When Covid struck, UIC Barcelona launched an annual giving campaign to help students in need. Three years down the road, the campaign has evolved into a program for scholarship support. Case for support, rallying leadership, breaking silos, changing mindsets, overcoming technological challenges, and building a culture of giving within the community are just some of the issues behind establishing annual giving. This session aims to provide you with a hands-on vision and practical advice to start or redefine an annual giving campaign. It will tell the true story: failure and success combined to advance UIC Barcelona's mission.

As the development and alumni relations sector goes through a period of significant churn and staff movement, how can teams maintain momentum and protect existing team members whilst carrying hard-to-fill vacancies? Options include: adapting existing roles, adjusting priorities and deliverables and bringing in short-term resources. Alongside these are considerations about opportunities for staff development, supporting individual and team well-being, management of alumni and donor relationships and maintaining internal reputation and relationships. Learn how this has been done at three UK institutions where gaps in staffing have included: Director of Development, Head of Philanthropy, PA, Major Gifts and Trusts and Foundations Manager.

Has chatGPT (or its successor) changed the way you work? If not yet, then it's about to do so! Natural language AI tools can do your work for you...or can they really? and should they? and will anyone still have a job next year? Join us to hear practical examples from those who are benefiting from using these tools and learn about the pros and cons, the issues and the ethics, and consider how we can add value in a world where machines can do the talking. Some short presentations from people sharing their experiences will be followed by roundtable discussions of how, why, when and whether we might all use these tools in our work. Please bring your own examples and experiences for discussion.

Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Professor Richard Oreffo founded The Cowrie Scholarship Foundation to support talented Black British undergraduate students and he invited VCs from across the U.K. to make a tangible commitment to anti-racism by becoming partner institutions of the new foundation. Over the next three years, more than 25 universities signed up. Come hear from a panel including fundraisers, widening participation experts, and the foundation about how we worked together across departments and institutions to share ideas and resources and about how we are working to continue to deliver collective impact into the future.

In this session, the University of Westminster and the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University will share how they have successfully scaled and revamped their mentoring programmes to support thousands of students and engage a huge network of alumni volunteers. The two organisations, who have both received CASE Awards for their mentoring activity, will highlight the strategies used to broaden their reach while navigating the potential benefits and challenges of various expansion options while ensuring a quality experience for both alumni mentors and student mentees.

The American School of Warsaw's response to the refugee crisis stemming from the war in Ukraine has led it to develop an innovative, integrated approach to how international K-12 schools engage in and support service learning. The school's #ASWforUkraine effort has raised more than $390,000 to support Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw and beyond. The students have been effective in every aspect of our relief efforts, so the school has decided to create an NGO that is dedicated to student-led service and to teach students how to develop programs, fundraise for them, and deliver the services.

In a healthy marketing strategy and mix, it's important to focus on prospective students that you want to reach and activities that you know work well. Adding elements of "anti-marketing" can sharpen that focus by helping you avoid pursuing activities that are unlikely to help you reach your goals. In this session, we will explore (1) negative personas: summarised characters representing prospective students that would not be a good fit for your institution; and (2) contra-signalling: communicating relevant aspects of an institution, programme, or location that might be perceived as negative by some applicants but are often overlooked.

Research from the Institute of Fundraising shows that over 75% of female fundraisers experience gender stereotyping at work. What does this mean for women (and men) working in higher education fundraising? How does our gender intersect with other aspects of identity to affect our work, and more importantly, how can we negate any harmful consequences? During this session, a diverse panel of fundraisers will discuss these important questions. Taking an intersectional approach, topics will include: -The fundraiser-donor relationship - Imposter-syndrome - Harassment and safety at work - The leadership gap - How we can change this space for the better.

Academic colleagues are a goldmine of content.

Their teaching, discoveries, and adventures can offer a treasure trove of stories to inspire our audiences.

Partnering with academics can help us achieve our goals in student recruitment, fundraising, alumni relations, and public engagement. But do we?

Or are we too sceptical, dismissive, and wary of our academic colleagues?

Do we tell ourselves that academic colleagues and content professionals are incompatible?

This session will offer you tools and tips to enable you to overcome any barriers, or perceived barriers, and forge winning collaborations.

Teamwork makes the dreamwork.

Research is a central pillar of many of our institutions' strategies, with an increased investment to create dedicated communications and engagement roles to support research activities and raise the profile of our expertise. But beyond broad alignment to analogous 'research grand challenge themes' or the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), how can we ensure a truly strategic approach to engagement with our research outputs which will drive institutional reputation? This session, working with one of the sector's most senior research comms experts and a partnership of global reputation consultants, will explore global best practices and top tips to optimise your research comms impact.