In this interactive workshop Rachel and Margaret will take you from blank page to inspiring and impactful case for support.

Your case is the foundation of your fundraising programme but how often do we rehash the same phrases or copy and paste from old funding bids or direct mail.

Well no more!

Come with a project you’re working on, an open mind and a willingness to ask, ‘why would anyone give to us?’

Mass fundraising programmes often steer clear of complex research, equipment or capital asks. But by finding ways to translate these concepts into accessible and compelling calls to action, we can inspire our communities and engage with new audiences. In this session, Heather and Jemma will share their experiences of successfully fundraising for research within their Regular Giving programmes - and give you the tools to do the same yourself.

Supporter journeys are the key to unlocking purpose, impact, and focus on your engagement programme.

This session will inspire strategic thinking to build supporter journeys, to advance engagement and fundraising - coupled with practical tips and case studies. We will share global experiences from across the sector, and colleagues at Manchester will reflect (in person or virtually) on their experiences of designing journeys across their alumni population of 533,000, and the impact of this on the institution.

We will invite contributions and share templates to apply the learning in your own context. Senior leaders will gain insights into how their teams can use supporter journeys to drive strategic work across advancement. Join us for this journey of inspiration and learning.

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.

Social media is essential for reaching our alumni. In 2022, 58% of the planet is active on social media. Younger alumni have always been prolific users, whilst COVID prompted a generational boom across the platforms. As a result, the number of people following our alumni social media channels has grown enormously since the pandemic. But who are these followers? How do they engage? What do they want?

This talk will help answer these questions. It will cover:

• How to find demographic information using in-platform analytics
• The value of qualitative research for investigating content wants and needs
• Understanding how alumni interact with our content
• Creating personas to represent our followers

These insights will provide a valuable foundation for building stronger alumni relations.
 

As we enter post-pandemic life, how do we ensure that we retain the digital skills we've learnt to support our Alumni community online? In this session we outline the steps every Alumni department should be applying to their strategy in order to fully optimise their hybrid and virtual events. Using learnings from Cornell University’s Leadership Week, coupled with key takeaways from virtual educational events that Forumm has hosted, you will leave this session with tangible knowledge and a host of ideas you can apply to your future strategy.

Learn how to use relationship marketing to focus your message and tell your school's story (and drive admissions, retention, and alumni engagement along the way!). Through this storytelling approach, you'll find effective methods to ensure that your communication resonates with families—past, current, and future. This session will cover everything from social media and email marketing to publications, from strategy to execution.

Readability is accessibility.

Written content with high readability greatly benefits our audiences:

• People who are stressed
• People who are distracted
• People with motor impairments
• People with cognitive impairments
• People who don’t speak English as their primary language.

But readability best practice isn't always followed in the education sector. It is a training need often overlooked by universities and colleges.

This talk aims to offer a foundational course in readability. You will discover 22 simple ways to make your website, blog, email, print, and social media more readable and (therefore) more accessible.

We will explore capitals, clauses, and colours. We will discuss sentences, sizes, and sub-headings. We will investigate alignment, acronyms, and alt text.

Let 2022 be your year for readability.

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.

Can philanthropy and alumni engagement transform entrepreneurship in higher education? What role does philanthropy play in start-ups and social venture philanthropy?

Over the past few years, advancement has fuelled a huge transformation in Durham University’s work in entrepreneurship. The impact of this work has been significant; twice as many students engaging with innovation and entrepreneurship activity, the number of startups emerging from programmes has almost trebled and four ventures have now raised over £1 million in external funding.

This session will showcase how the Durham Inspired Campaign has and continues to raise ambitions for entrepreneurship at Durham University and will help you consider how you might engage with entrepreneurship at your institution.