Marketing Your Planned Giving Program

Most planned giving shops have a marketing plan, but how effective is it? Whether you’re collaborating with a communications team or on your own, an integrated marketing and communications plan allows you to work smarter, not harder. An effective marketing plan will uncover unknown gifts, identify new prospects, and engage current donors—allowing you to demonstrate a tangible return on investment. Join us online to learn how one institution has developed a strategic marketing program that both informs their donors and serves as an effective stewardship tool. Our expert instructor will share practical takeaways for implementing these tactics, regardless of shop size and resources.

Launching a Crowdfunding Initiative

Is your shop interested in developing your own crowdfunding initiative, but unsure how it will complement your current advancement strategy? Crowdfunding can increase alumni engagement and participation while serving as a cost-effective tool for: Acquiring new donors Updating alumni contact information Re-engaging lapsed donors and identifying their philanthropic interests Serving faculty and students in their most pressing needs Being able to integrate a crowdfunding initiative into your overall strategy is crucial to any successful effort. Join us online to learn how to bring crowdfunding from inception to launch, while ensuring that this latest fundraising innovation helps boost your overall program.

Strategic Financial Aid Allocation for Retention

Financial, academic, and social challenges make student retention a complex issue on any campus. Amidst this complexity, many institutions continue to widely allocate limited financial aid funds without a clear understanding of which students are most incentivized by financial support. Those who are able to accurately target students most in need of financial incentives for degree completion, however, ensure the strongest investment for their students and their institution. Join us for an online training that will help your institution to develop strategic plans for retention-driven financial aid allocation. Primarily, we will address: Which students will be most impacted by financial aid incentives How to design a cost/benefit analysis for optimal financial aid allocation When to communicate and distribute financial aid awards to improve retention

Gaining Institutional Buy-In for a Streamlined Transfer Credit Evaluation Process

Gain the buy-in you need to improve the transfer credit process for your institution and potential transfer students. Agenda Brief Background on Case Studies Conducting a Self-Audit of Your Process What does your process look like? Who are the stakeholders involved? What data do you currently collect? What data do you need? Separating policy from business practice Gaining Buy-In and Making the Case Involving stakeholders in the planning process Building relationships and gaining allies Strategies for addressing opponents of your initiative Tying your initiative to your institution’s strategic plan Making a compelling case Moving Forward The importance of communication and keeping people in the loop Continuing to collect data Supplementary activities to further buy-in

Designing Your Course for Active Team-Based Learning

Implementing collaborative and team-based learning in large, diverse classes has proven to be an effective tool for improved student engagement and learning. The challenge is designing and facilitating your course to effectively identify students’ current knowledge and craft activities that promote a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Join us online to learn how to design your courses to incorporate team-based learning. Our expert instructor will cover how to: Build diverse student teams Assess teams’ current knowledge Create problem-based activities to promote critical thinking Evaluate the team-based experience Instructional designers, faculty developers and current faculty will leave this training with a proven and researched model for designing and facilitating team-based learning courses. During the webcast, we will demonstrate different team-based learning strategies through active attendee participation, allowing you to experience guided team interaction and dynamics.

Coaching as Supervision in Residence Life

Supervising staff in residence life is challenging–there is often a trade-off between process-driven management decisions and time-intensive mentoring. Spending too much time on the former undermines staff motivation and satisfaction, while the latter may leave little room for other duties. When faced with staff attrition and stretched resources, is your residence life supervision strategy as effective as it can be? Join us online to learn how the University of Washington implemented supervisory coaching in their residential life department to improve staff engagement. We will examine how coaching is different from other supervising strategies, and how your institution can use this strategy to improve staff development at multiple levels. You’ll also examine how to measure results and select the right way to employ supervisory coaching at your institution.

Auditing Your Annual Giving Operations

How are you prioritizing investments in your annual giving operation? Agenda Evaluating your core annual giving operations Donor retention Donor reactivation New donor acquisition Donor upgrades Building the pipeline Assessing the effectiveness of your annual giving vehicles Direct mail Phonathon E-solicitations Crowdfunding/Day of giving Personal solicitations Making smart investments in your annual giving operations Determining the capacity of your team Scaling considerations Case Study: Using your audit to guide planning and goal setting

Building a Custom Corporate Training Program

Learn the 4 tenets to building your institution’s corporate training program. Agenda Developing Program Model and Goals Common program structures Scaffolding development stages Setting measures for program success Establishing, Building, and Sustaining Relationships on Your Campus Connecting across departments Financial considerations and agreements Exploring Respective Community Markets and Their Common Challenges Needs analysis Establishing a price point Parameters for target audience Establishing, Building, and Sustaining Relationships in the Business Community Networking for success Selling the training Providing exceptional customer service Branding and image

Clery Act Checklist: 10 Steps for Compliance

The latest regulations are out! Are you prepared to update your Annual Security Report? Agenda What’s Changed? Impact of the VAWA and Campus SaVE Act Federal Register guidelines Steps for Clery Compliance Reviewing your stats: Auditing last year’s Annual Security Report Updating your report with current definitions and policies Recommendations for collaboration and continual education What Next? Ensuring your ASR is ready for October 2015 Enhancing your institution’s policies, procedures, and programs Final Q&A

Proactive Strategies for Controlling
Admissions Turnover

Turnover is an inevitable part of contemporary admissions work, but not all of it is out of your hands. Proactive and ongoing training, management, and evaluation of your admissions staff can go a long way toward promoting employee retention, thereby cutting cost and increasing the overall productivity of your office. Join us for an online training program that will teach you how to proactively manage turnover within your admissions office. You will come away from the program with concrete strategies that you can use to increase job satisfaction and promote retention among your admissions employees, including: Designing a deliberate and ongoing training plan Connecting employee performance goals to metrics Facilitating opportunities for advancement

Conducting a Self-Audit of Your Retention Data and Programs

Student success initiatives are often widespread, and they impact multiple areas of a single institution. However, campus administrators often don’t have enough program information to strategically allocate resources to the initiatives that create the most impact. This can lead to wasted resources and misaligned attention on programs that do not contribute to student success. Join us for an online training session that will help you understand how your retention team is measuring the success of the retention programs you have in place. You will leave with a worksheet that organizes the institutional programs, goals, and students related to these initiatives.

