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?

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!

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.

During the University of Chicago's Alumni Weekend in May 2024 there were at least 13 unique incidents of student, community, and alumni protest. Actions ranged from chalking, handing out pamphlets, disrupting events, occupying buildings, and damaging equipment.

Our campus, as so many others, had been home to an encampment on the main quads, just weeks before 2,500 attendees arrived for Alumni Weekend and Reunion events. The University of Chicago's commitment to free expression required the UChicago Alumni office to create a contingency plan that accounted for anticipated disruption, while abiding by the Chicago Principles.

Join us to review the Chicago Principles of Free Expression and the components of the Alumni Weekend contingency plan, constructed to include stakeholders across the University and beyond. Materials reviewed will include scripts to aid staff during events which are being disrupted, large scale protest plans, training materials for all staff volunteers, and the code of conduct for alumni participants. Session will review case studies using actual protests from the weekend and lessons learned.