During this panel, we will hear from VPs from different institutions across DIII on how the landscape of advancement has changed due to COVID-19 and how we need to move forward to be successful. We will discuss how topics such as social justice, the great resignation, and the generational workforce shift have affected how we approach our work, now and in the future. We will also discuss how leadership can best support staff and encourage an atmosphere and culture of belonging within their shops.

Change is always hard but sometimes it brings opportunity to improve and adapt. This session will look at how Advancement Operations leadership used both the pandemic and a year-long review of the university's name and symbols to elevate the relevance of their work to the broader university and to institute necessary change for the betterment of the department.

This session will cover best practices to review and revise policies and procedures. As the Director of Advancement Services, I am currently working collaboratively with our Foundation Board, Development Officers, Advancement Services staff, and other applicable institution departments to ensure that our policies and procedures suit the needs of all involved in the mission of advancing the university. I am a CPA and I have been with Jacksonville State University in several capacities since 2016. The takeaways from this session an be easily implemented once the attendees return to their respective institutions, primarily by encouraging a collaborative approach to Advancement.

In this session, we will discuss the CASE ASAP D3 Award winning Homecoming Alumni Letter Writing campaign and how we successfully engaged members of the Class of 1970 through student outreach. As COVID-19 forced Virginia Tech’s 2020 Homecoming events to move to a virtual format, it also cancelled the annual 50th Reunion, which would have celebrated the Class of 1970. The Student Alumni Associates (SAA) value their mission to bridge the gap between students and alumni, and the Executive Board set out to continue its tradition of connecting attendees with the students they would have otherwise met during an in-person event on campus. Join us as we discuss the success of this unique engagement program and learn about new opportunities we’ll be considering as we move into a hybrid reunion celebration in 2022.

How we present ourselves -- authentically, positively, powerfully -- inspires confidence and trust and is a hallmark of good leaders. The 2020 shift to a virtual world opened up new opportunities for connecting with others, individually and in groups, and new challenges. This session will cover important elements of communication (eye contact, facial expression, gestures, self-presentation, vocal tone and dynamics and silence) and how they can be maintained -- or enhanced! --in digital communication. With physicality and humor, presenter will encourage participation and interaction and use real examples -- everything from "I am not a cat, Judge" to managing your "resting face" while in meetings on Zoom -- to offer tips on putting your best self forward and inspiring others to engage with you.

Often career advancement within higher education advancement requires moving into frontline fundraising or leadership positions. It takes a skilled person to balance the demands of leading a fundraising team while achieving personal fundraising metrics. So You Want Me To Lead AND Make It Rain, will help anyone new to management or leadership, offering tips, experiences, best practices, and discussions on balancing the demands of both worlds. Attendees will learn from others with similar roles, how to pivot leadership styles, effectively manage up and down, be a champion for your team, and overcome obstacles that arise through the challenges of our work.

In an era of declining trust in big societal institutions, higher education is no exception – and you, as an advancement professional used to interacting with external audiences, are well-positioned as a countervailing force to this current negativity. CASE’s Discover the Next campaign builds off local successes and highlights research-tested approaches to showing the value of higher education through individual achievement, economic impact, innovation and scientific progress, and cultural vitality. Learn what tools and resources are available to help your institution connect with all stakeholders, from prospective students to alumni to community leaders. 

The coronavirus pandemic presented challenges to higher-ed communications that were daunting--but also an opportunity to spotlight innovation, reassure students and parents and strengthen relationships with stakeholders. This session will explore a range of strategies and communications tools used during the COVID-19 pandemic to communicate campus messages with authority, compassion and flexibility--from the vantage point of the messages deployed by a university president. This session will review the challenges of changing information affecting university operations and health and safety, and describe how Florida Institute of Technology tackled those challenges with video, Web and media relations approaches that actually led to an increase in enrollments during the pandemic. The importance of having the president be the face of calm, composure and compassion will be explored and results examined.

FIU’s Pathway to Philanthropist program (P2P) uses new gift tactics that embrace the ever-changing face of philanthropy, making it attainable for any donor, regardless of age or capacity, to have prominent impact in their communities as premier philanthropists. FIU has broken through traditional planned and blended gift structures to put forth new and creative possibilities that look beyond conventional modes of thinking, broadening the donor base, expanding donor capacity, and empowering the next generation of philanthropists. By expanding on existing gift acceptance policies, the Pathway to Philanthropist program leverages mid-level donors’ capacity and passion to realize their philanthropic goals and establishing their own legacy of philanthropy in their community. Through this program, FIU development professionals serve as philanthropic advisors empowering donors through opportunities to grow FIU’s alumni participation and impact student success, endowment funding, current and operational cash needs, as well as building a philanthropic legacy for themselves and their families. At FIU, Pathway to Philanthropist donors are an incredible group of next generation philanthropists who lead and inspire over 250,000 alumni and are guiding positive systemic change and evolution, ensuring FIU remains a top public university and anchor institution for the students and communities it serves. P2P redefines charitable giving through a financially inclusive approach, transforming a donor’s philanthropic experience as it educates on the positive systemic change that is greater than thought possible at their giving level. Like FIU’s inclusive educational approach to provide access to excellence and student success, P2P creates inclusive philanthropic opportunities for first generation philanthropists.

