8:00-9:00 a.m.
Continental Breakfast and Networking in the Sponsor Lounge
9:00-10:15 a.m. Breakout Sessions
Actual AI for AG and AS
Hannah Palpant and Claudia Gonzales, University of LaVerne, and Bob Burdenski
Auditorium Room
Join a presentation with examples of “AI hacks” being used in annual giving and advancement services. Hannah and Claudia will talk about their uses of AI for prospect management at the University of La Verne – and the staff training helping to make it work. Bob will chime in with some of his favorite examples of AI-infused annual giving program ideas. From the strategic plan to the stewardship, AI can now tangibly assist with many elements of your advancement program. Plan formats, draft letter copy, draft everything copy, long Excel formulas, graphic designs, giving day marketing themes, and a whole lot more. AI won’t replace you, but some of its time-saving shortcuts can help make your annual giving work more efficient. Join the discussion for a rundown of some smart (and specific) AI uses. Bring yours too!
An Employee Giving Forum
Danielle Roane, MLK Community Health
Mountain Vista Room
There may never be an ideal time to invite your faculty and staff to make a gift. Salary freezes, a lack of a giving tradition, unpopular administrative decisions, competing charity campaigns, and many other variables can make it easy to talk yourself out of your faculty and staff as a prospect audience. Yet, some institutions enjoy remarkable faculty and staff fundraising success and a correctly-calibrated appeal can even serve as a point-of-pride for your employees. Hear from Danielle about MLK Community Healt’h’s employee giving, and add your own faculty and staff success -or failures – to this open forum.
Getting – and Keeping – Your Advancement Services House in Order
Zac Spurlin, University of the Pacific
Valley Vista Room
Sometimes, our advancement services house needs a little cleaning; sometimes, it needs a deep cleaning to maintain order and sanity. This session will discuss ways to keep your advancement services house in order. We will look at the various rooms and closets throughout the house that collect clutter and how we can keep the common areas debris-free. Using naming conventions, data integrity groups, data validation, and various other methods will not only support your daily operations but will also make life much easier for any future conversion efforts.
Storytelling Stories
Iyoni Rice, USC
Campus Vista Room
Session description to follow.
Independent Schools
High Impact, Low Touch: Giving Loops
Lisa Vandergriff, Mayfield Senior School and Holman Gao, Boost My School
Garden Vista Room
As an annual fund leader, balancing broad participation with major gift cultivation can feel like an impossible trade-off. What if there was a way to grow both without overextending yourself? Join Mayfield Senior School and Boost My School for this session where you’ll learn how to design a peer-led giving model that energizes your community. By driving participation through donor-to-donor outreach, you’ll not only increase engagement but also create a foundation of support that makes major donors more willing to invest in your school. We’ll guide you step-by-step through spreading initiatives across the calendar, encouraging peer-led giving, and reducing the day-to-day demands of participation campaigns. Walk away with a clear roadmap to achieve sustainable growth while freeing time to focus on transformational gifts.
10:30-11:45 a.m.
Leadership Annual Giving – Key Components to Building your Program
Karina Chappel and Christine Camacho, Scripps College
Auditorium Room
This presentation will provide an overview of how Scripps College has operationalized its Leadership Annual Giving Program using a play sequence of diverse communications. During the presentation, we will discuss how Scripps identifies leadership annual giving prospects, break down how Scripps specifically applies a multi-channel approach that includes email, phone, text and mail to reach donors and explore the program methodology that has helped shape pipeline development at Scripps. After hearing this presentation, attendees will be able to apply these methods in their advancement teams, so that they too can maximize prospective leadership annual giving donors and operationalize Leadership Annual Giving programs to be both efficient and effective.
Why is AI All Up In Your Business?
