of your university as a city in itself), we discovered that thinking of our audience as curious people at large, our storytelling became more engaging, more relatable, and more authentic. It takes courage to shake-off old ways of doing at post-secondary institutions — for editors, writers and communicators who are taught to think of their first audience as their dean, director, or board of governors. Shifting that mindset to delight a general audience rather than boost our messaging to our internal audience takes courage and persistence. We will walk you through our aspirational development plan for arch, and the well-received reality of our first two issues. Above all, we hope to inspire you to be pushy (with a smile!), think laterally, and elevate your publications to authentic vehicles of communication with wider reach and deeper impact that sparks conversation and action.
• How We Hit a Home Run and Funded a Capital Project During a Pandemic 
  8 months into a pandemic, after sports had been cancelled and classes had moved to online learning, UBC and UBC Athletics announced they would move forward with renovating a new Softball facility so our Women’s team could have a home on campus. The caveat; we had 6 weeks to raise $125,000 with limited prospects, or a concrete plan. Join us as we walk through our fundraising journey and showcase how we raised over $400,000 and brought UBC Women’s Softball home to campus.
• Driving Better Outcomes with Fewer Resources: Tangible Strategies Every Development Shop Can Use
  Increasing cross-campus collaboration. Being intentional. Prioritizing what matters most. Making it easy.
  
  All of the above is imperative for any resource constrained team. And though it all sounds great in theory - actually achieving those objectives can be quite difficult.
  
  Join Andrea from Pacific Lutheran University and Dan from GiveCampus for a fun and hands-on session focused on giving audience members tangible frameworks and strategies to bring back with you to campus.
  
  Andrea will share how she used the “POP model” to prioritize and focus PLU’s efforts as well as a new working groups model to bring in new ideas and new stakeholders to Giving Day. Dan will share both theory and tactical strategies on how to make it easier and more meaningful to rally your community and the outcomes you’re driving.

4:30 pm - 5:30 pm 
Reimagining change: what can we learn from social and tech enterprise 
Tech and social entrepreneurship continue to effectively collide, spurring positive change while driving socioeconomic growth. As universities pave the way to tackle the most pressing issues of our times, what lessons can be learnt from social and tech ventures, innovators, and disruptors for greater immediacy and impact?  
Social entrepreneur, speaker, and elite athlete Derek Juno will lead his audience through an in-depth examination of how slower-paced, bureaucratic, and complex settings in higher education can adopt the community-building strategies that companies like MealShare, GoFundMe, and Benevity use. To further illuminate this talk, Juno will also share his own life-changing lessons and secrets that he has gleaned along the way. 
Speaker: Derek Juno, Accomplished Social Entrepreneur, Founder of Elysium Retreat, Elite Triathlete

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Cocktails with a View

7:00 pm - onwards
Evening Meet-ups

Friday, April 1, 2022

8:30 am - 9:30 am 
Breakfast 

9:30 am - 10:30 am 
Elective Session (choose one)

Sponsored by:

• Supporting New Grads Through a Post-Pandemic Career Transition 

  The COVID-19 global pandemic has resulted in recent post-secondary graduates trying to enter a job market that presents more challenges than we’ve seen in a number of decades. A Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey conducted in March 2021 indicated that the jobless rate for Canadians aged 15-24 rose to 19.9% (versus pre-pandemic rates that hovered around 10%). Tim Lang, President and CEO of Youth Employment Services in Toronto noted: "Youth are disproportionately affected during COVID-19. When organizations have to cut back, they often look at their newer employees or younger employees."

  In response, two faculty members partnered with Alumni Relations and Career Services at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) to introduce a new complimentary four-week program designed to help recent KPU graduates advance in their careers during these unprecedented times. Taught by faculty members with expertise in career development and communications, the program is designed for participants who work asynchronously through online modules with optional live online group sessions and office hours. 

  The session will discuss the planning process, feedback received from participants, and suggestions on how other institutions could introduce similar programming to achieve demonstrable outcomes.Content Tags: career programming, alumni programming, COVID-19 support, goodwill, cross-institutional partnerships

• Be an Oasis in the News Desert: Promote Your Institution While Supporting Local Journalism 
  Ever send out a press release only to hear the sound of crickets? Learn about the challenges facing journalists today and what's really happening inside newsrooms across the nation. Find out why local journalism is more important than ever and the scary things that can happen when it goes away, especially as it relates to public health -- an even more pressing topic in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Come away with tips on how institutions of higher education can help fill the gap by supporting local media outlets as well as learning to tell their own stories.
• "Choose Where Change Happens": pitchforks, fires, & faculty/staff giving at a regional comprehensive 
  Moving towards a culture of philanthropy is difficult for higher ed leaders and advancement professionals at institutions that have never engaged in development work—but particularly at rural, regional comprehensive universities. This case navigates the pitfalls and successes of the first ever faculty/staff campaign for the College of Arts & Humanities at Central Washington University, and demonstrates how a dean and development officer teamed together to waylay the “pitchfork and fire brigade” of dissent and become the university’s leader in employee giving percentage. Moving towards a comprehensive campaign means leaders have to work together towards a myopic vision, learn to listen to voices that motivate success, and create culture change by modeling the power of investing in our own passions at the university.
• CASE AMAtlas: From Global Standards to Global Data
  Discover the latest trends that impact advancement within your district, across the country, and around the globe. The CASE AMAtlas team will share recent findings from our benchmarking surveys, including the Voluntary Support of Education and Alumni Engagement Metrics. You will also get a sneak peek at data from our Core Metrics pilot (focusing on creating global metrics) and new Campaign Survey.
• Discover the Next: A Guide for the value of Higher Education Conversation
  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.

10:45 am - 12:00 pm 
Education as a path to empowerment and transformative leadership
In a world urgently searching for change, how do we unlock individual and institutional potential to drive the transformative leadership required to better our societies? In this inspiring conference closer, international speaker and author Samra Zafar will delve into the important and powerful role of transformation in leadership. On the personal level, Zafar will explore how presenting ourselves authentically, instead of perfectly, can free ourselves from judgment; foster trust, connections, and resilience; and uplift ourselves as leaders. In addressing higher education in today’s ever-evolving world, Zafar will use her own story to illustrate how education can empower people from all walks of life to be agents of change for a more equitable and responsible world.
Speaker: Samra Zafar, International Speaker, Author, Scholar, Entrepreneur, Human Right Activist

Sponsored by: