Bob Dylan was not singing about higher education when he sang “the times they are a changin’,” but indeed many universities nationwide are experiencing an era of challenge and change. Our relatively small school at the flagship university in Colorado has experienced significant change over the past year-plus — from deanship transitions to sweeping budget and organizational change. These changes have led us to pivot and evaluate our communications strategies in real time while we attempt to remain true to our mission and center community-building among faculty, staff, students, and supporters. We don’t have all the answers, but we know we are not the only ones interested in exploring inclusive and transparent communications strategies during times of change and processing our emotions as staff leaders. In this interactive session, we will work through lessons learned around change management in our school as we explore case studies together about budget constraints, political scrutiny, leadership transitions, humanizing change management, and more.

This session will delve into key areas of advancement to uncover effective strategies and valuable insights. The session will be structured around three core topics: Stewardship, Scholarships, and Annual Giving. Each segment will highlight successful practices and lessons learned from various initiatives, offering a comprehensive overview of what has proven effective at Northeast Community College. By examining examples and discussing strategic approaches, participants will gain actionable knowledge to enhance their own advancement efforts. This session promises to deliver a blend of practical tips and inspirational success stories, aimed at optimizing outcomes and fostering growth in advancement activities.

As CFR (Corporate and Foundation Relations) officers build extensive university networks to gain knowledge to construct compelling and concise proposals to fund campus priorities, Major Gift Officers can collaborate with CFR Officers to expand their offerings to individual donors with ready-made materials, data, and impactful stories. In this session participants will gain understanding of the value of Corporate and Foundation Relations and how Major Gift Officers can enhance institutional support through collaboration.

Buena Vista University has built and implemented a custom Alumni Engagement model based on CASE best practices and aligns with the CASE Alumni Engagement Survey and Metrics. Overtime this led to the development of a custom Affinity scoring model that combines not only engagement data but also giving as well as other prospect ratings into one quick and easy to interpret score. The two models help to build stronger donor pipelines by identifying prospects who are ready for the next step in the donor journey as well as potential alumni leaders. Come and hear how you can implement this easy system to boost your alumni engagement and fundraising results.

Does the number of scholarships you manage intimidate you? Are your scholarship processes stuck in the vicious cycle of swapping spreadsheets across campus? Then an online scholarship management system may be just what you are looking for. Emporia State University improved our scholarship utilization by 10% by using an online scholarship management system. In this session, we will discuss how an online scholarship management system can improve the efficiency of your scholarship awarding process. We will explore how these systems can merge the entire awarding process into one place. From student scholarship applications to thank you letters to the donors these systems will immensely improve your ability to manage your awarding process.