8 Steps to Implementing Open Educational Resources

Help your students save on textbook costs by implementing open educational resources in your courses. Agenda 8 Steps to implementing Open Educational Resources Tasking your key stakeholders: Champions, chairs, faculty, and librarians Evaluating and selecting OER providers Managing course design and objectives Improving faculty adoption Exploring financial considerations Managing the student experience Measuring and assessing the impact: Case studies Scaling and promoting OER across your program

Solving Retention Challenges with a Team Approach: A Case Study

Campuses continue to struggle with coordinating and solving campus-wide retention and enrollment challenges. Yet, the University of Tennessee used a problem-solving approach to pull together key partners to address an enrollment challenge. This approach worked so well that they have continued to meet to solve enrollment and retention challenges across campus, such as: Understanding why students leave Increasing low-income student success Balancing enrollment targets with financial goals. Join us to explore an alternative approach to solving enrollment and retention challenges. Using a case-study framework, this event will walk you through several different enrollment and retention challenges to demonstrate how your campus can make a case for rethinking key collaborations, success goals, and decision-making.

Training Faculty: Helping International Students Properly Cite Sources

International students studying in North America are often criticized for excessive plagiarism, with faculty wringing their hands in frustration. There are a number of legitimate reasons why students may be unable to properly cite sources in their writing. Faculty need to understand international students’ confusion, and institutions must support faculty with effective training and policy to help students become better writers. Join us to learn important considerations for how international students attribute authorship differently as well as how to implement a proper training program at your institution. While the focus of this program is to support international students, the fundamentals of proper citation in writing can be applied to all student populations.

Measuring Academic Program Cost and Demand

The cost disease facing many institutions is made even more challenging in the arena of academic programs. The notion of “mission creep” continues to plague institutions already facing structural deficits, and many institutions are struggling to justify academic program realignment to faculty. What is needed is a metric-driven lens to view programs as promoting or detracting from academic mission and overall competitive position. Join us for a webcast that will provide your institution with the keys to developing academic program cost and demand metrics. These metrics can help your institution control cost and subsequently improve mission quality and reputation among peer institutions.

FERPA Policy and Procedure Audit

Your FERPA policies and procedures should be reviewed, updated, and communicated regularly to ensure compliance and to assist your campus in the event of a potential violation. Yet, managing this process and communicating updates effectively to the campus community can be overwhelming, especially when changes to the regulations occur. Join us online to help ensure your FERPA documentation and practices are sound. You will leave with ideas for seven focus areas for your audit, as well as the key questions to ask within each area. Near the end of the training, we will review sample documents in use on some campuses and offer tips on how to improve them.

Creating Giving Circles to Increase Annual Giving

A strong and diversified alumni giving pipeline can increase your annual giving numbers and help your shop insulate itself from future fundraising downturns. One way to diversify your annual giving portfolio is to create an affinity-based giving circles program, which helps to alleviate donors’ doubts about unrestricted giving. Join us online to consider a new model for growing and retaining your alumni donors. You will be introduced to Illinois Wesleyan University’s “giving circles” model, which upon its launch saw a 300% increase in participation and converted 15% of participants from young alumni non-donors. Along with a comprehensive program overview, you will learn tactics for: Selecting and training program “influencers” Integrating the program into your current efforts Building buy-in for the program Monitoring progress Scaling the program for your institution

Taking a Case-Study Approach to Improving Academic Advising Assessment

Academic advising is an effective process to improve student success and completion. However, making the connection between advising and retention eludes many administrators who do not have the comprehensive data they need to demonstrate this connection. To comprehensively evaluate the success of academic advising, you must examine: Programmatic outcomes Student learning outcomes Return on investment Join us online to explore three different methods of evaluating academic advising, as well as the changes that can result based on your assessment. Using a case-study approach, this event will walk you through several different assessment examples to demonstrate how your campus can make a case for improvements in academic advising.

Capital Campaigns: Integrating
Student Involvement

Capital campaigns can be a source of excitement for the campus community, but can also be a source of questions, particularly from student organizations and leaders. How do campaign priorities get selected? Are tuition dollars being used to fund the campaign? Where is the campaign money coming from? Join us online to learn how the University of Michigan has strategically integrated student involvement in their capital campaign with the use of an official student campaign committee. From identifying, recruiting, and selecting students for the committee, to training them and empowering them to assist with campaign work, our expert instructors share a comprehensive case study that will leave you equipped to better involve and educate students on your campus.

Ideas from the For-Profit Sector on Making Your Program More Competitive

Can you describe your institution as nimble? Do you offer programs that meet the needs of adult learners? Does your institution effectively use online education to reach non-traditional learners? Do you offer practitioner-oriented programs? Proprietary institutions have successes we can learn from. Use the insights from an instructor that has experienced both sides of the fence. Take lessons learned from the for-profit sector to enhance your program’s competitiveness, student success, and persistence. J. Joseph Hoey will share best practices and case studies to illustrate innovations often used by the proprietary marketplace that are directly applicable to traditional institutions. Join us to learn models that you can incorporate into the way education is delivered at your institution. We will examine: Building education around the student Learning outcomes that connect learners and the workplace Flexible course and program offerings Steps to support students towards matriculation The role of prior learning assessment