Speakers
Ollie Bennett
Ollie is the Regular Giving Officer (Leadership Giving & Telephone Campaigns) at Imperial College London, where he has been since October 2016. Ollie manages the student telephone campaigns, and led on the process of bringing them in-house in 2018. He also oversees the Regular Giving team’s mid-value giving programme, conducting face to face meetings with a pool of c.200 alumni prospects. Ollie joined Imperial upon graduating from the University of Leeds, where he was a student caller and later a supervisor with the University’s Footsteps Fund.
Sam Burdock
As a student caller back in the late-noughties, Sam developed a fascination with the expansive world of higher education fundraising. After graduating, he managed Warwick’s student fundraising team, followed by an eventful 18 months in prospect research, covering the implementation of new data protection policies. Now, as the Warwick’s Leadership and Regular Giving Manager, Sam aims to steer the team through whatever comes next, into a period of sustained growth and success in regular giving at Warwick.
Kat Carter
Kat Carter has worked within the Higher Education and Not for Profit sectors for over 11 years. As Hubbub's resident digital fundraising specialist, Kat is passionate about empowering those she works with to feel confident in their own success - providing best practice guidance and strategic insights that deliver results worth celebrating. Previous to joining Hubbub, Kat managed the Regular Giving programme at the University of Southampton where she helped to launch one of the first UK crowdfunding platforms.
Laura Chapman
Laura’s obsessed with data analysis, decision science and perfecting the supporter experience. She is currently learning about the fascinating world of Neuro-fundraising. At DMS, Laura has turned insights into technically innovative and emotionally rich supporter journeys for a myriad of charities including The Children’s Trust, World Vision and has introduced the British Heart Foundation to innovative new techniques to power their new product development.
Kurstin Finch Gnehm
Kurstin Finch Gnehm is a senior fundraiser with experience leading across major gifts, individual giving, legacies, and advancement services. She currently works as the deputy director of philanthropy at the Royal Academy of Music, the U.K.’s top conservatoire, where she looks after individual giving, stewardship, legacies and events. Previously, Kurstin served as regular giving manager for Imperial College London, where her team recently won a CASE Award and the 2016 London Marathon award for most money raised per charity runner. She has also worked in the fundraising team for two of the U.K.’s ancient universities, the University of Aberdeen and the University of St Andrews, where she served as part of the 600th anniversary campaign team. Kurstin started her fundraising career at Linfield University in the United States and holds degrees from Linfield, Oregon State University, and the University of Iowa, where she has also taught communication and gender studies classes. She has a seat on the Learning and Development Committee at the Institute of Fundraising and co-chairs the fundraising track of the CASE Europe Annual Conference. Areas of expertise include data-driven fundraising, regulatory change, and stakeholder management, and Kurstin regularly writes and speaks about fundraising for the IDPE and CASE Europe.
Jemma Gurr
Jemma is Head of Regular Giving at The University of Manchester – leading on mail, phone and digital fundraising from one of the UK's largest alumni communities. Prior to joining the Manchester team, Jemma spent six years at the University of Sheffield, where she transformed the Regular Giving programme through data-driven decision making and compelling multi-channel appeals. Jemma has also held fundraising roles in the arts and charity sectors, and was named in Fundraising Magazine’s ’25 under 35’ in 2020
Lauren Holgate
Starting as a Warwick student fundraiser in 2013, Lauren loved understanding how diverse communities of alumni and friends became inspired through giving. After graduating, Lauren embraced local and globally based customer experience roles, alongside becoming a Warwick donor personally. Since settling back into fundraising as Warwick’s Regular Giving Officer, Lauren has led the student fundraising team over the past 23 months and 5 remote in-house telephone campaigns. Following Warwick’s first remote telephone campaign in Summer 2020, they have utilised an amalgamation of trusted and new approaches. Last month, Warwick wrapped up its first ever hybrid campaign. Today, Lauren is working with the wider team, to review and respond to the changing landscape, whilst engaging and exciting their regular giving community and beyond.
Kate James
As well as being an experienced agency lead, Kate has delivered hugely successful, multi-media fundraising programmes for the Universities of Leeds and Birmingham as well as charities as diverse as IFAW, Macmillan, Red Cross and Greenpeace. Kate can confidently guide charities and the Higher Education sector to help them develop new propositions, shape and deliver granular data insights as well as develop supporter journeys to maximise the opportunities to engage.
