Course Category: Free for All-Inclusive Members

Key Considerations for Strengthening Prospect Management and Gift Officer Collaboration

The relationship between prospect managers and gift officers is critical for portfolio optimization in advancement shops. It is the responsibility of advancement leaders to assess and strengthen collaboration between these roles in order to have a high-performance team that is able to strategically engage with donors. Join us as Cheryl Cerny, Associate Vice President for Advancement Operations and Campaign Director at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, discusses how empowering prospect management and fundraising staff and using strategic questioning throughout the donor cycle can have a positive impact on your donor relations experience. By reflecting on relevant examples and engaging in small-group discussion, you will walk away from this training with useful ideas and strategies for strengthening this important collaborative relationship in your shop.   Who Should Attend This training is designed for advancement staff who directly or indirectly supervise gift officers and/or prospect management staff, or those with direct supervision of a donor relations team. If you are an advancement leader who is hoping to empower gift officers and prospect managers to help them achieve the best in their work, this training is for you.

Using Storytelling to Bolster Unrestricted Giving

Unrestricted funds are an asset to meeting institutional needs, but they are not always easy to acquire based on donor understanding or personal interests. Successfully soliciting unrestricted gifts requires advancement professionals to know how these funds will positively impact the university experience for a variety of constituents and how to tell those stories in ways that will inspire donors to give. Join us for this interactive virtual training to learn how Kim Bowden, Vice President of Annual Giving at Georgia Tech, leads the Roll Call team in using storytelling to meet fundraising goals for their unrestricted annual fund. You will identify campus relationships that can help you to better understand how unrestricted gifts are used, consider your donor audience and what types of stories may resonate within it, and leave with storytelling ideas that will bolster your unrestricted giving.

Taking a Student-Centered Approach to the Probation Process

One of the biggest potential roadblocks in a student’s college career is being put on academic probation. The probation process can feel defeating and overwhelming to students, and when it happens, they may choose to leave the institution altogether rather than navigating the challenge. However, the probation process does not have to seem punitive, and it can ultimately lead to students feeling more empowered to succeed as long as they feel they are supported and given the tools to navigate the process. Join us for a 90-minute virtual training on reimagining the academic probation process in order to take a more student-centered approach. Our expert speakers, Laura Donaldson and Samantha Nielsen, will walk you through the creation and implementation of a probation process program in Dietrich College of Humanities & Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. This voluntary process centers the student experience by allowing advisors and students to create individualized plans to help the student get off probation successfully, while also addressing the non-academic barriers students encounter that may have contributed to their academic struggles. Laura and Samantha will share several valuable resources and considerations to keep in mind when starting a program of your own, as well as […]

Engaging Meaningfully with First-Generation Graduate Students to Increase Retention

While institutions today are getting better at recognizing that first-generation undergraduate students face additional barriers in navigating college, they still often expect first-generation graduate students to know how to overcome those barriers. Yet first-gen graduate students can still experience a variety of unique challenges – both personal and academic – that create additional roadblocks to their success. For instance, many first-gen graduate students may face a lack of understanding from family members while also having to navigate building social capital with faculty in an entirely different way. As graduate enrollment increases, faculty and staff working with graduate students can best support those students by understanding the additional challenges first-gen graduate students face. Join us for a 90-minute virtual training on what to consider in working with and mentoring first-generation graduate students. Our expert, Dr. Zaragosa “Mito” Diaz-Espinoza, will help you to recognize the struggles faced by first-gen graduate students in navigating such hurdles as a changing family life, the transition to graduate school, resource constraints at institutions, and making academic and professional decisions. You will have time to share what you yourself found challenging during graduate school and reflect on how that might be compounded for first-gen students. You will […]

Culturally Responsive Customer Service: A Holistic Approach to Student Retention

Service excellence requires an ethic of care and cultural sensitivity that recognizes students’ strengths and unique backgrounds to allow you to meet them where they are. Combining these two approaches into a culturally responsive customer service initiative allows an institution to provide holistic support throughout students’ academic journey, which in turn has a direct impact on retention, persistence, and overall student success. Leading this training are our subject matter experts, Dr. Jessica Lauritsen from Hennepin Technical College and Ivan Lui from The Brooklyn Bridge Alliance for Youth (BBA), who are experienced in successfully implementing a culturally responsive customer service initiative to increase student completion and persistence. Here, they will share their learnings and practical tips for how you can get started with: Understanding initial research on your institution’s student persistence and completion. Assessing the readiness of your institution and its leadership capacity for such an initiative. Using a “serving students” lens to reframe the conversation around intercultural development and cultural competency. Building a sustainable service excellence and retention initiative.

Intentionally Build Your Executive Presence

Executive presence is an amalgamation of your emotional, aesthetic, and communication behaviors, and it influences your ability to successfully grow as a leader. While your accomplishments, expertise, and experience are the bedrock of your career, building skills to enhance your executive presence can further support your professional reputation and growth. This workshop will help you to identify strategies to enhance three facets of your executive presence and build them into your daily routine. Through a mix of reflection, discussion, and content delivery, we’ll explore questions like: How do you navigate challenging situations, considering your internal emotional response as well as how you express those emotions outwardly? Does your communication style—both verbal and written—convey both your expertise and your emotional intelligence? Do your actions align with the leadership qualities you wish others to experience when working with you?

Writing Workshop for Advancement

Writing Workshop for Advancement November 1 – November 2, 2022 Strengthen the voice and consistency of your communications to donors and alumni. EVENT INFORMATION ENSURE YOUR TECHNOLOGY IS READY This workshop is intentionally designed to allow for maximum learning, connections, and engagement. We advise the following in order to participate fully: Audio & Visual Needs

A Masterclass in Discovery Work

Discovery work is an essential part of the fundraising process because it’s your first access point to learning how to optimize a potential donor’s philanthropic interest. Refining your approach and strategy is a great way to continue gaining confidence in your ability to be conversational as a fundraiser. The ability to ask insightful questions that keep prospects and donors talking and sharing will ultimately lead you to align your donor with the best possible opportunity for their philanthropy goals. Join us in this online training to deepen your skillset around discovery work and improve upon your first impression as a representative of your organization. Go into donor conversations equipped with the right questions to ask that will build trust and enable you get to know your donors more intimately.

Advancing Your DEI Strategy Across Viewpoints

Leaders of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are continually charged with spearheading initiatives that require them to navigate critical conversations with stakeholders who may have divergent or even radically different views and opinions than their own. In some cases, these views can run counter to the goals of the initiative at hand. In these possibly contentious spaces of dialogue, you might wonder how you can: Employ effective communication strategies to maximize participation from all parties involved; Model the process of becoming partners and encourage open and honest dialogue; or Work to flip the lens by engaging key supporters and minimizing negative voices. This one-day virtual training is designed to help leaders who are advancing equity and inclusion efforts on their campus to better identify and apply effective communication strategies to move conversations forward. The workshop will help you to keep your work “values-focused” by avoiding pitfalls and demonstrating how to lead openly and courageously.

Enhancing Your Personal and Professional Resilience

There remains a common misconception in our society that resilience is the ability to keep going at all costs. We lead busy lives and push ourselves to the brink of exhaustion in service of “resilience.” But in actuality, true resilience is created when we are able to pause, recharge, and generate the optimism and belief in our abilities that we need to sustain long-term and lead happier, more fulfilling lives. This video course will teach you how to use self-advocacy and intentional reflection to enhance resiliency across key aspects of your personal and professional life. Higher-ed professionals at all levels who would like to improve the quality of their relationships with themselves, others, and the various projects and day-to-day tasks in their lives will benefit from this course.

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