Time. Budget. People. Whatever the resource, many of us are trying to cope with less since COVID. And one of the best ways to cope at this challenging time is by doing just that. COPE. COPE stands for Creative Once, Publish Everywhere. It is a strategic approach that helps you gain maximum mileage out of every piece of content, repurposing it across multiple channels for multiple audiences. As a result, your resources will stretch much further, at a time when they are likely to be depleted. This session will explore the principles, practices, and processes required for the successful implementation of COPE, and how it might hold the answers to several content challenges in this post-pandemic age. Where there is COPE, there is hope.         

Let’s get personal! Three different perspectives on three different aspects of what makes corporate fundraising successful: How to get to business leaders, how to build capacity inside your organisation and how to engage volunteers, boards and campaign committees. Be prepared to see your way of doing things be challenged, gain practical insights into the ‘how it works’ in Europe and beyond and learn which strategies from abroad might help you.

Your student fundraising team carries the lion’s share of the responsibility when it comes to converting and engaging your alumni and donors. It is largely up to them to deliver a positive experience for potential donors and, ultimately, inspire them to make a financial contribution. Despite this, oftentimes insufficient investment is made in recruiting and developing the best team for the task. This session will look at topics such as student recruitment, training, development, motivation, incentives, retention, and team-building. Your students are taking on what is arguably the toughest job in the development team and placing themselves on the very front line of your institution’s fundraising efforts. With this in mind, this entirely student-focused session will ensure that you and your team are set up for maximum success

The University of St. Andrews wanted an innovative and effective tactic to get alumni to update their online profiles with new contact details. St. Andrews partnered with StageClip to turn two old VHS recordings from the 1990s into short, Tik-Tok style, fully personalised digital clips of individual graduations that could be shared on social media. Nearly 20% of alumni reached updated their contact information, and the campaign sparked engagement in unexpected ways for their alumni relations and development teams. In this session, StageClip will present the process, results, surprises, and next steps for this new outreach opportunity.

During this session, we will present and discuss insights from the Advancement Services Survey, created by Salesforce.org and CASE, aimed at understanding how Higher Education professionals across Europe approach digital transformation, the immediate impact of COVID-19 on their plans and strategies. We will also discuss what the future for Advancement Services could look like.

Having no specific PG creative identity for recruitment campaigns for the University of Glasgow was problematic, less impactful, inconsistent and a bit meh! So, we decided to create an identity that our PG audiences could relate to which also meant we could be more consistent with our messaging across the University when fronting a campaign and could stand out from the PG crowd on a webpage or in social space. In the session, we will explain what happened in our journey, why we did what we did and how we feel it’s working, as well as sharing our guidelines and top tips to make sure it's easy for the rest of the UofG community to implement too.

Listen to the hottest debate at the conference! A panel of higher education leaders will debate the motion: “This house believes that fundraising is disconnected from the core mission of universities, ceasing fundraising would have little or no impact on most universities.”

Although we may never want to hear ‘you’re on mute’ again, Zoom has enabled us to connect with our global alumni community like never before. The need to create a sense of community for our students and recent graduates has never been more important than in 2020. In this session we will discuss:

• How we worked with the University’s Careers Network to deliver an integrated approach to our activities from graduation to life as a graduate ensuring they meet the needs of our graduating class
• How we connected our newest alumni with our international community through a specially commissioned poem
• How we enhance student and recent graduate professional networks while also developing their skills and introducing them to our donors

In July 2010, Lisa and Josh Greer went from 'living paycheck to paycheck to the 1% literally overnight'. They set about acting philanthropically but found themselves met with obstacles, 'formulaic chuminess', and dinners that amounted to 'being [publicly] strong-armed' to give. In short, Lisa felt like she and Josh were being treated like walking ATMs.

With her time dedicated to philanthropy, Lisa set to investigate and change big philanthropy so that other new donors wouldn't be put off giving in the way that she could have been. In this conversation, Lisa will share her findings and give us fundraisers a chance to listen to a donor's views - without also thinking about how we're going to ask them for money.

Are you or your team lacking the drive and motivation to support your alumni community? Are requests met with frustration or annoyance? Has it been increasingly difficult to manage work and family/friends? It is likely you are feeling the effects of burnout. Burnout can be weighing on your mental health however is both preventable and manageable. Learn the telling signs of burnout, how to address it, and maintain a healthier work environment for you and your team.