Portfolio Prioritization: Maximizing Opportunities for Your Donor Pipeline

A portfolio is the engine that drives a gift officer’s work and sets them up for future success. However, for new or seasoned professionals alike, opportunities to look at your portfolio with a different viewpoint can be highly beneficial as you seek to understand your portfolio data and prioritize donor relationships. Additionally, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions are facing a reset moment with their portfolios as they are able to travel again to meet donors in person. Join us for this webcast to learn how to identify key data points in your portfolio which you can then use to cultivate relationships with your donors and chart a path for success in your own portfolio management.

The Consultative Approach to Mentoring: Building a Network of Support

With the apprentice model of mentoring, a mentee is assigned one mentor, usually someone senior in the organization, to provide guidance in all aspects of their career. Although this is a powerful model that typically serves mentees well, this approach to mentoring does require intensive commitments of time and energy from both individuals. And mentors may not always have all of the expertise a mentee needs. As an alternative, however, the consultative approach to mentoring can be used to replace or supplement the more traditional apprentice model of mentoring. The consultative approach encourages mentees to identify those discrete skills and focused areas of support in which they need mentorship, and to then identify multiple mentors to specifically meet those needs. In addition to being flexible enough to support individuals throughout their careers, the consultative approach can help departments promote greater equity and inclusion by empowering everyone to share their expertise with one another. In this course, you’ll be introduced to the consultative approach to mentoring, you’ll be able to build your network of potential mentors, and you’ll gain valuable tools to help manage sticking points in mentorship relationships. This course is appropriate for all higher ed professionals, both at the […]

Establishing a Culture of Philanthropy as an Academic Dean

Philanthropic work in higher education is as important as ever, as the cost of delivering a high-quality education continues to increase. Academic deans are situated in an important role that allows them to guide the strategic direction of their school or college to help meet the academic mission of their institution. But to achieve their strategic vision, deans must embrace their responsibility to foster a culture of philanthropy within their academic unit to ensure success for years to come. This video course will be beneficial to any academic dean—new or experienced—or those aspiring to the role who are seeking to develop or refine a plan to achieve philanthropic goals for their institution. This course is designed to help you understand what a culture of philanthropy is, why it is important, what your responsibility is as a dean in establishing a culture of philanthropy, and how to approach fundraising as a part of this culture. Our expert instructor, Dr. Wade Weast, will help you to understand how your roles as a visionary, collaborator, role model, and fundraiser come together to help alumni, donors, and friends of your academic unit leave a lasting impact. Accompanying this course is a workbook designed to […]

Partnering with Faculty in Grateful Patient Fundraising: Elements of a Training Guide

Faculty and development professionals must share a commitment to philanthropy in order for a grateful patient fundraising (GPFR) program to be successful. Building trust, respect, and rapport is best accomplished through a strategic process that involves educating and training medical faculty partners. When your medical faculty understands the “why,” the “how,” and the “what” of your GPFR program, it is often much easier to engage grateful patients and successfully close gifts. This training will discuss the essential elements of a training guide that development professionals should consider in their initial meetings with faculty as they begin a partnership in GPFR. Join us in this useful online training to deepen your capability as a gift officer in academic medicine and learn ways to successfully achieve buy-in from your medical faculty partners.

Managing Difficult Faculty

If you are in an academic leadership position, you’ve encountered challenging faculty who exhibit unprofessional, unproductive, and even destructive behavior. When faculty decline in productivity, stop attending meetings, or criticize their junior colleagues, how can you deal with these inevitable and uncomfortable situations? In this two-part webcast series, our expert instructor will guide you through a four-stage process for dealing with difficult faculty personalities. You will learn to: Identify and address problematic behaviors early Use appropriate strategies for different behavior types Learn how and when to escalate your intervention Create written agreements that establish conduct expectations and consequences Minimize the impact of problematic behavior in your department

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.

Applying a Restorative Justice Approach to Student Conduct

A small but growing number of colleges and universities have been adopting restorative justice (RJ) processes as an alternative (in some cases) to traditional, sanctions-focused student conduct proceedings. Taking an RJ approach requires a philosophical shift for the student conduct office – it entails new sets of questions for student conduct hearings and an alert ear for cases in which there is the possibility to restore harm that’s been done, rather than simply (or only) penalize. If a hearing indicates that restorative justice may be possible and desirable, RJ processes usually proceed to individual pre-conference meetings held with the offender and those harmed in the incident. Ultimately, if all parties are willing, the issue is dealt with through a group conference with trained facilitators. The goal of the conference is to arrive at a mutual understanding of the harm caused and a mutual agreement for how the harm will be repaired. To learn more about how to make a restorative justice program most successful, we interviewed two officials from Colorado State University, which has frequently been recognized for its restorative justice and other student conduct programs. The two officials are Paul Osincup and Melissa Emerson, the associate and assistant directors […]

Enhance Your Application Process: Strategies to Measure Grit and Non-Cognitive Variables

Many application processes do not assess for persistence and grit, yet these qualities are often a better predictor of success than academic ability. Traditional admissions processes that focus solely on academics put some students at a disadvantage – especially first-generation or low-income students. Incorporating the right questions into your application processes will help you better predict success for students who might not meet traditional requirements. Join us online to learn how to enhance your own admissions processes.  This webcast will provide strategies and tools to help you assess non-cognitive variables by rethinking: The questions you ask in applications How you phrase essay prompts The reviewal process of extra-curricular activities and recommendations

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.

Katie Jeanneret

As Customer Relations Manager, Katie manages all correspondence with our customers and Subject Matter Experts, and coordinates various internal procedures for our Operations Team. She enjoys problem solving and finding a way to meet the needs of everyone we work with. Katie graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Drama from Washington University in St. Louis. Before making the move to Denver and Academic Impressions, she spent the last few years in the Washington, DC area working in performing arts and arts education. She is excited to explore all that Denver has to offer! When she isn’t working, you can usually find Katie on a hike, doing yoga, going to a concert, or trying a new recipe or restaurant.