Parents are one of the hottest markets for philanthropy and fundraising; but in order to solicit them, we must first engage them, and meaningfully. This session will discuss the ways one institution built a family engagement strategy--through its onboarding of first-year families, in-person and virtual programming, and strategic and aligned communications, all sequenced to reinforce one another.

Because parent programming on college campuses can be scattered and disjointed, we developed a strategic plan for family engagement to provide coherence, direction, and vision. This session will provide an overview of how we not only built that plan but quickly implemented that plan and how collaboration across the institution has allowed us to meaningfully engage families and contribute to our fundraising and philanthropy goals.

The “great wealth transfer” is a monumental phenomenon that is already underway and will continue to impact our work. Over the next two decades, Boomers are expected to transfer approximately $68 trillion in assets to younger generations. This transfer presents a unique opportunity for transformative philanthropy and strategic adaptation within alumni associations. This session will share actionable insights on how alumni associations can leverage this as an opportunity to forge stronger connections with aging constituents while maximizing philanthropic impact.

Prospecting often marks the beginning of each relationship we hope to form with a donor. Despite this, fundraisers tend to focus their energy learning more about gift closure conversations than how to reach their donors in the first place. Through the lessons learned during an experiment in prospecting you will learn how you can connect to your intended donor base with ease!

In this session you will gain insights from a study conducted using real prospects. We will talk about how to approach prospecting, what you might expect your results to be and what actually happened in the study. As well as how all of this can inform your work in the future. Additionally, the session will be full of opportunities for you to ask questions and share your experiences in prospecting.

At the end of this session you will be able to identify your target audience, create an outreach plan to increase the responses you receive from your audience and utilize these prospecting tools as an asset that aids the work you do with donors throughout the rest of the gift cycle. Let us help you make the most of the time you spend prospecting so that you can get back to closing more gifts!

Learn how Marian University (Indianapolis) utilized the 10 year anniversary of their College of Osteopathic Medicine to secure a $29M naming gift from a family who had $0 giving history until three years prior.

Since the pandemic, more fundraisers do their work remotely. What is the impact on our bottom line? Can anyone work from anywhere? What are best practices based on recent research?

Discover how to transform unassigned prospects into engaged donors through strategic relationship management. This session will showcase how to keep potential donors "warm" by ensuring ongoing communication, even without immediate assignment to a relationship manager. Additionally, we'll explore the rapid growth of Illinois Tech’s regional events program, driven by targeted outreach using geographic mapping tools, which has significantly increased alumni participation nationwide.
We'll also touch on how integrating key engagement forms into their platform has streamlined volunteer management and improved data capture, enabling more effective alumni engagement.