8:00-9:00 a.m.
Continental breakfast and networking in the Sponsor Lounge.
9:00-10:15 a.m. Breakout Sessions
A Digital Fundraising Coffee Club Forum
Nick Harvey, Western Washington University and Moderators TBA
Auditorium Room
Join Nick for a free-ranging forum about all things digital fundraising. Bring your crowdfunding, email, social media, sponsored posts and advertising, and your great hacks, tools and solutions.
Silos to Systems: Managing Content Across Your Institution
Nichole LeFebvre, The Lucille Packard Foundation for Children’s Health
Mountain Vista Room
As our organization grew, teams began working in silos—leading to duplicated efforts, inefficient collaboration, and difficulty finding resources. This impacted our ability to create engaging, donor-centric communications. At Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, our Content Team tackled these challenges by designing a powerful system to break down silos, boost internal communication, and create more compelling tools to support donor conversations:
✔ Monthly Collaboration Meetings – Align priorities, brainstorm ideas, and identify opportunities to repurpose content. Representatives from every foundation team attend— including annual fund, principal gifts, and corporate relations—maximizing efficiency.
✔ Centralized Content Hub –Track all content projects in one user-friendly place, ensuring transparency, accessibility, and streamlined collaboration.
✔ Communication Tools – Equip field staff with biweekly touchpoints and disease-area primers, enabling them to personalize communications for stronger relationships with potential donors.
Join this session to unlock the benefits of an organized, dynamic content system. You’ll hear ideas for establishing buy-in from colleagues, fostering a sense of community, and maintaining the practice. You’ll have the chance to share your own pain points and discover how to adapt this system to your organization’s needs.
What to do When Your Donor Wants to Donate An Island in Canada
Doug Bennett, Orange Coast College Foundation
Valley Vista Room
We will attempt to simplify the challenges of accepting in-kind gifts, from the simple gifts of cars to more complex gifts like real estate, boats, planes, and more. We will attempt to demystify the mysterious when accepting the “weird and bizarre.” We will begin the discussion by reviewing the importance of gift acceptance committees and policies. How to gracefully say “NO” and then we will dive into areas of specific concern these days, including:
✔ Gifts you should think twice about before accepting, like timeshares, life insurance, closely held stock, and certain bequests, and how to say “NO” to an in-kind gift gracefully.
✔ A Case Study of how the Orange Coast College Foundation built a nationally recognized sailing and maritime training facility through its boat and yacht donation program.
Green for Go-Live! Are You Really Ready?
Myndi Simo and Karen Latora, UC Innovations
Campus Vista Room
The go-live of a new software is an exciting (and sometimes daunting) time. If you are in the middle of an implementation or planning one in the future…this session is for you! Join us for tips on navigating go-live readiness including lessons learned, incorporating best practices, user adoption/support and much more! We want this to be super interactive, so bring your ideas, ask questions, and share your experiences! We will have some fun prizes.
10:30-11:45 p.m. Breakout Sessions
The Best of the 2023 Annual Giving Idea Exchange
Bob Burdenski, Robert Burdenski Annual Giving
Auditorium Room
For 24 years, Bob Burdenski has hosted an annual exchange where hundreds of institutions share thousands of annual giving innovations, ideas and success stories. Awesome appeals, terrific technologies, dynamic discoveries and marvelous messages. It was a great year of pushing the envelope in direct mail, digital and beyond. Come and see CASE Innovations in Annual Giving author Bob Burdenski dump out his bag of BOB (Best of the Bunch) favorites for some of the clever and successful fundraising ideas of the year.
Gift Agreements – Managing the Crazy
Nicole Forrest Boggs, CSU Long Beach
Valley Vista Room
Has a DoD ever handed you a cocktail napkin and asked if you can book this major gift tomorrow? I hope the answer is no, but we do live in a metrics-driven world. In this session, we will explore some best practices on processes and procedures regarding putting pen to paper with gift agreements, intake forms, tried and true templates, scholarship criteria forms, scholarship administration, and pledge reminders.
Text-To-Engage: Strategies for Annual Giving and Major Gift Cultivation
James Yokelle, UC Irvine
Campus Vista Room
Building off of his 2017 MOTM session that detailed the diverse ways text-to-give was leveraged for annual giving efforts and major gift cultivation at USC, James returns with additional strategies and examples currently in use at UC Irvine. From events and direct mail appeals to tribute and similar crowdfunding-esque campaigns, discover ways you can create storytelling opportunities for your community through text.
12:00-12:30 p.m. Closing Session
Closing Session – Minds Met: Favorite Take-Aways, Moments of Inspiration and Predictions
Bob Burdenski and John Taylor
Auditorium Room
We’ll award sponsor bingo prizes and reflect on the most important take-aways we’ve heard over the past three days at the 2024 Meeting of the Minds. Join us with your own closing thoughts and your favorite “a-ha!” moments from the conference.