We are delighted to welcome Clive Summerhayes, alumnus and donor to the University of Leeds; Dr Amanda MacCannell, Summerhayes Fellow, and Vicky Treherne, Head of Transformational & Major Giving at the University of Leeds. Vicky will moderate a “Question and Answer” session with Clive and Amanda which will give delegates an insight into the relationships developed between fundraisers, donors and beneficiaries and an example of the impact of the work of university advancement teams.

Who are your prospects? How do you know if you are focusing on the right prospects? Can you demonstrate the value of your prospects to your leadership? Many charities have limited resources for prospect management, yet choosing to dedicate your resources can create a real step change in your fundraising success. This session will explore how to use data to prioritise your prospects and, through careful segmentation, upscale your efforts.

A walkthrough of projects we’ve undertaken, and tools and resources we’ve used at UEA and LSE to help us solve underlying issues with processes and data structures, improve efficiencies, and future-proof our teams. We will talk about how different approaches work in different scenarios with different team sizes and share the lessons we’ve learned along the way.

Successful campaigns involve the very best people, planning, and performance and so we have decided to kick off the track with a panel of brilliant practitioners who have all been at the forefront of planning and delivering very successful campaigns: at Cambridge, London Business School and UCL. Our panel moderators will talk to them about the lessons learnt and how they can be applied across the sector. This session will be full of practical insights and is relevant to everyone, regardless of your role or the size and shape of your development function.

How can a smaller shop use the new AI tools to work smarter and find more prospects for its fundraising team? I am one person working for eight fundraisers. We are a new team with big goals. I am experimenting with AI like ChatGPT to see how I can use it to find corporations and individuals and what information we can find out about them - quickly, because I have a long and growing list of requests for prospects. AI is changing and developing fast. I will discuss some of the sites and methods I have used and some of my thoughts around prompt engineering and fact checking. This session will finish with a Q and A and a discussion.

2024 marks the 50th Anniversary of CASE as an association. To mark the anniversary, CASE is looking squarely into the future, and how our work as champions of our institutions, may change. Whether you work in advancement services, alumni relations, communications, fundraising, marketing, or any other specialty, we want to surface the trends and issues that are around the corner. At many conferences during the year, CASE is asking a panel of volunteers some questions about the profession – in the future. At the end of the year, we will take stock of the responses and share what we think the future might hold for our profession and all its disciplines – the ones we know now, and the ones that might emerge!