• A clear-eyed view of your internal landscape, including the structures, headwinds, and staffing realities shaping your transformational gift work, and where you have room to improve.
• A fresh look at who is already at your table, grounded in current research on transformational gifts and in your institution’s own giving data.
• Practical fluency with complex assets, so you can confidently navigate conversations about donor-advised funds, real estate, and private capital.
• A vision worth partnering on, framed around the need it addresses, who it will impact, and what it will change, so faculty, leaders, and donors can all see themselves in it.
• A blueprint for your transformational gift team, clarifying who owns the vision, who brings it to life, and where the gift will live once it arrives.
• A partnership strategy for a real donor, built with your team using the Collaborative Donor Relationships Framework, plus a team action plan to carry it forward.

A transformational gift can change what’s possible for an institution and the people it serves. These gifts launch new fields of discovery, open doors for generations of students, and extend an institution’s reach into communities far beyond campus. At their best, they grow from a partnership: a shared commitment between a donor and an institution to make a difference neither could make alone. Building that partnership depends on more than a gift officer. It takes deans, faculty, and campus leaders who can bring a big idea to life, clear internal ownership of the work, and a team ready to invest in the donor relationship long after the gift is made.

This hands-on, one-and-a-half-day workshop is built for institutions ready to align around their transformational gifts strategy. We encourage advancement professionals to attend with campus partners, such as a dean, faculty leader, or leader of innovation and strategy, so you can understand how to steward a relationship with a potential donor with a strategic internal transformational gift team in place. You’ll start by understanding your landscape, including the donors already at your table, then shape a vision that connects to what donors value most, and finish by building your internal team and a partnership strategy for a real donor.

Throughout the workshop, we’ll draw on the Collaborative Donor Relationships Framework, our approach to moving donor relationships from transaction to partnership through five phases: Awareness, Interest, Connection, Partnership, and Investment. Each session blends practitioner insight, current research, and collaborative exercises, so you’ll leave with tools you can use immediately, a team aligned around next steps, and a network of peers doing this same work.

More details about the timing of the days can be found by clicking Learn More and Register, but session descriptions of the two days are below:   

Putting It on the Table: The Realities Shaping Your Transformational Gift Work
We’ll open with two questions: What big challenge brought you here, and what are you hoping to leave having learned or accomplished? From there, we’ll surface the realities you bring with you, from leadership transitions and campaign pressure to staffing gaps and internal politics. Together, you’ll sort what you can control from what you can’t and explore how peers are making progress within similar constraints. Naming these realities up front lets the rest of the workshop focus on what you can move forward.

Understanding Your Existing Donor Relationships
Your next transformational partner may already be at your table. Drawing on current research, we’ll examine the factors most associated with these gifts, including the role of thoughtful, personalized stewardship of earlier gifts. You’ll then look at your own data with fresh eyes, setting aside old assumptions to spot loyal, engaged donors whose values, capacity, and history with your institution point to a bigger conversation they haven’t yet been invited into.

Navigating Complex Assets and Private Capital
Most principal gifts will come through some form of non-cash or private asset. In this session, you’ll build working fluency with donor-advised funds, real estate, private equity, venture capital, and related vehicles. Through real examples, you’ll learn when to raise these conversations, what questions to ask, and how to bring in the right partners so you can help your donor find a path to the commitment they want to make.

Finding Your Why: Shaping a Vision Worth Partnering On
Why does your institution need a transformational gift? Donors respond far less to budgets and funding categories than to specific outcomes where your ambitions meet their aspirations to make a transformative impact in society. You and your team will work through the questions that turn a need into a vision: What issue will you address? What capabilities do you bring? What will it take to launch and sustain the work? Who will benefit, and how will you measure progress?

From “What We Need” to “What We Could Build Together”: Engaging Transformational Gift Donors
Conversations with transformational gift donors look different from a typical major gift solicitation. In this session, we’ll discuss the Collaborative Donor Relationships Framework and its five phases, and you’ll learn practical tools to move these relationships forward: uncovering the values behind a donor’s giving, designing experiences that connect donors with the people bringing a vision to life, and using storytelling to shift the conversation from “here is what we need” to “here is what we could build together.”

Building Your Transformational Gift Team
A donor partnership at this level is only as strong as the team behind it. In this session, you’ll map the people your gift will depend on: the leaders who own the vision, the faculty and staff who will carry out the work, and the students, patients, or community members who will benefit from it. You’ll also tackle the practical questions that can quietly derail a gift, such as who coordinates across units, where the funds will live once the gift arrives, how impact is measured and communicated, and who stewards the donor relationship. Whether you work at a large, decentralized institution or a small, nimble one, you’ll leave with approaches for convening the right people, navigating competing priorities, and keeping everyone aligned around a shared goal.

Donor Partnership Lab and Team Action Planning
Come with a specific donor you hope to engage. Working with your team and peers, you’ll apply the Collaborative Donor Relationships Framework to assess where your relationship stands today and plan what comes next, including how you’ll keep investing in your donor after the gift so they stay connected to the impact they hope to achieve rather than hearing from you only when it’s time to renew. We’ll close by bringing everything together into a team action plan that addresses your internal landscape, your shared vision, and your donor partnership strategy, focusing on where you have the discretion and opportunity to act right away.

Academic Impressions workshops provide the opportunity for quality conversations and relationship-building through both formal and informal networking opportunities in an intimate setting. Our in-depth and hands-on approach to learning provides you with actionable takeaways.

Learn More About the Academic Impressions Workshop Experience ➞