From what on earth to use Google Analytics for (what's a UTM link anyways?!) to how to disrupt your audiences inbox with compelling emails, join Jonathan May and Kat Carter from Hubbub as they take you through the weird and wonderful learnings of online giving.

Many fundraising offices in Europe, are surprisingly small or young or have experienced a significant break in fundraising operations.This workshop is designed to map the challenges of colleagues from various organizations, countries, and backgrounds in HE institutions. We believe that some of the key problems are comparable – as are lessons and solutions. Such a discussion would provide fertile ground for peer learning and the development of scalable and adaptable solutions.

We propose an interactive workshop with break-out working groups ensuring active participation to explore the top 3 to 5 issues mapped in the preceding plenary discussion. This will draw out some generalizations and potential ideas and will map out the issues experienced in different contexts as well as the actual job of fundraising itself.

In 2020, the VU Amsterdam, was the only university in the Netherlands not actively engaged in Fundraising. Surprisingly, since it has a long tradition in philanthropy, being the first Dutch university to be founded with a philanthropic gift and being home to the first academic research center in philanthropy in Europe since 1990.

When the Executive Board decided to bring philanthropy back to the heart of its organisation, they realised it would take more than just to start raising funds again. We will share experiences from VU’s journey of re-introducing fundraising and more-over, integrated advancement. From the initial vision to the managerial and operational challenges in bringing together internal stakeholders and aligning their activities with VU’s external stakeholders as they re-shaped VU’s tradition of philanthropy.

Globally, changes over the past couple of decades in both the distribution of wealth and in demographics, linked to the significant transfer of intergenerational wealth, have increased the importance and impact of principal gifts. In recent successful higher education campaigns, up to 97% of the campaign gifts came from as few as 3% of the donors, and principal gifts accounted for over 60% of the overall campaign total. So, who wouldn’t want a principal gits programme? However, where do you start or, if you’ve already started down this road, have you thought of everything? This session will give practical insights into the fundamentals that should form part of any properly structured principal gift programme from how you define a principal gift through to the identification and allocation of prospects, building your pipeline and choosing which projects might be suitable.

What do we mean by Advancement, Development, and Fundraising – and why should it matter to me anyway?

What do Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, and your institution have in common? Each has received private donations – solicited and secured by someone – to fund their mission.

Our chosen career of seeking financial support for schools, colleges, and universities is a long-established profession, indeed—yet there’s no doubt that the Antiquity version of LinkedIn had as much confusion about the terms of ‘advancement’, ‘development’, and ‘fundraising’ as there is today.

But who cares, really? Don’t they all just mean roughly the same thing? In this session, we’ll dive into a rich discussion on how we can understand and use these terms to frame our work as frontline fundraisers, development officers, and advancement professionals. You’ll come away with practical insights to help you in multiple contexts: building your career trajectory, advocating for resources for your department, and even securing support for your institution.

There are plenty of opportunities to advance fundraising and philanthropy in higher education in Spain. The concept of institutional readiness proves useful to unveil them. This session will present different strategies to enhance fundraising from two higher education institutions from Spain:, UIC Barcelona and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

So you're a small shop, with super limited resource and a teeny tiny budget but you've got big ambitions! Join a sharing session to explore some examples from a School environment of how getting creative, collaborating with other teams and engaging your community members can help you create a bigger impact. We will also explore the need to be tough - resisting distractions, marshalling effort and saying 'No'. Breaking into small groups we'll then work together to help each other look for opportunities for the little fish to make a big fundraising splash and create positive change in our communities.

Delivering excellent customer experience is important in building brand differentiation, appeal and connection - all of which contribute to recruitment performance. But it’s also critical in ensuring student retention, success and advocacy. This session will explore the core components of developing and implementing an effective customer experience strategy, focused on meeting audiences’ needs to improve institutional performance. We’ll share examples from the University of Wolverhampton’s recent work on improving the customer experience that they deliver. We will also draw on recent syndicated research conducted by SMRS, working with 47 universities who are part of the CASE Universities’ Marketing Forum, to understand the behaviours of over 34,000 future undergraduate students.

Many major gift fundraisers are looking forward to returning to elements of pre-pandemic fundraising. However, there is a new generation whose primary experience is working in the new ‘hybrid era’, who have been successful in building and cultivating relationships to gift outcomes purely in this environment.

What can we learn from these class of 20/21 fundraisers? Which aspects of their approaches can be utilised by experienced fundraisers, and how can we incorporate individuals into the area, and work in teams with a blend of experience?

This session will provide personal insight into starting in this new environment, share key takeaways for individual practitioners, managers, and teams, and provide an opportunity to share experiences of joining the profession at this time or working with new fundraisers.

Now we have your attention: - this is a very practical session for any institution with foreign alumni which will address such things as: Do we need to set up our own legal entity in another country to accept tax-effective donations or would an Intermediary work just as well; my US alumni want Planned Giving – what is it; what is this US/UK dual benefit for my donors; is Transnational Giving Europe still working, is fundraising in Hong Kong still possible and so forth.  Mary Emerson, Executive Director of American Friends of Winchester College, Arnaud Marcilhacy, French Major Gift Fundraiser and Nancy Bikson, lawyer and expert in tax-effective giving worldwide will talk you through your international engagement, post-pandemic, during a cost-of-living crisis, war in Ukraine and as climate change hits!  No matter where your institution is located we will help you ensure you are maximising your time and energy whilst minimising costs and headaches.  Practical, real help and advice from skilled practitioners who have lived international fundraising for education for decades.