Event Category: Free For All-Inclusive

Cultivating and Stewarding Transformational Donors: A Conversation with Vice Presidents

Identifying key insights from casual but meaningful conversations with transformational donors can lead to strong relationships that provide your institution with the support it needs for generations to come. These conversations don’t always come easy. In fact, they often encompass their own unique challenges, depending on the type of donor you’re speaking to, the campus partners joining the conversation, and how well their donor experience has gone.   To overcome the potential challenges within these conversations, there are phases of cultivation and stewardship in which you can become more fluent over time, such as:   Join us in this panel conversation with Vice Presidents of Advancement, Dexter Bailey of California Institute of Technology, and Kristen DeVries of Western Michigan University Foundation, alongside Mitchell Spearmen, Founder and Dreamer of Gifts of a Lifetime, to discuss how they have approached conversations with ultra-high-net-worth families.   You will have the opportunity to ask questions to help navigate a current phase you’re in or to ask about how to approach a specific scenario.

The Role of Philanthropic Conversations in Families

Transferring values, not just dollars, is the essence of philanthropic conversations in families. These conversations rarely occur with families who have the actual capacity to give, however. Whether your alumnus identifies as middle-class or is part of a family with a long-storied history with your institution, cultivating conversation among their closest familial ties is often the missing link when developing strong and sincere relationships with multiple generations. Join us in this first of a three-session series on family giving. In this training, you will gain insights into the role of philanthropic conversations within families and why it is important to bring institutional values into the familial relationships you’re stewarding.

World War Z? The Impact of Multiple Generations on Campus

With more generations in the workplace than ever before, there is no shortage of jokes, social media flurry, and casual speculation about the Millennials in your team meeting or the Boomer down the hall. Interestingly, while we love to discuss these topics, very few people actually know what their differences are beyond vague stereotypes like “work ethic” and “quiet quitting.” Many of these conversations also lack the nuance that includes a judgement-free understanding of why the generations are different. This session will demystify the strengths and weaknesses of each generation, confirm that your favorite 15-year-old TikTok influencer is not a millennial, and provide you with information that you can use to navigate the varying work styles, expectations, and communication patterns that you encounter across generations in your everyday context.  

Actualize Your Purpose: A Workshop on Improving Your Well-Being

The pandemic has fundamentally altered the way we work: remote and hybrid environments, students and colleagues in greater need of support, and demands for greater work-life balance. This is the perfect time to take stock, check in with yourself and your goals, and start creating work habits that work for you.    Join us online for an interactive workshop and discussion that will help you refocus your time, energy, and future work in realizing your purpose and professional vision. You’ll begin the workshop by assessing the current state of your well-being and reflecting on the factors that most contribute to it. You’ll then explore to what extent inherited norms shape your definition of success, so that you can create your own definition of success based on your values and the impact you want to have in the world. Finally, you’ll document a practical and tangible plan that outlines the goals and tasks you’ll need to craft the meaningful life and career you desire. 

Have It Your Way (or Not): Customer Service Across Generations

A college community has perhaps the most generationally diverse members of any organization. From Baby Boomers and Generation X to Millennials and Gen Z, today’s students and employees alike co-navigate university systems with vastly different expectations of how they like to be treated as customers. These varying preferences have great impact on the campus culture as a whole, as well as on the diverse knowledge and skills service providers need in order to deliver great experiences for all. This virtual training will provide you with a greater awareness of the varying preferences for customer service that exist for employees and students in college and university communities, as well as a look at how service providers can modify styles to meet expectations and enhance the university experience across generations.

Using Feedback to Build a Growth-Minded Work Environment

Learning to address conflict and manage difficult personalities as a leader or manager can be a stressful process. Once a situation has reached the point of conflict, it is often hard to manage it without emotion and move forward in a productive way. However, supervisors who work intentionally to create a growth-minded environment can engender a space where addressing conflict or confronting different opinions comes naturally to everyone involved. As such, you create a space where unhealthy conflict cannot grow and provides opportunities for those who have a habit of dissention to compromise or find a position better suited to their needs. Join us for a virtual training to learn how to manage performance and feedback in order to create a healthy working environment that fosters debate and encourages empathy and positive intentional communication. Our expert facilitator Dr. Cié Gee will walk you through how to address conflict or difficult behavior with clear and regular feedback early on in the process. You will learn how implementing regular feedback and honest conversations will lead to a more productive, psychologically safe environment. You will also take a look inward to learn how your leadership practices could be unconsciously nurturing an environment in […]

Building Communities of Practice: Extended Orientation and Development Programs for Campus Leaders

At this time of continued transition in higher education, institutions are regularly welcoming new leaders at all levels. Many institutions do not have well-developed, intentional practices for fully onboarding new leaders in ways that will help them understand the culture, complexity, and wide range of responsibilities and expectations of their position. Additionally, many leaders are relatively isolated in their roles from a wide-ranging support network across their campus community. Developing a program that will impart new leaders with a clear sense of how to be successful in their role and at the institution, share resources that will support their transition, and provide intentional opportunities to build relationships can supplement what any one specific department or area is able to provide to ensure success for the new leaders on campus.  Join us to learn how creating extended orientation and development programs can shorten transition periods and set a strong foundation for success. Using the Virginia Tech Academic Leaders Program and New Senior Leader Cohort as models, we will explore essential programmatic elements, learn how to make the case for such a program, and hear about pitfalls to avoid.   In this training, we will cover:  

Connecting Values to the Gift: Strategies to Incorporate Families into Your Fundraising Goals

The donor’s legacy and philanthropic goals need to be carried on through their gift to your institution. Before a formal proposal is presented, or prior to a meeting that focuses on outlining the gift agreement, you need to connect the donor family’s values to your institutional goals. This process begins by aligning family engagement strategies into your institutional fundraising goals. Join us in this third installment of our Family Giving Series to potentially unlock millions of dollars in giving by building upon your approach to cultivation and stewardship with your most loyal and engaged families. By drilling into the core value of what a family holds dear, you will be able to continue deep philanthropic partnerships with donor families for generations to come.

Maintaining Collaborative Momentum After Securing a Transformational Gift

Identifying and cultivating a major donor whose personal beliefs and philanthropic vision align with institutional purpose is no small task, and securing a transformational gift from such a donor is a significant accomplishment for an institution. Not only can such a gift transform the lives of current and future students, but it should also shift the ways in which the advancement shop engages with campus partners, the donor themselves, and alumni and other potential donors. Using her experience with Western Michigan University’s Empowering Futures Gift, Kristen DeVries, Vice President and Executive Director of WMU Foundation, will share how a transformational gift can motivate additional alumni and donor engagement. In this two-hour training, you will consider how to establish clear internal processes and communication methods that will allow you to use momentum from a transformational gift to inspire others to contribute to historic institutional change.

Equipping Gift Officers to Facilitate Conversations Among Multi-Generational Families

The exercise of facilitating philanthropic conversations around values with the families you engage with is essential for the long-term philanthropic viability of your institution. However, gift officers are often not trained for this unique approach to fundraising that focuses on the family. Instead, they may often feel a natural hesitation to insert themselves into these intimate conversations—especially when there are unknowns involved, so as a result they end up forgoing relationship-building among multiple generations of the same family. Equipping a gift officer with the knowledge of why this approach is important—and not extraneous work—can lead to more creative and meaningful gifts, trusted relationships, and a wider variety of natural opportunities for follow-up. Join us in this second training within a three-part Family Giving Series to learn how to navigate the different perspectives and unique goals among a multi-generational family by helping them align their values to benefit your institution and increase philanthropic engagement.

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