Welcome to New Orleans! Please stop by the registration desk starting at 12:00 p.m. to check in
and pick up your conference materials.
1:00 – 1:15
Welcome, Faculty Introductions and Conference Overview
All Faculty
Join conference leadership to meet the faculty, review conference highlights and learn how to get the most
out of your time at the workshop
1:15 – 2:15
Faculty Panel: The Prelude.
All Faculty
Post-it note exercise: what is your biggest challenge, what are you hoping to get out of the
conversations.
2:15 – 2:45
Refreshment Break
2:45 – 3:45
Elective Sessions (choose one)
Gift Processing Hot Topics & Best Practices
Speaker: Karen Sims
Join our discussion as we move past the basics into the complex world of gift processing hot topics. Today's gift processing best practices have made their way from our back offices to every frontline fundraising strategy and boardrooms. There are often multiple solutions for each unique scenario. Knowing that one size does not fit all, we will discuss how to implement these practices into your shops and to share resources that will better equip us all for little fires ahead.
Pinch the tail and suck the head: Data Stewardship & Data Hygiene Best Practices
Speaker: Adriana Bitoun
An organization's most valued asset is its data; organizational data describes results, informs strategy, and unveils areas of opportunity. Therefore, due data care is the most critical activityto ensure effective decision-making. Unfortunately, there is more data floating around than time and energy to organize it - But you will learn the proper way to pinch the tail and suck the head or how to get the best out of your data. In this session, you will learn to identify the most impactful data and how to develop a simple but effective data hygiene routine to keep it freshand relevant.
3:45 – 4:00
Stretch Break
4:00 – 5:00
Elective Sessions (choose one)
Giving Day Strategies & Crowdfunding Initiatives
Speaker: Karen Sims
Giving days and crowdfunding are the current growing wave in many fundraising and stewardship plans today. Crowdfunding can often reach much broader and diverse audiences. This discussion will highlight best practices to get us in the winner's circles with solid policies and practices.
Creating Data Governance Policies & Following Best Practice
Speaker: Emilio Caballero
As stewards of highly sensitive information we are obligated to follow many complex standards for privacy and data access. This session will discuss some of the most basic requirements of the CRA, PCI, PII, FERPA and GDPR. If you work with constituent data and these terms are not familiar to you, then this session is a must.
5:00 – 6:00
Networking Reception
Join conference faculty and your colleagues to network and unwind after Day 1. Complimentary
hors d'oeuvres and drink tickets will be provided. Don't forget your business cards!
6:00 PM
Conference Adjourns for the Day
Dinner on your own
8:30 – 9:30 AM
Continental Breakfast / Table Discussions
8:30 – 9:15
Faculty Office Hours
15 minute one-on-one conversations with faculty. Sign-ups required.
9:30 – 10:30
Jazz It Up: Automation in Operations & Digital Transformation
Speaker: Adriana Bitoun
Ever wondered how leading organizations achieve great things? It is not accomplished solely on large budgets or resources. It is through the use of automation and digital transformation. Impressive changes, scalable operations, and constituent outreach are at one's fingertips within reasonable or no budgets. Learn what tools you have available and how to utilize them to support a reliable operation and make Digital Transformation a reality for your organization. Your operations will be better than the best gumbo around.
10:30 – 10:45
Coffee Break
10:45 – 11:45
Elective Sessions (choose one)
CASE Insights--Using Data to Inform Fundraising and Engagement
Speaker: Cindy Moon-Barna
How are your data serving you? While every institution has some level of data collection in place, the reach and impact of those efforts varies widely. What data are you collecting? Are you focused entirely on fundraising or are you also capturing engagement activities? Are you utilizing the latest CASE Global Reporting Standards? How do you tie the data you collect into strategic decisions? How do your efforts compare to your peers? This presentation will discuss how to deepen your data practices—no matter where you are on your journey. In addition to providing a lens for assessing your own data practices, CASE will share the latest findings and trends from our global data benchmarks and research projects—focusing on engagement data, US fundraising outcomes, and a deep dive into a recent study of principal gifts.
How Harvard Enhanced Gift Processing Efficiency Through Automation
Speaker: Chris Cagliuso
Timely and accurate gift processing is vital to our institutions and our donors. But in a resource constrained environment, finding ways to record gifts faster without sacrificing accuracy can be challenging. And without expanding staff, it means providing the existing team with better tools to do their work. In this session, we'll discuss how Harvard's gift processing, direct marketing, and technology teams partnered up to create an automated process for entering a specific set of gifts. . . and how that ultimately improved gift processing efficiency across the board.
11:45 AM – 1:15 PM
Lunch on your own
1:15 – 2:15
Small Group Conversations (birds of a feather)
Speaker: Faculty led small group discussions
2:15 – 2:45
Refreshment Break
2:45 – 3:45
Elective Sessions (choose one):
Leading Through Change with no Authority
Speaker: Karen Sims
Being a Leader, Being Professional, Top Tier Customer Service, Training, Writing Procedures, Setting Goals, Obtaining Goals, Marketing yourself & your department, are accomplishments you can achieve by becoming the best Leader you can be with no authority. This session will be fun, and bring excitement you can take back and utilize immediately in your everyday life.
CRM Conversion Best Practices & Pain Points
Speaker: Emilio Caballero
There are so many decisions that go into the planning and selection of a new CRM. This session will discuss the process from the request for proposals to vendors to the implementation and everything in between. How you prepare your discussion points and evaluation for each stage directly impacts your time, budget, staff resources, and sanity.
3:45 – 4:00
Stretch Break
4:00 – 5:00
How to effectively and efficiently utilize ratings, modeling scores, and other analytics
Speaker: Heather Breerwood
Leadership wants to utilize analytics for strategic planning. Now what? In a sea of vendors, metrics, scores, ratings, and models, you may become too preoccupied with they "what" and forget the "why"? Furthermore, do you know if your data is ready to yield the best results. In this session, you will learn how to manage an analytics project from selecting to proper vendor and preparing your data for extraction, to transforming your results in to actionable fundraising strategies. We will discuss everything from Blackbaud Target Analytics, to wealth screens, to "DIY" analytics measures such as RFM.
5:00
Conference Adjourns for the Day
Dinner on your own (sign-up sheets for dine-arounds available)
8:30 – 9:30 AM
Continental Breakfast / Roundtable Discussions
Join your peers for optional small-group discussions during breakfast. Share your biggest challenges, review hot topics and discuss solutions with your peers.
8:30 – 9:15
Faculty Office Hours
15 minute one-on-one conversations with faculty. Sign-ups required.
9:30 – 10:30
Diversifying your database
Speaker: Faculty Panel Discussion
Location: Louisiana Ballroom
Many institutions are working to advance DE&I efforts within our CRMs. Respectful and accurate data management is critical to building strong relationships with our constituents and to meet the ongoing needs of the evolving university population. Join us in discussing how our biographical data management practices should be advancing to keep up with the current data needs and learn strategies to improve your data processes to ensure the data is inclusive of all constituents, regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, racial/ethnic background, and nationality. Discuss strategies used to include international data and new gender identities into standard data table structures, to meet the ongoing needs of the evolving university population. Many of our Advancement shops are uniquely positioned to contribute to this effort. Join us to explore ways we can integrate and operationalize DEI data in our systems.
10:30 – 10:45
Coffee Break
10:45 AM – 12:00 PM
Participant Panel: Best Practice Highlights
All Faculty
Participants will present their institution's best practice policies and procedures. Attendees will join the
discussion by sharing deep dive questions on the presented topics.