Sometimes the relationship between central communications and annual giving looks more like the Batman versus the Joker than a dynamic duo. In this session, hear how the Florida State University Foundation set about making a more collaborative partnership between annual giving and communications, and how that has translated to success for both teams.

Giving Days are the latest and greatest fundraising trend, but if you have a small staff and limited resources, they can feel like an overwhelming task to take on. Will it be worth the time and effort? How do you make a case for a giving day with your leadership and across your campus? Where do you start? What will it take to be successful? Join William Peace University(WPU) and their technology partner Alma Base for an inside look at how the university's small advancement team launched their first stand-alone giving day in 2020 with amazing results, exceeding their goal by 140%. And how they supercharged their efforts in 2021, resulting in a 71% increase in donations fin 2021, despite the challenges presented by COVID. Attendees will leave with an outline of how to start a giving day program at their campus, and a list of ways they can continue to improve their existing program. From direct mail appeals to challenge gifts, student giving to alumni engagement, from campus buy-in to events(virtual and in-person), this presentation will provide practical steps for creating or improving on a successful giving day that any size school or advancement shop can do. Vital to WPU's success was its partnership with AlmaBase. AlmaBase is a technology company based the mission to make education more affordable for everyone by helping universities & schools become more alumni centric. Almabase powered the giving day microsite, and platform for email marketing, event registration, and engagement tracking. Working together, WPU and AlmaBase created a technology solution that integrated with the university's multi-channel fundraising approach for their giving day.

The future of work is a hybrid and the future of engagement is more digital.

Learn how to use highly personalized digital experiences with portfolios and analytics to effectively connect and engage donors and deliver digital transformation. During the pandemic, Georgia Institute of Technology sent 92,000 digital portfolios that generated 41,000 engaged donors and $10 Million in commitments. See examples of portfolios with digital + video + mobile and how they can be personalized yet stay on brand. Learn tips to grow loyalty, engage donors, and develop opportunities.

As a recipient of a $15,000,000 gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in December 2020, WKCTC quickly developed a framework for gift usage that would provide far-reaching impact, including both immediate and long-term, sustaining impact for the institution and region. With the receipt of a historic gift, the opinions and expectations of multiple audiences must be taken into account–how do faculty and staff view the gift? Board members? Other donors? The community? Elected officials? Ensuring donor intent is honored while being accountable to multiple stakeholder groups, all while ensuring the gift is put to the best possible use, requires considerations beyond the immediately obvious. There are important steps to take to make sure the manna maintains its heavenly status!

In the summer of 2020, alumnae were calling on their alma mater to do more when it comes to supporting black students. Community forums turned into the idea of a Black Alumnae Steering Committee for the first-ever Black Alumnae Council. Focusing on efforts to attract, connect, and retain, the group decided to also build an endowed scholarship, raising over $50,000 in under one month. Many donors were first-time donors or disconnected donors. This is the story of how the council was built and where it will go from here.

Chances are you and your institution have been collecting alumni engagement data centered around awareness, experiences, volunteerism, and philanthropy. How can you use all the data that you've collected to appropriately identify gaps, strategically budget, create innovative programming, enrich your volunteer opportunities, and lift up your campus partners? In this session, we'll explore how Virginia Commonwealth University is putting its data into action to create more meaningful relationships with alumni.

This session will highlight how we took an in-house, from-scratch alumni mentorship program and are turning into a preceptor pipeline for our students in health administration in a time when we were losing preceptors due to the on-going pandemic. We wanted to provide students with a resource beyond faculty and advisors in the “real world” who can offer insight and advice into graduate school and job hunting, so we matched students and alumni mentees based on career paths or intended career paths. We also took into consideration their styles of relationship - more casual to more structured, with the goals in mind that these alumni would stay with the student over the course of their academic career and would provide preceptor placement for students requiring a preceptorship during their senior year to complete the requirements of their program. The steps for creating and cultivating this program will be explained in this session on starting an alumni mentorship program - yes, even possible during a pandemic.

