Welcome to Chicago! Stop by the registration desk beginning at 12:00 p.m. to check in and pick up your conference materials.
1:00 – 2:00
Conference Welcome, Overview, and Big Picture Trends in Philanthropic Landscape
Speaker: All Faculty Panel - Moderated by Edgar Gonzalez
Join conference leadership to meet the faculty, review conference highlights and learn how to make the most out of our time together. Then we’ll dive right into a session gleaning insight on the education landscape, trends in philanthropy, and topics of interest to all attendees via an interactive faculty panel. Come ready to share what you are experiencing at your institution.
2:00 – 3:15
Mindset of a Major Gift Officer
Speakers: Edgar Gonzalez and Pedro Govantes
The expectations placed on major gift officers are wide-ranging and require a diverse blend of skills applied in unique situations. Developing your core competencies will contribute to your long-term success but it all starts with having the right outlook and approach. The faculty will lead a fast-paced look at the mindset required to thrive as a successful major gift officer in the 21st century.
3:15 – 3:45
Refreshment Break
3:45 – 4:45
Elective Sessions (choose one):
Working with Partners Across Campus
Speakers: Kristin Love and Michael Reza
How to do things differently and why it matters. This session will emphasize relationship-building with partners outside of the Advancement division to achieve greater outcomes. Time will be spent on building professional toolkits, overcoming challenges and working across silos toward positive engagement and philanthropic impact to the institution.
Stewardship: The Beginning or the End
Speakers: Emilie Fan and Pedro Govantes
When looking at the traditional fundraising cycle, stewardship is often viewed as the last of the five steps. Some of you may even move donors to “permanent stewardship” in your caseload, or move said donors out of your caseload into a Donor Relation colleague’s caseload. But how many of your current top prospects have made a major gift before? Probably more than you originally thought. Let’s flip the script on stewardship and discuss how great stewardship can lead to the next major gift.
4:45 – 5:45
Networking Reception
Join conference speakers and your colleagues to network and socialize after the first day of the conference. Drink tickets and hors d'oeuvres will be provided. Don't forget your business cards!
5:45
Conference Adjourns for the Day
Dinner on your own OR optional small group dinners; sign-up required
8:30 – 9:30 AM
Continental Breakfast and Roundtable Discussions
9:30 – 10:45
Habits of Highly Effective Gift Officers: Secret Sauce
Speakers: Edgar Gonzalez, Joyce Lee and Michael Reza
The most important factor in success (or lack thereof) as major gift officer is YOU. With the right attitude, hard work and by forming the right habits you can dramatically increase your chances for success. How you approach, plan, execute and track your work matters. This session will help you identify characteristics competencies and habits of highly successful gift officers and share a recipe for “secret sauce” in thinking about career progression
10:45-11:00
Coffee Break
11:00 AM – Noon
Elective Sessions (choose one):
Portfolio Management - Using Metrics to Manager and Validate Stronger Performance
Speakers: Emilie Fan and Kristin Love
As fundraisers, our work is both an art and a science, and we know that what gets measured gets done. This session will focus on the science of the work- the prescribed set of activities that lead to positive outcomes. Faculty will focus the conversation on crafting and utilizing metrics customized to the institution, as well as incentivizing teams and fundraisers in achievement of their goals. By viewing metrics as friends rather than foes, fundraisers will gain new tools to manage portfolios with sophistication.
Managing Up, Down and Sideways
Speakers: Joyce Lee and Michael Reza
What are the ways in which you can more effectively connect and partner with everyone around you? How do you influence your colleagues and collaborators? What are some constructive leverage points and approaches? This session tackles recurring challenges and offers learnings, tactics, and keys to success in building and growing relationships. Through large and small group discussions, attendees will share perspectives, lessons, and new strategies and tactics to take away.
Noon – 1:30 PM
Lunch on your own
1:30 – 2:30
Practicing Inclusive Fundraising
Speakers: Edgar Gonzalez and Pedro Govantes
How can – and how should – higher education development approach fundraising opportunities within diverse communities? This session offers some ideas on how fundraisers and institutions can reflect on their practices, content, and outreach to respectfully and effectively engage donors whose philanthropy may be consciously informed by race, gender identity, orientation, able-bodied status, and a range of other identities. After reviewing some examples, participants will also have the opportunity to share challenges and successes, in the spirit of a candid dialog aimed at helping our work reflect our personal values and institutional missions, and the diverse
2:30 – 2:45
Refreshment Break
2:45 – 3:45
Elective Sessions (choose one):
Big Ideas: Raising Sights Through Storytelling
Speakers: Joyce Lee and Michael Reza
We all know the power and immense potential of compelling storytelling—its ability to inspire our colleagues, leaders, and donors and to forge new pathways and relationships. What are the key steps to finding the right story? And what are the essential elements for every effective story? This session offers a practical outline on how to find stories that will raise sights, with examples from experiences with both internal and external partners. Participants will have an opportunity to workshop with each other a past experience as well as a future (or current!) “big idea.”
Advancement is the Ultimate Team Sport
Speaker: Emilie Fan and Kristin Love
Building off strategies discussed in Portfolio Management - Using Metrics to Manage and Validate Stronger Performance, faculty will lead attendees through group discussions around leveraging internal partnerships to exceed your fundraising metrics. We will discuss ways to effectively motivate collaboration throughout your Advancement shop, build strategic moves management plans for each of your prospects, and establish a strong relationship network for your caseload. Come ready to discuss who your key Advancement partners are or where there are opportunities to expand your internal network of partners. Let’s figure out how to cross that finish line together!
3:45 – 4:00
Stretch Break
4:00–5:00
Ask Us Anything: Challenges and Management Strategies
Speaker: All Faculty – Moderated by Joyce Lee
What are the tough challenges you’re not sure how to take on? What are the questions about major gift work or the development profession that you’ve always wanted to ask, but haven’t found the right venue yet? This session will kick off with the moderator posing questions for the faculty on some particular sticky wickets, and then will open to anonymous questions from the audience on: stumbling blocks encountered; hard nuts to crack; and how to Zillow the special real estate between a rock and hard place. Please come with questions and let’s commit to a candid learning space! We’ll be using app-based live poll for questions.
5:00
Conference Adjourns for the Day
Dinner on your own OR optional small group dinners; sign-up required
8:30 – 9:30 AM
Continental Breakfast and Roundtable Discussions by Institution Type
9:30 – 10:30
Part 1: Career Planning and Self Awareness
Speaker: All Faculty Panel - Moderated by Pedro Govantes
In Part One of this all-faculty panel discussion, we will have the opportunity to hear from our faculty about their professional journey, how they decided what type of institute they wanted to serve in, when they knew to make a move, how they determined if they wanted to pursue more of a management or pure fundraising track, and perhaps most importantly, how they cultivated the crucial characteristic of self-awareness.
10:30 – 10:45
Coffee Break
10:45 – 11:45
Part 2: Career Reset - Why to Stay in Educational Advancement and in Your Job:
Speaker: All Faculty Panel - Moderated byPedro Govantes
In Part Two of this all-faculty our panel discussion, we will hear from all of our faculty on why they have decided to remain in higher education advancement, even in the face of all the challenges.
11:45 AM – 12:15 PM
Faculty Q&A and Final Thoughts
Final questions, faculty perspectives and next steps as you go back to your institutions.
