12:00–12:30 PM

Welcome & Setting the Stage

This session will provide an overview of the institute experience and expectations as well as introduce faculty leaders and fellow participants.

12:30–1:30

Advancement Services Primer

Did you know advancement services is the backbone for all fundraising and development? Do you know where you fit within the advancement services department? What you do every day has an impact on your institution's ability to raise funds and engage constituents. This session will help you get a lay of the land and prepare you for all the institute has to offer.

1:30–2:00

Stretch Break

2:00–3:00

Electives (choose one)

• Fundamentals of Gift Processing & Sticky Gifts
  
  Are you just getting started in gift processing, or do you want to brush up on skills acquired over a number of years in the profession? Do you have specific questions about the odd gift? We'll start with gift processing basics including IRS and CASE guidelines. We'll also cover complex gift processing situations like partial use gifts, stock, gifts-in-kind, gifts with quid pro quo, pledge recording, and more.
• Building a Data-Centered Culture at Your Institution
  
  Every organization has a potential treasure trove of data, but not everyone recognizes the potential value of this commodity. This session will focus on the basics of addressing data needs at your organization. Participants will explore the value of data, strategies for data acquisition and integration, and practical ways in which we address data integrity. Importantly, practical means of measuring data-related ROI are explored.

3:00–3:30 

Stretch Break

3:30–4:30

Cohort Conversation

Participants will have the opportunity to engage in small group discussion with fellow attendees to maximize their learning throughout the institute. These meetings are facilitated by a faculty leader and are designed to help attendees more deeply explore concepts covered each week.

12:00–12:30 PM

Week 2 Intro & Activity

12:30–1:30

Scores and More - Engagement Scores

Alumni engagement isn't just measured by giving participation rates anymore. Learn about the new focus on alumni engagement scores. We'll cover what data should go into an engagement score, how to collect the data, and how the score can be beneficial to your institution. We'll also cover CASE's new Alumni Engagement Metrics survey.

1:30–2:00

Stretch Break

2:00–3:00

Electives (choose one)

• The 5 W's of Policies and Procedures for Managing Expectations, Compliance, and Best Practices
  
  A clearly articulated (and easily implemented) set of policies and procedures supports every advancement operation's long-term ability to maintain data accurately, manage team and stakeholder expectations, and comply with requirements. But who decides what is the core set of policies and procedures you need in your toolkit and when each should be deployed? Where do you start in developing or refining your institutions set of policies and procedures? Why do you need both and how do you document and distribute each for the greatest impact? We'll discuss these questions, and more, as we identify the key policies and procedures you need and gain ideas for implementing best practice solutions while avoiding reaching for a one-size-fits all answer.
• Portfolio and Moves Management
  
  Transition is common in the advancement office as staff come and go, and we move in and out of campaign periods. It's critical to make sure your best prospects don't get "lost" in your database. A well-designed prospect management system helps to ensure continuous donor engagement and stewardship by tracking relationship history and future plans for your top donors and prospects. We'll look at moves and prospect management (and the difference between the two), and how to create a prospect management system that supports individual staff efforts as well as prospect pool and campaign analytics.

3:00–3:30 

Stretch Break

3:30–4:30

Cohort Conversations

Participants will have the opportunity to engage in small group discussions facilitated by the presenting faculty leaders to further explore concepts covered and share ideas with fellow attendees.

12:00–12:30 PM

Week 3 Intro & Activity

12:30–1:30

View from the Vice President's/Development Office

Join Floyd Akins, associate vice president for advancement at Michigan State University, to discuss his remarkable tenure in advancement and to review best practices for working with leadership at your institution.

1:30–2:00

Stretch Break

2:00–3:00

Electives (choose one)

• Service Desk & ITIL
  
  How to best deliver timely service to users and to manage applications, technology, and infrastructure that support fundraising initiatives.
• You are What You Measure: Standard Reports, Metrics & KPI's
  
  What are standard reports? What should they look like? What tools can be used to create them? And how will they help drive your fundraising program forward? How are campaign reports different from standard reports? What do you measure and why? What are the key performance indicators for benchmarking?

3:00–3:30 

Stretch Break

3:30–4:30

Cohort Conversations

Participants will have the opportunity to engage in small group discussions facilitated by the presenting faculty leaders to further explore concepts covered and share ideas with fellow attendees.

12:00–12:30 PM

Week 4 Intro & Activity

12:30–1:30

Electives (choose one)

• Gift Agreements & Compliance
  
  What's a Gift Agreement? Why are they important? What should or shouldn't be in a Gift Agreement? We'll cover the critical importance of a properly written Gift Agreement and how it benefits both your institution and the donor. We'll also cover the various regulations and laws that impact Gift Agreements. Give you guidance on how to write appropriate Gift Agreements that meet your donor's requests while also staying compliant.
• Cyber Security & Data Governance
  
  Addressing Cybersecurity and Data Governance in Higher Education Fundraising.

1:30–2:00

Stretch Break

2:00–3:00

Managing Advancement Services in a Complex Advancement Environment

Are you leading or part of an advancement services team in a complex environment? From politics to staffing to competing priorities to relationships and expectations, our worlds can be complicated. How do you get the right people on your team, partner with your internal partners and serve your external constituents all at the same time? This session will provide an overview of how to think about who you are as a department, who you have on your team, how to partner throughout the organization and model an ethos that brings advancement services into the planning and strategic space instead of the constant responding world.

3:00–3:30

Closing Faculty Panel

Join members of the conference faculty for an interactive closing session designed to help attendees reflect on their institute experience, answer remaining questions, discuss next steps, and close out our time together.

3:30–4:00 

Stretch Break

4:00-5:00

Cohort Conversations

Participants will have the opportunity to engage in small group discussions facilitated by the presenting faculty leaders to further explore concepts covered and share ideas with fellow attendees.

Prospect Identification and Rating

Finding and making sure you engage your top major gift prospects is a primary goal of prospect research and management. We'll cover techniques to identify your most likely prospects including in-house efforts and vendor screenings. Then we'll talk ratings: how to design your prospect rating system and use it to prioritize among your potential donors to ensure your frontline fundraisers are connecting with the right folks at the right time.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Chaos

Good project management, simply put, aims to get the right people working on the right tasks at the right time to ensure successful outcomes. Many of advancement services staff already have that mix of attention to detail and interest in process and outcomes that make them good project managers. We'll discuss how to deploy these skills in service of your initiatives and how project management methods can help you face the changing priorities, technology landscape, and user requirements of a modern fundraising shop.

Keep It Clean: Take an Active Approach to Data Hygiene

Dirty, outdated, or missing data keeping you awake at night? There's a lot you can do. Learn how to set, prioritize, and achieve data hygiene goals. We'll talk about solutions like data entry standards and documentation, user permissions, audits, and appends (data purchases). Find out how to use your data hygiene metrics to promote your advancement services team within your advancement team.