Whether you lead a small team or a large team; whether you are on the development frontlines or work in advancement HR, you have been confronted with some new and unique retention and attrition pressures. This session will draw from industry trends, best practices and experienced presenters to normalize what our industry is experiencing and share some strategies that you can take back to your team. Your input (venting is allowed too) are encouraged and welcome. Consider this group therapy!

Ever send out a press release only to hear the sound of crickets? Learn about the challenges facing journalists today and what's really happening inside newsrooms across the nation. Find out why local journalism is more important than ever and the scary things that can happen when it goes away, especially as it relates to public health -- an even more pressing topic in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Come away with tips on how institutions of higher education can help fill the gap by supporting local media outlets as well as learning to tell their own stories.

How do you honor healthcare workers who risked their own health and the health of their families to provide direct care to patients, set up, run and staff COVID testing sites, perform human clinical vaccination trials , and teach medical students in the midst of a pandemic? With appreciation. We wanted to make people aware of everything our health sciences experts were doing, on the front lines and behind the scenes, and get the story out in multiple ways...social media, videos, our main online news site, our healthcare magazines, and our general alumni magazine. The coverage needed to be broad, deep, timely and accurate. We wanted to be advocates for public health, and provide our public scholars platforms for science-based information: pro-mask wearing, social distancing, and vaccine taking. We wanted to explain zoonotic diseases and why they are proliferating. How to make an mRNA vaccine in your lab. And that some children are, indeed, getting very sick with COVID. We wanted to let readers go into patient rooms with healthcare workers who held their cellphones up so dying patients could FaceTime with family members who weren't able to be there due to COVID restrictions. To let ER doctors tell about nights spent in their garages, unable to be with their children on the other side of the wall for fear of bringing home the virus. And to talk about what it was like to be a doctor unable to work because of long-hauler COVID. We wanted to show as many of our healthcare workers as possible in PPE, recording their faces for history-- through selfies, largely, since even we...the communication staff of the university...could not go into the hospital, nor take photos inside. They did, indeed, share their stories with us. And for that, we are grateful.

In the midst of the Pandemic and the racial justice reckoning, the office of Advancement and Alumni Engagement and the Black Law Students Association students and alumni board at Emory Law sought to endow a scholarship to enhance support for the recruitment of minority students. Through engagement with the board, the use of Volunteer by EverTrue, and active peer-to-peer solicitation, the group completed the campaign and beat their goal of raising $100,000 in less than one year. Now planning is underway for the second phase of their effort. Associate Dean of Advancement and Alumni Engagement, Courtney Stombock will host a conversation with Jennifer Crabb Kyles, Senior Director of Alumni Engagement and a key volunteer to discuss the challenges and successes of peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns and working with affinity groups.

The work we do in advancement is critical to our institution's success. Being able to define what we do is more important than ever. As we redefine our focus, our ability to talk about what we do and work together is key to our success. Learning the language of advancement will allow you to make a case for your work, collaborate with colleagues, and better understand what we have been focused on in the past and where are are headed as we redefine our work in higher education advancement.

Fundraisers are storytellers, connectors and relationship managers. We guide, understand and listen. The underlying concept with each of these is applying and using emotional intelligence (EQ). Are you fundraiser with a high level of EQ? Do you understand the importance and use of recognition, awareness and management of your own emotions as well as those we interact with frequently? In this session, we will explore and discuss EQ and uniquely practice techniques to incorporate EQ elements to elevate your fundraising skills to the next level.

In March of 2020, as we all know, our world stopped. Yet, the funding needs of our small, regional university continued. How did a small Advancement and Alumni shop of 15 people push through to meet and exceed Funding Goals in the remaining of FY `20 and 2020-21? This session will outline the steps we took to meet our goals, continue relationships with our donors and the lessons we learned that will shape our work moving forward.

Fiscal year 2021 was an unprecedented fiscal year for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. With the events that transpired during the summer of 2020, HBCUs were thrust into social, racial, and health epidemics that infused donors and their visibility into the mainstream. Despite canceling homecoming celebrations, reunions, and commencements, HBCUs were uniquely impacted by remote work and engagement, which traditionally motivates fundraising. This session reveals the results from an in-depth qualitative and quantitative study on fiscal year 2021. Attendees will learn about the year's impact on HBCU advancement operations and how advancement professionals can harness the knowledge to build future philanthropy.

