Do you sometimes find yourself in a position where you’re trying to make someone do something that perhaps isn’t top of their priority list? Or maybe you have competing requests and need to say ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ to a stakeholder. Perhaps you’re struggling to get the information you need. Or your stakeholders sometimes don’t respond to your emails. These are common challenges no matter where you are in your career. Come along to this session to hear practical ways to increase your confidence and broaden your approach to influencing. Sometimes the simplest changes can influence behaviour in others. Come and see what changes you can make to help you be more confident in your influencing.

This session will be focused on the learnings taken from a training course on migration, specifically forced migration. It will summarise the 6-day training sessions hosted by CURVE (Cultivating Understanding of Refugees and Vulnerable Environments), @kairoseurope and Erasmus+. Learnings will be rounded off with topline conclusions on forced migration, philanthropic support and donor relations. This CURVE training will be run by a range of people from refugees to practitioners. Sessions include: • Understanding the Migration Issues of Southern EU Countries • Understanding how climate emergency is already influencing forced migration • Mental health: PTSD, traumas, cultural shock and more: what are the signs and how can we help • Alternative languages: music, art, theatre, dance & informal education techniques to facilitate interaction and mutual exchange with the local community • Hate Speech, social media and the danger of spreading fear of the “other” as a cultural and religious threat • Learning about the specific issues faced by women and unaccompanied minors

Philanthropy writing is part art, part science and part internal diplomacy! How can we work with colleagues to create proposals and reports which grab donors by the heart and head, especially when writing about complex academic or technical projects? Fran shares tips to sharpen your persuasive writing skills.

In this session, we will explore how a Stewardship and Donor Relations function can articulate its purpose as part of an Advancement Team, and how doing so can add clarity and focus to all of its work.

At Durham University, we have a long-standing and loyal donor base of alumni who have continuously given financially to the university for up to 30 years consecutively. We have donors who started giving much longer than that, but the 30-year anniversary is currently our longest period of continuous giving. The Continuous Year Donors programme in Durham recognises donors who have given financially for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years and 30 years. The aim of this presentation is to take you on a journey through the process of data retrieving, data analysis and delivery of our CYD programme at Durham. The various phases of the project, mailing out to all CYDs who have passed milestones this fiscal year and highlighting a pioneering new initiative to steward the first group of donors passing 30 years of giving. Exploring the barriers faced in launching this new enterprise and overcoming those with adjustment and compromise. Culminating on how we connected and communicated this with the donors, we successfully rolled out a sustainable and future-proof stewardship recognition programme.

In this Q&A session, you’ll have a chance to chat with three fundraisers from different institutions and areas of expertise to hear about their experiences working with and stewarding donors of all shapes and sizes. Should corporate donors be stewarded differently? What’s an example of a big-impact, low-cost stewardship that changed a relationship with donors? What value can donor relations bring to building a relationship and securing a gift? And any other burning questions you’ve ever wanted to ask a fundraiser. You can submit questions in advance or ask in the session – all topics are open for discussion!