It’s been almost nine months since the world’s first fully autonomous fundraiser interacted with its first assigned donor. During that time, 11 higher educational institutions joined together as a cohort to engage donors with an AI-powerered Virtual Engagement Officer (and a second cohort is now live), but more importantly research, develop, and accelerate the deployment of autonomous fundraising for our entire industry.

All higher education institutions can relate to the fact that they have more donors and alumni than they have fundraisers with capacity to build relationships. This is precisely where autonomous fundraising changes what’s possible.

In this session, Susan Lewers, Associate Vice President, Major and Planned Gifts, of Illinois Institute of Technology will present the results her and her team have seen from autonomous fundraising – donors engaged, dollars raised, and pipeline built, in addition to their experience being the first organizations in the world to deploy a Virtual Engagement Officer to a portfolio of their donors.

We’ll present what we learned, what we got right, where course corrections were needed, and how we navigated AI in a field defined by relationships. We’ll share all of our findings including portfolios for autonomous fundraisers, sourcing engagement content independently, accuracy, transparency, ethics, and more.

Finally, we’ll conclude by looking at where we are going, how we can continue to further personalize donor journeys, push the outer limits of technology, and more.

This presentation will delve into the critical roles of the Wisconsin Alumni Student Board (WASB) and the Wisconsin Recent Grad Council (RGC) in influencing signature programs and initiatives at the Wisconsin Alumni Association (WAA). Both groups play a pivotal role in ensuring that current students and recent graduates are actively engaged in programs designed to strengthen their connections with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A core theme of the presentation highlights how diverse perspectives of both groups enhance the effectiveness of engagement strategies.

In this session, you'll hear Board members, alumni volunteers, and professional staff share how they've participated in focused, solutions-based workgroups to take a deep dive into specific opportunities or challenges in alumni engagement. From how alumni can support business strategy development to deepening connections with former Board members — you'll learn how to harness the collective energy and experience of volunteers to advance strategic priorities and initiatives. You'll also gain a better understanding of how alumni/volunteers feel about the sort of "roll-up-your-sleeves" work.

In this session you'll hear from Kristine Lo, Director of Fundraising Performance Analytics at the University of Chicago, how her team revolutionized fundraising management reporting to ensure managers and staff at all levels had the insights they needed to effectively manage up, down and across. The session will include best practices of effective management reporting, how consistency in management reporting can improve results, and suggestions for how you can audit (or start) your own data-delivery program.