Search Results for: meeting

How to Start a Foundation Stewardship Program from Scratch

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

What does effective private foundation stewardship look like? Grand Valley State has a tightly-knit community – and here’s how they got there. Based on their experience, read 5 steps to get started, 5 steps to get your house in order, 4 ways to learn about the community, and 4 ways to make it personal. Attending Academic Impressions’ “Corporate Stewardship: Demonstrating ROI” webcast recently, I was provoked to think more deeply about what private foundation stewardship would look like. This question has been critical to my work at Grand Valley State. After eight years, I’ve built a significant network, but that didn’t happen immediately; this is a tightly-knit community, and coming in from outside and forming that network took concentrated work. Here is what I’ve learned along the way. From Scratch to Steward: 5 Steps to Get Started Here is how you get started in foundation giving: 5 Steps to Get Your House in Order 4 Ways to Learn About the Community 4 Ways to Make it Personal Above all, listen. If you ever have the chance to hear what family foundations have to say about their work, try to go. While at Grand Valley, I have attended a couple family […]

5 Fairy Tales People Believe About Mentoring in Higher Ed

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Once upon a time, I lived in a magical fairy tale world where higher education professionals, educated and insightful individuals, knew exactly how to navigate a mentor program and the results were nothing less than charming. Then I woke up. Sadly, the real world presents many obstacles to this “happily ever after,” and a belief in the fairy tale mentorship creates unsuccessful and unsustainable mentor programs. The five fairy tales below highlight five major lessons learned from designing and growing a university-wide mentor program. Before I begin, a caveat: Everyone’s story is different. Yet perhaps you can find relevance to your own institution and inspiration to begin or improve your mentor program. For almost ten years, I have worked with a university leadership development program that cultivates faculty and staff from every area of the university in a series of day-long sessions. Part of this development includes an embedded mentor program. The leadership program was created in 2008 through a cooperation of Student Affairs and Academic Affairs to cultivate leaders within the university. The goal is for participants to use these new skills in their current position and to hopefully grow into executive leadership positions. The mentor portion was designed […]

5 Steps to Spring Clean Your Major Gifts Portfolio

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

A COLUMN FROM GETTYSBURG COLLEGE This article is the second in a series by Ashlyn Sowell, Gettysburg’s associate vice president and campaign director. In her previous article, Sowell reviewed 4 lessons about campaign communications and volunteer management that she and her team at Gettysburg learned — from their volunteers. You can read that article here. Today, Sowell, with input from Gettysburg’s director of prospect research, walks through critical steps in reviewing your major gifts portfolio. We hope you will find this article useful and share it with your colleagues. We also recommend these related upcoming trainings: After the winter of 2014, I think everyone is looking forward to spring. And with spring comes that throwing open of the windows, getting rid of clutter, and giving everything a good dusting.  It can also be the perfect time to review your major gifts portfolio to usher in new prospects and to let go of the old. I was struck by the news in the VSE reports that just came out recently. Giving in higher education is up and the highest it has been in five years.  That’s great news and speaks volumes to the work done by gift officers in partnership with […]

7 Tips for Effectively Managing an Admissions Team

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

One seasoned enrollment manager offers practical strategies for making your admissions team high performing, high morale, and effective. When I took on my role in 1997 as director of admissions at Elizabethtown College, the extent of my leadership and management experience consisted of serving as captain of my college track team several years before. While I’d worked hard as an admissions counselor and was beginning to feel a genuine connection to admissions work and higher education, I did not think of myself as a leader. I suspect my experience is fairly common among those who find themselves (or will find themselves) in positions of leadership in an admissions office: lots of enthusiasm, little experience. Though I still make mistakes, I’ve learned a few things about leading and managing an admissions team. But for this post, I asked my own team for some feedback about what does generally work, and what doesn’t. Responses to my inquiry resulted in my first observation about self-management and reinforce how important it is for admissions leaders to solicit feedback from team members! I hope these observations are helpful. UNDERSTAND YOUR TEAM Understanding the characteristics and acknowledging the complexities of the team is a must. Most […]

For Fundraisers: How to Build a Successful Partnership with Your Athletic Director

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

It doesn’t matter if you are a Major Gift Officer working as a liaison to the athletic department or a Director of Athletic Development. Now more than ever, to effectively raise money for your college athletic department you must have a successful partnership with your Athletic Director. Many advancement professionals working with college athletic departments do not have a background as a coach or an administrator. So how can you, as the athletic fundraiser, build a successful partnership with your Athletic Director? Unfortunately, there is no magic formula to help build this relationship, but here are four steps you can take to get started: 1. Schedule a weekly meeting with your Athletic Director. If a weekly meeting isn’t possible, then make sure it is at least bi-weekly. These meetings will ensure that you, as the frontline fundraiser for the athletic department, have a strong understanding of the current needs of the department. While you’re meeting, you’ll also have the opportunity to coordinate upcoming travel and additional events that require the Athletic Director’s attendance. It may also be helpful for you to attend athletic staff meetings and for your Athletic Director to attend development meetings going forward, to further strengthen the connection […]

