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.

Learn from the award winning “Only in Nebraska” campaign what to do and not to do to make your next campaign a success. With a university system that has four unique campus brands, we still wanted everyone to share a single, unified message. In this session we will share how we started with a systemwide visioning day with top campus influencers and then developed campaign priorities for each campus and individual unit. Next, we used that information to build a comprehensive communications plan to publicly launch the campaign while considering all possible audiences from students to faculty and campus leaders to trustees and major donors to alumni of all four campuses.

As we share our “Top Five Lessons Learned from a Campaign Launch,” we will explain how we partnered closely with our campus partners to ensure that everyone felt they could see themselves in this campaign. We will also discuss how adding an engagement goal to our normal fundraising goal has rallied everyone around the campaign. Publicly launching a campaign is so much more than a cool logo and a catchy tagline – let us share with you how we approached it, Only in Nebraska.

In an era where donor count is trending down and questions about the value of higher education are trending up, how can communications and marketing professionals keep audiences engaged and ready to give? With the help of some killer sticker incentives and a little ingenuity, Kansas State University Foundation is daring to ask donors what they care about and then creating personalized content strategies that hit the engagement mark.

In a world of ever-evolving multichannel engagement strategies, finding the perfect game plan for donor connection can seem like a daunting task. Many of us, particularly small to mid-level Foundations and Fundraisers with tight budgets, often find expensive one-size-fits-all programs out of reach. We're here to offer an alternative approach and share our resources with other institutes and programs facing the same challenges. Discover how to master the art of donor engagement in-house, make the most of the resources you already have at your disposal, and find ways to create the perfect donor engagement plan for your organization.

In Fall 2023, Colorado State University unveiled a dynamic brand platform, launching across campus and in a multilingual recruitment campaign inviting audiences to “Find Your Energy” at CSU. This multi-year, award-winning initiative utilized an omni-channel approach for launch and expansion. MarComm collected broad feedback from stakeholder groups in the CSU community to foster adoption before launching this initiative, which captures a sense of awe and inspiration, telling stories about what makes CSU special. Learn how CSU, determined to propel its position as a leading higher ed competitor in Colorado, engineered alignment to capitalize on brand development and yield impressive results.

Rather than treating social media as a bulletin board that serves endless pieces of content by shouting into the void, learn how the University of Colorado Boulder captures data behind each social media post to help improve strategy and ensure less wasted effort (with the goal being no waste!). Dr. Noelle Seybert, Director of Social Media at CU Boulder, will walk the group through the approach, the execution, and the results behind the @CUBoulder social media data tracking and show how you, too, can get in on the fun!

Your campus buildings can be transformed into effective marketing assets through highly creative environmental branding. Learn how these often overlooked spaces can be utilized to their full marketing potential to greatly elevate the overall perception of your brand, enhance the student experience, and boost donor dollars. In this session, you will learn effective strategies and results supported by case studies that will elevate your understanding of the powerful influence environmental branding can have on your institution.