Felicity Meu, GiveCampus
Mountain Vista Room
AI is everywhere, in every industry, and it’s actually been a part of our daily lives for years. Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Face ID, Netflix’s movie recommendations, and Gmail’s spam filter all use AI to–at least in theory–make our lives easier and better. But what does it mean for you as an advancement professional? After all, cultivating an authentic, personal relationship is key to getting someone to give, so how exactly can AI help? Discover how to leverage this emerging technology while preserving and enhancing the most important aspect of the work you do—meaningful human-to-human engagement. In this session, participants will learn:
• Why advancement teams should care about Artificial Intelligence
• The opportunities and challenges of this technology in the fundraising space
• Practical ways to start leveraging AI in order to reclaim your most precious resource—time.
Join Felicity as she discusses the opportunities and challenges posed by AI and how to effectively leverage this powerful tool today.
Can We Accept Gifts to That Club? Third-Party Fundraising Issues
Elina Gorelik, Loyola Marymount University with John Taylor
Valley Vista Room
Do you know the IRS disallows tax deductions for gifts to most student clubs and groups? They have a particular disdain for Greek organizations! There’s this key “educational purposes” language the IRS uses to determine what’s deductible and what’s not. However, there are some creative solutions to this conundrum, as many donors will often insist that a donation go to a student program. Elina will discuss how they are approaching this challenge at Loyola Marymount University—from addressing the needs of Student Affairs to satisfying Finance and the auditors. John will provide insights on the relevant IRS rulings. The two will dive into the value and importance of establishing an institutional Third-Party Fundraising protocol and approval process to ensure student organizations don’t launch fundraisers without our blessings!
Building and Strengthening Donor Relationships with “Touchpoints”
Dresden Joswig and Jennie Lin, Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health
Campus Vista Room
Relationships are central to the business of fundraising – but staying in contact with a large portfolio of donors and prospects can be exhausting and time-consuming work for busy gift officers and their support staff. By creating a regularly scheduled set of carefully curated “touchpoints” for our gift officers, the communications team at the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health leverages news, social media, and other sources to facilitate more meaningful connections between donors and gift officers and ensure that our community is in-the-know about the continued impact of their generosity. In this session, we will share how we built our donor touchpoints program in partnership with our fundraising team; how it has helped to advance qualification work, warm up cold prospects, and strengthen relationships with VIP donors; how our fundraisers put their stamp on the materials we create; and how you might go about creating a similar program at your institution.
Independent Schools
Independent School Annual Giving
Vidya Kagan, Menlo School
and Bob Burdenski
Garden Vista Room
Join a forum on annual giving for independent schools .
Lunch – 11:45 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
Conference Luncheon in the Kellogg Center Dining Room (Lobby Level) and on the Sponsor Lounge Patio
1:00-2:15 p.m.
Inside the UCLA/USC SoCal Rival Week Fundraising Competition
Iyoni Rice, USC and Stacy Rauch, UCLA
Auditorium Room
Session description to follow.
Leading Every Day: Building a Leadership Annual Giving Program that Matters
Robin Savoian, Caltech
Mountain Vista Room
Session description to follow.
Gift and Pledge Administration – A Panel Discussion
Jessica LaBorde and Grant Potter, UC Davis, Vidya Kagan, Menlo School
Valley Vista Room
This “audience participation” session will attempt to answer fundamental gift processing and entry questions that have raised concerns for decades! We will begin by asking the audience to list the gift processing issues rearing their ugly heads in day-to-day gift processing. The panel will try to suggest solutions to those problems and reflect on national best practices. The panel will also come prepared to discuss various topics, including gift dates, receipt requirements, gift processing metrics, copying/scanning requirements, and recurring giving issues. You are encouraged to email your discussion topics beforehand if you prefer to be anonymous!
A Healthcare Forum
Danielle Roane, MLK Community Health
Campus Vista Room
Bring your questions, topics and success stories (or failures!) to this healthcare fundraising forum. We’ll discuss grateful patients, volunteers, event fundraising, corporate gifts and much more.
