Most development professionals have experienced an uncomfortable, offensive, or harmful donor-constituent interaction. This cannot just be seen as “part of the job” rather something that is addressed to create a culture and systems that build brave spaces and policies and procedures that result in greater safety and professional satisfaction.

Universities across the country deploy regional development teams to engage and cultivate alums who are far from campus. While cultivation opportunities have become more accessible virtually, remote alumni still crave in-person engagement with campus leadership for an impactful experience. The UC Berkeley East Coast Major Gifts team developed a program to efficiently and effectively bring campus leadership, from Deans and Vice Chancellors to the University Chancellor, across the country specifically for development work and donor meetings. This system, tailored over years of iteration, has resulted in historic fundraising revenue from the region, contributing over $373M to the recently completed Light the Way Campaign. Brown University deployed a similar strategy on the West Coast, including a bespoke events program focused on campaign priorities and key donors. In this session, we will outline the strategy and implementation plan to collaborate with campus fundraisers, build a sustainable regional donor pipeline, and use qualitative and quantitative data-informed strategies to bring campus leaders to regions in which their time will be used effectively to drive forward major gift conversations.

In today's evolving philanthropic landscape, digital engagement officers are proving to be indispensable in enhancing fundraising strategies and cultivating robust donor pipelines. This session explores how digital tools—such as video, texting, email, virtual meetings, and even traditional phone calls—can transform donor interactions and drive substantial results.

Gain insights from a successful program that developed a digital engagement strategy from the ground up, now generating over $1M annually. Learn actionable tips for streamlining your digital outreach efforts, discover valuable resources, and receive practical samples to implement in your own organization. Benefit from the experiences of seasoned development officers who have navigated this digital frontier, and leave equipped with the knowledge to elevate your donor engagement and fundraising success.

Engaging donors around planned giving opportunities is a powerful fundraising approach. As Professor Russell James, expert in Planned Giving strategies, puts it: cash is not king. Gift officers are often aware of planned giving vehicles but are challenged to find organic ways to guide donors to understand these opportunities. Planned giving vehicles can also seem technical and intimidating to many development officers. Planned giving training often focuses on the mechanisms themselves, which can generate curiosity but leave unanswered questions about how to turn theoretical knowledge into gift closures. This session follows a different approach. Through story-telling and case-studies, this session builds from the relationships and conversations development officers have with their donors to show the path forward to planned giving strategies and partnership approaches that close gifts.

Want to maximize your Gala ROI? Discover the transformative power of volunteer engagement. In this presentation, we will delve into innovative strategies to enhance your return on investment (ROI) by empowering your volunteers. Learn how the Chinese American International School (PS-8), leverages our volunteer's unique skills and passions to create a more dynamic and efficient event that not only meets but exceeds our fundraising goals.

The #1 way to ensure your institution's success & your future success as a fundraiser is ambitious, consistent discovery now. But discovery is one of the hardest parts of fundraising! When you're getting in the door with amazing new potential donors, discovery can feel like an adventure. When you're slogging through names in your database and getting zero responses, discovery can feel overwhelming and oppressive. Join this session for tactical discovery tips from sending better emails to cold calling to turning the conversation to money in that first visit.

How often have your staff come to you to tell you about an inappropriate comment, touching, or other more egregious behavior from a donor, board member or volunteer? Or do you simply hear about it second hand because reporting it means losing a prospect or being told that it's "just part of the job"? Staff who work in the field have put up with harassment in many forms for many years, but with recent cultural shifts and efforts like CASE"s Zero Tolerance Policy, advancement shops are taking action. Please join the presenters to learn about how some shops are taking concrete actions and practices to prevent harassment and discrimination in advancement, fundraising, and related functions and how you can take these approaches back to your own team, including training to empower and protect staff members, as well as transparent reporting and remediation processes. Through gathering research, developing guidelines, and creating concrete actions and practices to address the problem, and sharing our own journeys, we can all help change the industry to create a safe and respectful workplace culture.

What is it about “the little engine that could” that allowed it to successfully pull the train over the mountain when larger engines refused to even try? Why is it that California pistachio farmers so often become millionaires when the trees take years to mature and bear fruit? What can we learn from the little engine that exclaimed “I think I can…I think I can” as it huffed and puffed to the mountain top?
Can universities and colleges embarking on their first-ever comprehensive campaign learn from these examples? Yes, when one considers the common characteristics or ingredients in a successful campaign: patience, persistence, and a healthy culture of philanthropy. It is almost universal that comprehensive campaigns, especially multi-year, first time efforts, are a mixture of challenges and opportunities. But with patience, persistence and a keen understanding of your culture of philanthropy, the challenges can be met, and the opportunities can bear fruit.
Join us for an in depth look at these issues and obstacles and get tips on how patience and persistence can lead to success:
• You can’t raise money for everything! When every department on campus wants to raise money, how do you go about setting meaningful priorities and goals? How do you respond to shifting priorities?
• Explore strategies when changes in leadership occur, whether at the executive level, key volunteers or even your Development staff.
• Most Advancement officers will squirm a bit when asked if they have sufficient prospects for a campaign. Join our discussion on successful techniques to grow or enhance your prospect pool.
• Return on investment. It takes money to raise money. Explore with colleagues the multiple methods for aquiring resources that will put you on a path to a successful campaign.
• Whether a campaign is big or small, short or long, there comes a time when campaign fatigue sets in. Volunteers get tired or need to move on to other things, staff move on or get frustrated, people will begin to wonder if it will ever end. This session will reveal successful ways to overcome the challenges inherent in campaign fatigue.
• Identifying and growing your culture of philanthropy is essential to campaign success. Explore with us the four key pillars of a robust culture and how you can improve them as your campaign unfolds.

Key Takeaways:
• Develop campaign priorities that are bold, transformational and aligned with your mission and strategic plan. And don’t forget to measure prospect and donor interest. Be flexible and amenable to change if needed.
• Expect to experience changes in leadership – sometimes the president or other executives, development team members, or volunteers. Consider these changes to be opportunities for fresh perspectives and new energy.
• Be prepared to state your case with the need for sufficient resources. You cannot expect to take your fundraising program to higher levels with the same old budget.
• When your prospect pool is insufficient for your chosen goal, you must build the ship while sailing it. Building your pool takes grit, patience, hard discovery work and creativity. Never stop mining your database.
• Remember the story of the little engine that could, which teaches the value of optimism and hard work. Despite a steep climb and a heavy load, the little engine slowly succeeds in pulling the train over the mountain. And keep in mind the lessons of the pistachio farmer, who never gives up and sees from the beginning the value of nurturing cultivation of his trees, just as we must be patient and persistent with our prospects.

Are you tired of siloes? Do you wish you were able to collaborate more with your academic and administrative leaders? During this interactive session we will discuss ways you can effectively partner with them to set fundraising, engagement, and campaign priorities, prep for meetings and asks, and much more. In addition, learn what organizations are looking for when hiring fundraising and engagement professionals to work with their leaders. You will walk away with practical tools to foster stronger internal relationships so you can engage more people and secure critical philanthropic dollars to fuel your mission. This session is perfect for fundraisers, engagement professionals, and university leaders seeking to unlock the full potential of their advancement programs.

The fundraising basics to learn about wills, trust, and beneficiary designations from retirement plans. This presentation will explain these terms, discuss the the benefits to the donor and charity, and offer useful conversation starters for gift officers to use with prospective donors. Whether you are a staff person or board volunteer new to fundraising or a seasoned gift officer this session will give you the knowledge and wording to use to secure these important future gifts for your organization.