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.

Electronic screening, giving habits, and prospect research tools help identify potential donors. Now, how do we get them to engage? This session explores how to uncover connections that generate prospect response, helping you secure more initial individual meetings and build relationships that draw your constituents closer to your institution. The presenters, who have more than 40 years of combined major and planned gift experience, have each joined a new organization within the past year. They will share perspectives on outreach techniques that are effective across institutions and ones that are unique to their current campus, as well as to facilitate idea sharing among attendees.

We want donors to give to capacity, but sometimes programs across campus aren’t ready to implement a major gift level of investment. Fundraisers will learn how to: build the runway beyond an annual fund gift with prospects to get to those major and principal gift opportunities; embrace expertise as a generalist who brings together donors with programs that support university fundraising priorities; manage up, down, and across to move the program forward to meet donors where they can see the most impact; and increase collaboration with development colleagues to amplify smaller programs and maximize dollars raised.