In June 2022 the University of East Anglia led in announcing the discovery of the 340-year-old royal shipwreck the Gloucester, off the Norfolk coast in the UK, together with a major research project and exhibition. One of UEA's biggest-ever integrated communications and content campaigns, the story made headlines around the world. As the research and exhibition continue, this session looks at UEA's approach to the announcement, objectives, the logistics of working with multiple internal and external stakeholders, and ongoing work to shed light on the story of the Gloucester and its significance to UEA, our region and in British history.

Campaigns have become a fixture in the fundraising landscape, and offer institutions of all sizes the chance to transform how they engage with their audiences. How can campaigns best serve your institution and your audiences? What are the conditions for campaign success - and how do you navigate the challenges as well as the opportunities? Three speakers bring campaign experience from the UK to New Zealand and will touch on building internal buy-in through training academic champions; developing brand and partnering with external communications; and how to maximise existing and new opportunities with donors in the context of a strategic campaign. This is a roundtable session where participants can learn from each other and will come away with armed with new ideas for their own institutions as well as an expanded professional network.

Deep dive with Liz Reilly and Karen Cairney following their key session Unleashing the power of your people: attracting, retaining and maximising the potential of your diverse talent pool.

The world today is creating a group of relatively young, extremely wealthy philanthropists brought up on data, science, finance, technology and rationality. In seeking out altruistic philosophies that align with their experiences, many have explored Effective Altruism, an approach to philanthropy that removes emotion and storytelling and focus instead on measurable outcomes and impact. In many respects, this clashes heavily with fundraising practices today. In this talk, we explore this community and its giving, explore examples of organisations that have bridged the gap, and discuss whether, when, why, and how we might draw this community closer to our work.

New alumni can be the most difficult to engage. Once they leave university (and their university email addresses), finding and connecting them can become a years-long effort. By connecting with alumni at graduation, when their affinity for the university is at an all-time high, targeted surveys provide the data needed to keep them engaged long after graduation. We'll discuss how personalised recognition videos have helped reach over 2 million graduates worldwide. 

Podcasts continue to grow in popularity in a variety of channels, especially among a younger audience. This presents an exciting opportunity for universities to publish interesting content in fresh ways - for stakeholder engagement in general, but also for marketing and recruitment in particular. In this session, we will explore the current and evolving landscape of university podcasts; what it takes to plan, produce, and publish a podcast; and how your university’s recruitment can benefit from one. We will draw from successful podcasts that the speakers helped produce at University College London, the Royal College of Art, and the University of Antwerp.

In times of anti-globalization, anti-immigration and anti-science sentiments, one of higher education´s main challenges is demonstrating the value of its service mission locally and globally. By educating global citizens, universities and their alumni can foster diversity and innovation in their societies. This interactive session presents a research-based framework on global competence and alumni´s commitment to their alma mater. It further elaborates on how building affective organisational commitment (AOC) can innovate student-alumni engagement programs. This session further offers opportunities to share and discuss challenges and solutions on embedding AOC to the (international) student-alumni journey plus take-away tools for easy implementation.

A discussion about how the Alumni and Careers teams at the University of Sussex have worked collaboratively to re-launch our mentoring offering between alumni (both recent graduates and graduates further along on their career journey) and final-year students, which prioritises students from under-represented groups. In this session we will cover: designing our programme, launching our programme (including signups), what tools we used to keep alumni and students engaged, building a mentoring community through our exclusive networking and mentoring platform Sussex Connect (hosted through Gravyty) and challenges we faced along the way and lessons learnt.

Fundraisers are under unprecedented financial pressure. At the same time, organisations need to think responsibly and strategically about who they accept money from. Reputations can take centuries to build and 1 headline to destroy. This roundtable will look at how the latest developments in AI can enable organisations to meet big fundraising targets without leaving themselves at risk of ending up on the front pages of the newspapers – for the wrong reasons. We’ll bring together a group of organisations that currently use AI for both prospect research and due diligence checks. We’ll discuss current examples of where AI fits into fundraising lifecycles in a way that both builds the funding pipeline and protects your organisation’s reputation.