Has the "Now Hiring" sign been lit too long at your university? Are you struggling to create and demonstrate your division's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion? Well, good news, you aren't alone. Join us in this interactive and informational session on how to lay a strong foundation to hire and retain a diverse team. While we don't have all the answers, we will share information surrounding the creation of our diversity action plan, the hiring of a Talent and Diversity Manager, and some additional ideas to build a diverse talent pipeline. Please come with the great ideas your institution has to address our opening questions as we hope to crowdsource more tools for all in attendance.

Closing, qualifying, and planning. During this session, participants will hear how the University of Florida reached its $3B campaign goal in the middle of a pandemic and took the final 18 months of the campaign to lean into next. Guided unit-level analyses of campaign performance, discussions with academic and university leadership, and a commitment to the Florida Way, UF developed an individualized plan for each college that focused on reaching goals and pivoting to next.

In this session, attendees will learn innovative ways to overcome the physical limitations of technology services. We will cover platforms/software, the use of single sign-on, and ideas for creating a “digital portal” to deliver technology to all end-users from a single point of access regardless of device or operating systems.

Faculty are essential partners in alumni engagement. Their expertise and relationships with alumni represent significant but underutilized opportunities to serve students’ professional development needs and complement alumni engagement efforts. In fall 2020, Emory University launched a virtual Alumni Connections professional development series for undergraduates as part of the Mellon Humanities Pathways initiative. Each Alumni Connections event convened three to five humanities alumni from nine participating departments for candid Zoom conversations with faculty and students focusing on how their humanities degrees prepared them for successful careers. Alumni Connections was a product of the rapid shift to virtual learning and the renewed attention to professional development for undergraduates in the liberal arts. Despite these circumstances, however, the virtual series—and alumni–faculty relationships more broadly—has proven a promising effort that will guide both undergraduate professional development and alumni engagement efforts at Emory going forward. Beyond creating accessible engagement opportunities for geographically dispersed alumni and maximizing resources (time, travel expenses, etc.) that would have been associated with an in-person format, Alumni Connections has revealed the key role that faculty can play in the alumni engagement process: from initiating and sustaining bonds with students-turned-alumni to generating creative strategies to engage alumni and serve undergraduate career development. From the perspective of students and faculty, Alumni Connections has also emphasized how accessible and candid touchpoints with alumni—especially those geared to individual departments—can be a vital tool for career discernment. Alumni Connections has redefined the role of faculty as key stakeholders in Emory’s alumni engagement process as well as the role alumni play in undergraduate education and professional development. This session will invite advancement professionals to join Emory in considering how promoting stronger alumni-faculty bonds can generate meaningful and lasting benefits for all stakeholders along the student–faculty–alumni engagement continuum.

The Office of Alumni Engagement at the University of South Carolina, Darla Moore School of Business spent the year of 2020 developing a new robust and purposeful alumni Hub Network program. The Darla Moore School of Business expanded its alumni engagement activities in new regions across the country and internationally. By creating the Hub Network, we have been able to create stronger connections among alumni in targeted areas across the globe while leveraging these relationships to connect students with career opportunities. Each strategic area has alumni Hub network volunteers that serve as ambassadors to make introductions to companies and champion networking experiences for alumni within their region. This initiative is part of the dean’s strategic plan to provide increased value to students and alumni of the school. Come learn how we built this alumni engagement program and expanded it to our international alumni community! The content of the presentation will include: how to build a new alumni program internationally, how to recruit alumni to serve as volunteer leaders, communication tools created, how to host both in-person and virtual events, creation of a Guidebook, how to maintain relationships, and connect alumni to students and departments within the Moore School. The intended audience for this presentation is for alumni staff members.

Brand reputation and rankings at universities are as important as ever. With competition for students, funding, eminence and the best faculty, it’s more important than ever to make an impact. With 96% of pitches never being placed, advertising being ignored and an increasingly difficult task of getting attention from media and others, Augusta University decided to leverage technology to take their pitches to the next level. In doing so, they have earned greater media attention and more website engagement — all through an increased focus on go-to faculty experts. By “setting the table” for journalists, Augusta University is making an impact. Key to this strategy has been the use of a new type of media pitch that presents easy-to-digest story ideas that play into the news cycle. The process isn’t a big shift; it’s how they roll it out that makes a difference. Each week their communications team puts together three or four brief story ideas, called Spotlights. This new type of media release is then distributed to their curated local, regional and national media lists along with all the other places those Spotlights exist, from social media to news feeds and web pages — even on the faculty profiles themselves. The fact that the faculty are tagged into the Spotlight (and the story automatically displays on their profile), means more exposure and more engagement. After they send the curated newsletter, they also follow up with journalists to further develop media relationships and solidify their faculty as the go-to experts. Augusta University has been monitoring the success of this program and will share the data and what they’ve learned during this session.