Independent Schools
Independent School Favorites From 25 Years of the
Annual Giving Appeal and Idea Exchange
Bob Burdenski
Garden Vista Room
For 25 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 3-time CASE Innovations in Annual Giving author Bob Burdenski dump out his bag of BOB (Best of the Bunch) favorites with some specially-selected independent school fundraising ideas.
2:30-3:45 p.m.
An Annual Giving Directors’ Forum: Life After the US News Alumni Participation Decision
Stacy Rauch, UCLA, Michele Poesy, UC Davis, Jessica Pfahler, U of Redlands and Emily VanderLinden, Loyola Marymount University
Auditorium Room
From participation, to pipeline? From socks, to more sustained stewardship? From alumni, to other audiences? We’ll talk about CASE’s Alumni Engagement Metrics, the continuing value of a broad base of giving (including capital campaign participation goals), and what it all means for a variety of educational institutions.
Cultivating Connection: The Intersection of Digital Identity and Philanthropic Giving
Antonio Valero, University of Redlands
Mountain Vista Room
Session description to follow.
Annual Giving Segmentation Survival Skills: Quality Control Without Coding
Grant Potter, UC Davis
Valley Vista Room
At UC Davis, the campus and health annual fund teams send more than 150 unique solicitations—direct mail, email, and text—each year. While their Advancement Services shop is fortunate enough to have developers to code and pull these solicitations, the responsibility for ensuring data accuracy falls primarily on a team of two people (who only really know their way around Excel!) Over the past few years, they’ve developed efficient processes, templates, and practical tips to streamline a large amount of data quality control without needing advanced technical skills. In this presentation they’ll cover: spec writing, review checklists, segmenting your populations, recurring exclusions, easy to use excel formulas/VBAs, and review tips for donor populations, gift ladders, print funds, and hyperlinks.
How AI Actually Works & What It Still Can’t Do
Griff Bohm, Momentum
Campus Vista Room
Welcome to 2025: AI is (still) everywhere. Every tech company in the world is trying to promote their AI to you as the next great thing. But for all the hype, most fundraisers out there still don’t understand how AI actually works. And what it still can’t do (hint: there’s lots). In this session, experts from the team at Momentum, formerly behavioral psychologists from Duke University and the University of Colorado, will take you on a deep dive into how artificial intelligence works, how human psychology plays a part, and what you need to be on the look out for next.
Independent Schools
Independent Schools Closing Forum
Alexin Telfrancia, Polytechnic School and Lisa Vandergriff, Mayfield Senior School
Garden Vista Room
Session description to follow.
4:00-5:15 p.m.
A Digital Fundraising Forum
Moderators TBA
Auditorium Room
Session description to follow.
Student Philanthropy Programs
Iyoni Rice, USC
Mountain Vista Room
Session description to follow.
A Donor Wants to Give Us WHAT? ! Accepting Nonstandard Gifts
John Taylor, John H. Taylor Consulting LLC
Valley Vista Room
Increasingly, donors attempt to donate unique, not always desired, forms of non-cash gifts. This session will focus on establishing protocols and policies to facilitate accepting or rejecting these gifts. We’ll discuss the importance of a Gift Acceptance Committee and a Gift Acceptance Policy. We’ll look at gifts of securities in particular and the IRS’s concern regarding related versus unrelated gifts of property. And then we’ll do a lightning round covering a dozen or so other non-standard gifts – including cryptocurrency!
Donor Journeys : Green Lights, Cross Roads and Stop Signs
Rachel Spencer, VanillaSoft
Campus Vista Room
An understanding of where a given prospect sits on their individual journey of awareness, interest and desire to take action, should be at the core of our outbound engagement strategies; as well as the way we think about sustainable pipeline development. From the Engagement Center, to DXO and Leadership Gift programs, we need to pay close attention to the various signs and signals of “readiness to progress” (or – perhaps – a lack thereof!!!) So, what signs should we look out for? And what should we do when we encounter them?!!