Dr Travis McDearmon
Dr. J. Travis McDearmon is a Lead Development Officer at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. His 14 year career in fundraising has included positions in regular giving, major gifts and administration. Travis received his Ph.D. in Higher Education and Sociology from the University of Kentucky in 2011. His research on philanthropy and alumni role identity has been published in peer-reviewed research journals including Research in Higher Education and the International Journal for Educational Advancement.
Marnie Middlemiss
Marnie joined the University of Brighton in September 2019 as their Director of Philanthropy & Alumni Engagement. She has over 20 years’ experience as a fundraiser working across the cultural, heritage and higher education sectors. She has worked for the Roundhouse (Camden), King’s College London, Bath Spa University, The Holburne Museum (Bath) and The Photographers’ Gallery (London). She has particular experience in the establishment of new fundraising and alumni teams, strategic development, building the donor base, and capital campaigns. She volunteered with CASE Europe on the annual Ross-CASE Survey of Charitable Giving to Universities in 2016 and 2017, and has presented at the CASE Europe Conference. She is the Co-Chair of the Board of Trustee for Attitude is Everything, a charity which improves Deaf and disabled people’s access to live music by working in partnership with audiences, artists and the music industry.
Amber Nathan
Amber is Head of Research at Bluefrog Fundraising. She’s worked in insight for over 20 years, beginning corporate side in advertising development and NPD. In 2004 she joined Bluefrog where she conducts donor insight research for the development of fundraising programmes. Amber headed up Bluefrog’s seminal studies on Middle Donors, Lapsers and In Memoriam giving. Since March this year she’s run Bluefrog’s ongoing study into donor needs during the pandemic. She has personally interviewed thousands of charity supporters.
Rosslyn Owen
Rosslyn has nine years of Regular Giving. Her role at Buffalo involves working closely with current and prospective clients to assist with the growth of their regular giving programmes.
Beatrice Purser-Hallard
Beatrice Purser-Hallard has been working in the Regular Giving sector for 15 years. Joining the University of Bath as one half of a fundraising team of two, she grew Regular Giving there from scratch into a thriving, varied and successful programme. Inspired by the difference that is made all over the world by the impact of philanthropy, since 2015 she has been working with dozens of universities and other educational establishments with Smarteezie Ltd. She specialises in providing data analytics and insight, consultancy, and software support for telephone fundraising to maximise the success of customers’ fundraising programmes.
Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan is the Head of Individual Giving at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Prior to Central she raised funds for the National Film and TV School and was involved in the distribution of grants at the Millennium Commission and the British Council.
Adrian Salmon
Adrian Salmon, Vice President, GG+A Europe, has more than 20 years of direct marketing fundraising experience in the higher education, arts and culture, and wider not-for-profit spheres. His particular expertise includes direct mail fundraising, annual giving program management, and management of contributions from integrated mail and online appeals.
Before joining GG+A in 2015, Adrian was Footsteps Fund Manager at the University of Leeds, where he dramatically increased the University’s number of donors, annual giving income, and contributions from integrated mail and online appeals. Adrian also implemented an automated propensity scoring system, the first to be used by a university in the United Kingdom, and designed and implemented the University’s first dedicated 20-seat fundraising call center.
Prior to joining the University of Leeds, Adrian served for more than nine years with The Phone Room Ltd. as Director of Client Services and as Head of TPR Education. He headed numerous award-winning telephone campaigns for non-profit clients, including the National Galleries of Scotland, Symphony Hall Birmingham, and the South Bank Centre. He also established successful telephone fundraising campaigns for Salford University and Birkbeck College, University of London.
Adrian holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Cambridge and is a member of the Institute of Fundraising. Adrian also serves on the Advisory Panel of Rogare, the new practitioner-focused fundraising think tank.
Jen Shang
Professor Jen Shang is the world’s first PhD in Philanthropy. She is also the world’s only philanthropic psychologist. Her research has been covered in the New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Advancing Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Times. Jen has been published in numerous academic journals including, the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, the Economic Journal, Experimental Economics, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and Nonprofit Management and Leadership. Her research has been funded by the Society of Judgment and Decision Making, the National Science Foundation, The Aspen Institute, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and the Hewlett Foundation.