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. Topics will be sourced from the faculty and from your answers in the preconference survey. Come ready to share what you are experiencing at your institution.

How do you prioritize your time as a major gift officer? Who do you plan to contact today, this week, and this month to maximize the potential of your assigned prospects? As frontline fundraisers, we are pulled in many different directions. Each day we need to decide how to focus our time on the cultivation steps that will result in the highest impact for our prospects. In this session, we will discuss ways to use your portfolio list to help you manage your time and efforts in the relationship management of your assigned prospects.

In any philanthropic fundraising campaign approximately 75%-85% of your goal will be made up of leadership gifts. At the University of South Carolina, we have refined the leadership gift moves process and created a new position focused entirely on engagement with the top tier of donors capable of making a campaign leadership gift; tracking of their moves; effectively utilizing the President, Vice President of Development, Cabinet Members, and Deans to move these donors through the pipeline; and add new high wealth capacity donors to the mix. With this model, we have found an increase in ROI not only through fundraising numbers, but also in collaboration between units and central offices, and well-cultivated donors enthusiastic about the future of our university.

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 the characteristics, competencies, and habits of highly successful gift officers - but it all starts with having the right mindset, outlook and approach.

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.”

Crafting a gift strategy that begins before a gift officer’s first outreach and continuously improves and evolves throughout the donor cycle amplifies asks and results. Moreover, a gift strategy that infuses gifts of assets and gift planning builds intentionality and helps donors understand how they may be able to commit more and feel joyful about doing so. This session will provide practical steps for building a strategy throughout the donor cycle including tactical pre-work and the using donor cues and clues. Learn how to craft your donor centered strategy using frameworks based in donor motivations. Complete with real life case studies from the presenters’ combined 40+ years of major gift experience, this session will help operationalize moves management through strategy building.

In this interactive presentation, learn how Gift Officers at Georgia State University have leveraged outreach cadences and go beyond the traditional email outreach. The presenters will share insights, strategies, and tools to support increased engagement through a multi-channel workflow, booked meetings, and giving through the use of turnkey questions.

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 dialogue aimed at helping our work reflect our personal values and institutional missions, and the diverse constituencies we serve.

Building holistic industry/university partnerships can benefit students, faculty and industry, but they are complex and take preparation, strategic thinking and thoughtfulness. After attending this session, participants will be able to plan and execute a successful industry visit to campus, learn how to move a partnership forward and understand potential challenges.

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.