In today's world, uncertainty is a powerful emotional context that permeates all aspects of our lives. A global pandemic, economic threat, and political strife are layered onto our already hectic, demanding lives. How can we not only cope but thrive personally and professionally?

Can we bring joy into the workplace, energize our teams, and flourish even in this anxious time? All the best research says ‘yes’.

Paul Krismer brings the science of positive psychology to bear. With practical advice coupled with humorous anecdotes, Paul provides an inspiring toolkit for resilience!

Embrace the research results that prove positive emotions come readily when certain skills are learned. See how these skills demonstrably lead directly to greater success. Come away equipped to fuel your personal happiness and create positive contagion amongst the people you influence. 

Learn practical ways to amplify the joy in your workplace. Discover insights about how to powerfully engage teams and change organizational culture.   

Alumni Relations is tricky at best in how well an institution is doing in engagement. We all want to believe that our Alumni Relations program is good but how do we know? How do we know if we are making an impact and how do we compare to other schools just like us? This session will look at data and ways in which we engage with our alumni - fundraising, alumni leadership, general meetings.

In March 2020 when in person events were promptly shut down as a result of COVID 19, many schools and organizations reworked plans for "face to face" engagement. Now, more than a year later we have seen how virtual gatherings have broken down geographic location and financial barriers for meaningful engagement. Let us guide a discussion on how small shops have implemented virtual gatherings that create lasting impressions, evoke excitement, and encourage support of your school.

"Let's add that as a constituent code!" "We need to create a new fund!" All too often, in an honest attempt to capture relevant information, we create an overstuffed, disorganized database packed with an unwieldy number of constituent codes, a plethora of confusing categories, underutilized volunteer tabs, and tables within attributes with duplicate information. Does this sound like a closet you might have at home, the one you can barely close the door to or find anything in?

Think about your data in terms of having a perfect white t-shirt and keeping that one, instead of keeping the off-white shirt, the shirt that is a bit too-small, too large, has the wrong neck - sometimes we keep all, and mistakenly wear the wrong one. When we do this with data, reporting and analysis are skewed and inaccurate.

We will share our journey of assessing constituent codes, attributes, and attribute tables, as well as examining campaigns funds and appeals through a Marie Kondo lens. We will explain how a strong partnership between advancement services teams and frontline fundraisers can make the difference when it comes to a mutual understanding of the whys behind moving, removing and keeping information everyone thinks are relevant and valuable. Allows us to refocus your lens and help you to see how clean data adds value and impact while reducing frustration and time-stealers.

Thoughtful organization will bring you joy!

The Meadows School more than doubled its diversity virtually overnight. The rapid and successful change at The Meadows was due to a new and innovative approach to financial aid. This workshop will provide school leaders with strategies for establishing long-term relationships with large donors interested in supporting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, thereby expanding diversity in the student body, and as a result fundamentally changing the lives of all community members.

Collaboration between development and communications teams ensures that fundraising and stewardship objectives are met in creative, well-planned, and results-oriented ways. Whether it is for your annual fund, a special campaign, or a special event, plans that strategically incorporate fundraising and communications objectives and tactics reach broader audiences and yield positive results. Using case studies, development professionals will see how communications planning (research, planning execution, and assessment) and an infusion of creative tactics enhance fundraising campaigns. Conversely, communications professionals will see how a clear understanding of fundraising objectives can help guide planning and inspire innovative outreach vehicles.

Do you feel like you are always moving at breakneck speed with less time to think creatively than you’d like? Have little wiggle room in your budget and even less staff bandwidth, but need to amp up your alumni engagement approach?

Tap into the scalable, best-bang-for-your-buck ideas of four of the most creative CASE NAIS colleagues out there, exchange ideas with your fellow conference attendees and discover how to leverage the soft power of alumni engagement. Take away ideas and resources for measuring the value-add your alumni can bring to your schools. (including how to make the AEM Atlas Survey work for you.)

While Rutgers Preparatory School is the oldest independent school in New Jersey, they now look at fundraising in a new way. With sights set on a $10m comprehensive campaign (the largest in their long history), Rutgers Prep leadership committed to instilling best fundraising practices, from start to finish. From proactive volunteer leaders to a productive qualification effort, from comprehensive staff training to strategizing bold asks, Rutgers Prep leaders and volunteers will share how they started new processes in a systemic way to ensure the success of their campaign.

Felicity Meu, Director of Partner Success at GiveCampus, and Jill Kelly, Director of Advancement at the Francis Parker School, will be presenting about the power of leveraging peer-to-peer fundraising strategies for parents. When it comes to engaging parents, it pays off to have the right theme, marketing approach, and technology to make it easy and joyful for parents to participate. Parent involvement doesn't just increase participation numbers for the fiscal year—it also builds a contagious culture of philanthropy around the school, encouraging alumni, staff, and other constituents to get involved for years to come.

Parents Engagement and Parents' Association practices have a long-standing history of catering to mostly white constituents. Practices and policies even without malice, go unchecked and perpetuate exclusivity. In the call for racial justice within independent school communities, this workshop explores ways in which advancement professionals can be more intentional, working to center justice and belonging, in both words and actions. This workshop offers the opportunity to explore identity development and anti-bias frameworks, learning practical strategies that invite more inclusivity and justice to advancement, PA, alumni relations, and other advancement related entities. Performative measures are not enough, this workshop will bring more awareness, accountability, and action to developing practices that move beyond performative gesturing, but as a gateway to meaningful and sustainable change.

If you could take two advancement veterans out for a drink and ask them to share their best advice, what would they say? Skip the learning curve and learn the hard lessons the easy way in this fun, interactive session. You’ll hear examples that have worked really well (and those that haven’t) and go back to your office with insights to help you become more effective and confident in your work. Covering everything from donor relations to strategic planning, this session will offer something for everyone, and participants will leave with ideas and practices to implement for success in their own shop.

The key to recruiting right-fit families and inspiring donors and prospects starts with words--and not just any words. The language you use to describe who you are as an institution (your verbal identity or brand messaging) has to be authentic, clear, consistent and, above all, articulated from a position of strength. All too often, schools feel the need to position themselves against peers and competitors based on their own perceived deficits. But focusing on your school’s unique strengths will not only distinguish you in the marketplace, but will also inspire, instill confidence, and resonate with people on a human level. This session will provide a framework and tactics for creating messaging that will revolutionize how you think about and approach your work as a marketer or fundraiser, and why being “message positive” is not only good for your institution, but empowering for you and the entire school community.

The pandemic taught many of us to be nimble and resourceful -- especially when it comes to fundraising. Zoom and other technology platforms that were new in 2020 are tools we likely will continue to use as a way to cultivate, meet with donors, and raise money. Find out how the small Advancement Office at the Tower Hill School in Wilmington, Delaware, leveraged such tools with its volunteers and former and current faculty to lead the school's most successful day of giving that was fun, creative, and didn't (really) ask for money! Learn how to tailor Tower Hill's marketing and communications strategies to meet your institutional goals.

In the fall of 2020, many media stories speculated that the COVID-19 pandemic would provide an enrollment windfall for private schools in detriment of public schools. Official numbers confirmed enrollment declines in public schools last year, but analyses of NAIS enrollment data also showed that the total number of independent school students in 2020-2021 was slightly lower than pre-COVID times. As schools continue to adjust to a second year of the pandemic, what enrollment changes are impacting independent schools and their competitors? This session will explore K-12 enrollment trends and how the pandemic has shifted the educational landscape at large. It will also provide some recommendations for independent schools on how to attract and retain families.