Collaboration is the name of the game, right? But what happens when internal silos get in the way growth? Working across those silos to build something of which entire institution can be proud is a goal that can be realized with a bit of communication, creativity and dedication.

The newest advancement tool to help in fund raising is analytics. How can math help you succeed in soliciting donations and where you spend your time. Attend this session on Basic Analytics and leave this conference with all the tools you needs to build a model for your database to raise more money and manage your time better.

On average across higher-ed institutions, only 2.8% of constituents are assigned to a major gift officer. That means about 97% of your alums only hear from your institution through mass appeals, news, and event invitations.

Emory University is taking a unique approach to building 1-1 relationships with thousands more alumni: they launched a Donor Experience Academy.

Created in partnership with Evertrue, Emory’s DXA is an intensive training curriculum that focuses on the fundamentals of fundraising; the unique nuances of working at Emory; and the best-in-industry sales enablement technology to power high-volume, personalized outreach at scale.

Once hired, Donor Experience Officers at Emory complete the curriculum of the DXA over 12 months while executing the role of a frontline fundraiser through the DXO role. DXOs are assigned a portfolio of Emory’s 1,000 “next-best” prospects. Then, they leverage  technology to cultivate these prospects, build major gift pipeline and actively solicit and increase annual gift amounts.

After completing the first month of training in the DXA, Emory’s first cohort of DXOs started their outreach and were off to the races. As a team of three, they booked 75 meetings and had 225 donor conversations in their first two months. They are already reversing declining donor counts through DXO outreach, and DXOs are gaining experience that will launch them into successful MGO careers at Emory. Not only will this team be well-versed in fundraising at Emory, they are emerging as the industry's top tech-enabled fundraisers.

Join this session to hear about the early wins and the iterative strategy for Emory’s Donor Experience Academy. Session attendees will learn the impact Donor Experience Programs can have, as well as DX tactics they can use at their institutions immediately.

Development officers representing units historically underrepresented in institutional fundraising face unique challenges that differ from their counterparts who lead long-tenured fundraising programs, perhaps for a major academic unit or an athletic program. This session is intended for fundraisers and advancement leaders seeking to develop or reframe fundraising programs, led by a development officer, for historically underrepresented areas that include, but are not limited to, student affairs, university libraries, study abroad, and various interdisciplinary centers/programs. This session will introduce a theoretical lens (Bolman and Deal’s four organizational frames) that can serve as a framework for building and reframing fundraising programs, review findings from the presenter’s doctoral dissertation on two student affairs fundraising programs, and conclude with a discussion on implications for practice.

Do you know the history of higher education philanthropy? Who invented the fundraising goal thermometer? Who created screened prospect lists? And what is so significant about the Greenbrier Conference? Attend this session and learn how higher education fundraising began in the US, from the colonial colleges all the way to the present. This fun and interactive session compiles into one place all the scattered literature concerning the history of our profession to give fundraisers a deeper appreciation for our young profession.

How NC State University used lessons learned from major gifts, for-profit businesses, and success of digital-first initiatives to re-define and re-launch its Leadership Annual GIving program. The session will focus on NC State's approach to Leadership Annual Giving from launching the program to implementation focusing on how we got it off the ground and lessons we are already learning. Participate should leave the session with ideas on how to launch a program or improve their existing program.

In this session we walk you through how we raised over $20,000 during our first ever Employee Giving Campaign and the adjustments we made for a successful second year during COVID-19. We will cover our promotional strategies to get employees excited and involved in our first ever Employee Giving Campaign and a hybrid Employee Giving Campaign. Misty has over 20 years of experience in the fields of marketing and advancement. We aim to show other small shops how they can implement similar strategies with great success.

A wealth of knowledge, creativity, and potential is locked inside your employees’ brains. To unleash it, you need to establish a culture of professional coaching across your organization. In this session, we’ll explore how to do this—from the soft skills a coach needs to be successful (e.g. empathetic listening, critical thinking, etc.) to how to actually implement a coaching program. You’ll get practical tips for building communication flows, crafting feedback systems, setting goals, and getting executive buy-in. With a coaching culture in place, you’ll enjoy the benefits of greater collaboration, productivity, and team morale. Note: This presentation can include an educational speaking partner upon request.

In this panel discussion the speakers will address racial inequity in higher education (or philanthropy), and the battle fatigue that comes along with leadership. This session will discuss strategies for navigating battle fatigue and how they have tackled these problems on multiple levels, leaned on multiple levers for change, and chose interventions that educate stakeholders