The history of how universities formed is almost certainly shaping your fundraising programme, and maybe not in a good way. Listen to best practices in Strategic Initiative fundraising and prepare your whole institution to give the donors what they want and achieve the impact you’re really capable of.  Challenge yourself to be a leader and do the evolution of fundraising – because if you want to solve 21st century problems, you might need to break out of some 11th century silos first.

Supporting your academics to build a social media profile not only enhances their research and international network but is also an important aspect for recruitment and rankings. In this co-presentation Dr Hilary Young (448 Studio) and Dr Sean Morrissey (University of Strathclyde) will discuss successful techniques and strategies that they have implemented to support and encourage academic social media communities that thrive.

Hear from LSHTM's award winning Alumni Relations team about the innovative Pentacel Project.

Supporting student wellbeing and increasing belonging and community was a priority at LSHTM when COVID-19 hit. Demand for counselling services had grown. COVID-19 exacerbated student anxiety and stress. LSHTM developed a pilot intervention whereby incoming students were placed in five-person informal support groups called 'Pentacells’. Each Pentacell had an alumni facilitator to support and steer discussions.

The project aimed to:

• Increase student wellbeing.
• Improve institutional engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
• Foster a sense of belonging.
• Be adaptable so other institutions can replicate it.

Pentacell significantly improved participants' student experience. Our volunteers' life experience and diversity helped students settle in more quickly, improving student resilience, wellbeing, satisfaction, and institutional affinity.
 

Higher education isn’t immune from the basic marketing premise that getting your product offer right is just as important as anything you do to promote it – which for universities means ensuring a course portfolio that meets demand.

This session will explore the insights you need to understand opportunities for growing, contracting or changing your course portfolio. Does your portfolio reflect student demand and market needs? How to evidence something you’ve suspected for a while? What does it take to get organisational buy in to a review of what you are selling to an increasingly discerning market.

We’ll take you through 5 key stages of portfolio review and hear from Birmingham City University about the work underway there to review and overhaul its portfolio.

University research communication has changed. Press officers and news are out, in favour of communications business partners and multi-channel media campaigns.

Yet, Covid has shown the value in specialist science journalists and news media in holding governments to account and helping the public distinguish fact from fiction. University press officers help journalists to find stories and find experts to scrutinise developments.
Fiona Fox, chief executive of the Science Media Centre, will present a new SMC report into the future of university press offices. She will argue that specialist press officers are vital in the advancement of education, research and society.

Pete Castle, from the University of Reading press office, will describe how today's university comms priorities can coexist with traditional media relations.

I will be dealing with mechanisms on how the University of Navarra has been listening to stakeholders based on the data that we collected during the last 5 years, consisting of roughly 26.000 participants (prospective students, students and alumni). We will then share some learnings from this project and how our own stakeholders at the university perceive us, and how this knowledge can also be transformed into meaningful actions that will lead to an overall improvement of our core activities. I am certain that the session will generate a meaningful discussion about how these insights are relevant to other universities as well, towards a common understanding of metrics for measuring and managing university reputation.

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.

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.

The pandemic sent alumni professionals hurtling into a world of digital engagement - for KAUST, in Saudi Arabia, this world was one we wanted to be part of, so we decided to use the 'opportunity' of lockdown to increase targeted engagement with the global alumni community. From checking-in to see how alumni were, to a digital campaign with the message ‘share the view from your window’ and receiving the University’s first philanthropic gift from the Chinese alumni chapter, the first nine months of pandemic resulted in 17% increased engagement.

In this session, we’ll speak about KAUST’s experiences of engaging alumni in Saudi Arabia and internationally pre, during-and post-pandemic; our successes and learnings; as well as considering what’s next for connecting with the COVID-community and beyond.