Responsive General Collection Management: Integrating Stakeholder Input

It may seem difficult to both balance space management in your academic library and continue to cultivate a thriving general collection that meets the needs of 21st century faculty and students. However, strong weeding and storage policies offer an effective way to meet both aims. The key is to move beyond just reviewing circulation data and integrate user input to inform your general collection management. Join us for a webcast that explores how to seamlessly integrate data and user input into your library’s storage and weeding policies. You will leave with five key takeaways and a plan for establishing policies that ensure the viability of your general collection in a way that nurtures the relationship between your library and its most important stakeholders.

Disrupting the Status Quo: 5 Counterintuitive Notions for Inspiring Creativity

Posted on by bradystanton@ai_azuread

Creativity is an essential aspect of human nature, yet many people struggle to embrace it, either from insecurity or fearing its potential unpredictability. While it is tempting to stick to familiar routines that afford the comfort of not dealing with potential failure or uncertainty, there is no room for personal or organizational growth with this mindset. Today, the need to foster creativity that drives innovation and growth in organizations is a highly regarded requirement for leaders. However, simply telling your team to “think outside the box” isn’t exactly inspiring. To quote Ted Lasso, “Takin’ on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse. If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.” While we all agree that change is scary, what makes creativity so satisfying is the opportunity to see situations from new perspectives. In this article, we will explore five counterintuitive notions that can help to cultivate a creative culture. Embracing creativity is both a challenging and rewarding process. While these examples may appear to be counterintuitive, give them a try and see how they are able to unlock the full potential of your meetings, employees, and organization to help drive innovation. Lean into embracing […]

Managing Change During COVID-19: Equipping supervisors for change in a time of unending uncertainty

Posted on by bradystanton@ai_azuread

By Amanda Morrow, SHRM-CP, Human Resources Business Partner, Rice Universitywith editing contributions from Melinda English, Rebecca Gould, and Susann Glenn Panic Over one year ago, the isolated whispers of a novel coronavirus grew into a boisterous, full-blown pandemic alarm that reverberated across the globe. As a result, universities and colleges worldwide were suddenly tasked with leading their staff, faculty, and students through unprecedented challenges and unforeseen complications. We, here, at Rice University in Houston, Texas, were no exception. On March 5, 2020, our Crisis Management Team alerted the campus that a staff member who had been under quarantine with a possible case of the coronavirus has tested positive for the disease. While swift action was taken to isolate the affected individual and those with whom they had contact, this news catalyzed sudden and wide-reaching action across campus. As the implications of SARS-CoV-2, a highly contagious, airborne disease, began to take form, the Human Resources (HR) team sprang into action. Our team immediately began supporting efforts to close down the campus to only essential personnel; to provide critical guidance to supervisors as they sent most (if not all) of their employees-home to work fully remote; to redesign how work was being […]

The Skills Higher-Ed Leaders Need to Succeed

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

2017 Update: Following up on this research, we have published our findings and our best current thinking in the paper “The Skills Future Higher-Ed Leaders Need to Succeed.” In Denver, CO this March, Academic Impressions convened a select group of forty academic and administrative leaders from diverse colleges and universities to address the question: What are the skills and qualities that leaders in the future need to have in order to thrive? Why this Conversation is So Critical Now Leadership matters. As program facilitator Pat Sanaghan remarked, an institution “cannot rise above its leadership.” The circumstances colleges find themselves in today — whether those circumstances are productive or disastrous — are a product of the decisions and actions (or inaction) of past leaders. If your own institution’s outlook isn’t bright, that’s a leadership issue. In a time of significant change and stress in the industry, we need to rethink the kind of leadership we need. How We Pursued this Conversation No one sage has the answers to this complex question. That’s why we called together 40 people from all across an institution’s organizational chart and from diverse types of institutions. We had presidents, chiefs of staff, chief academic officers. We also had several […]

Fundraising Essentials: Perfecting Moves Management Webcast Recording

Get practical ideas and advice on the “art” associated with the science of moves management. Gain the knowledge you need to smoothly move prospects through the donor cycle and upgrade them to the next giving level. Throughout this training, you will learn: The right questions to ask and when to ask them Identifying prospects who need to be upgraded or downgraded How to effectively manage donor meetings to ensure outcomes are met Tactics for moving donors through each stage of the solicitation cycle Considerations for using data to guide strategy

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