Topics and speakers are unlikely to change, but they might. We’re constructing the program with an emphasis on annual giving, advancement services, management, digital, data and stewardship.
We’re going to have more than 30 sessions at this year’s MOTM Conference, so check back as we update the content…
Opening Plenary Session:
Be Mindful: All The Sessions You Don’t Want To Miss…
Welcome, Introductions and Conference Highlights
Bob Burdenski and John Taylor, Conference co-Chairs
Well-known Crystal Apple teachers, CASE authors, listserv moderators, and fundraising curmudgeons Bob Burdenski and John Taylor launch the 2025 Meeting of the Minds Conference with a festive welcome from the sponsors and a rapid-fire rundown of some of their favorite can’t-miss sessions and speakers to follow. Often in sync, lovingly in conflict, and always working in support of philanthropic goals, annual giving and advancement services offices play a critical role in advancement success. Join Bob and John as they provide a preview of the great conference sessions to come, and hear a special welcome from our sponsors.
Pre-Conference Workshop: (Free Registration Required.)
An Introduction to Annual Giving and the “Meeting of the Minds” Conference
Bob Burdenski, Robert Burdenski Annual Giving
New to the profession? New to the conference? Join CASE Laureate and long-time MOTM host Bob Burdenski for an overview of today’s annual giving fundraising. We’ll talk about the evolving goals, methods, channels, messages, metrics — and the very idea of “annual giving” itself. Ideal for “newbies” (or you “oldbies” in need of a refresh) and also get some ideas for maximizing your “Minds” conference experience in Pomona.
More information is here.
Pre-Conference Workshop: (Free Registration Required.)
Advancement Services Fundamentals
John Taylor, John H. Taylor Consulting
Join CASE author John Taylor as he digs into many topics facing the Advancement Services profession today. John will address several common IRS topics, including:
▪ Binding & Non-Binding Pledges
▪ Donor-Advised Fund and Family Foundation Issues
Quid Pro Quo
▪ The Latest Edition of the CASE Standards (and the many changes and additions made since the previous edition over ten years ago)
▪ Implementing Gift Assessment Fees (taxes on incoming gifts).
▪ Sponsorships – Advertising Versus Contribution.
More information is here.
Opening Plenary:
The Future of Our Work
Rodger Devine, Pomona College
Rodger will begin with some insights on how advancement work will evolve in the coming years – infused by AI. 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 panel for a run-down of some smart (and specific) AI uses. Bring yours too!
Actual AI for AG and AS
Hannah Palpant and Claudia Gonzales, University of LaVerne, and Bob Burdenski
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!
Aligning Advancement Services in Support of Annual Giving
Natalie Greenhouse, Occidental College
Session description to follow.
An Annual Giving Directors’ Forum: Participation, Pipelines and Pivots
Stacy Rauch, UCLA, Jessica Pfahler, University of Redlands, Michele Poesy, UC Davis and Others TBA
From participation, to pipeline? From socks, to more sustained stewardship? From alumni, to other audiences? We’ll talk about the evolving metrics of broad-based giving (including capital campaign participation goals), synergies with engagement and what it all means for a range of institutions.
Building and Strengthening Donor Relationships with “Touchpoints”
Dresden Joswig and Jennie Lin, Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health
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.
Can We Accept Gifts to That Club? Third-Party Fundraising Issues
Elina Gorelik, Loyola Marymount University with John Taylor
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!
Cultivating Connection: The Intersection of Digital Identity and Philanthropic Giving
Antonio Valero, University of Redlands
Session description to follow.
A Donor Relations and Stewardship Toolbox
Nicole Forrest Boggs, CSU Long Beach
In today’s competitive fundraising landscape, effective donor relations and stewardship are crucial for nonprofit success. This session explores the latest administrative tools and technologies designed to enhance donor engagement, streamline stewardship processes, and foster long-term relationships.
A Digital Fundraising Forum
Moderators TBA
It’s a one-stop-shopping forum for all of your digital fundraising topics and questions. Join our deep-dive digital moderators for an open exchange of ideas, solutions, strategies and more.
Direct Mail: 5 Things You Should be Testing
Sara Pond and Matt Sulzer, MCR
Testing, testing 1, 2, 3… Are you testing your direct mail approach? Join MCR to learn 5 things you should test, how to perform a quality test, and lessons learned from client results – plus, view a smorgasbord of direct mail samples! Implementing these elements into your upcoming campaign will reveal insights about your audience, identify donor patterns and help you develop a sound fundraising strategy.
DIY Your Digital Engagement Program
Michelle Poesy, Tessa Haden and Leslie Fitzpatrick, UC Davis
In today’s evolving philanthropic landscape, digital engagement officers are proving to be indispensable in enhancing fundraising strategies and cultivating robust donor pipelines. This session explores how digital tools—such as video, texting, email, virtual meetings, and even traditional phone calls—can transform donor interactions and drive substantial results. Gain insights from a successful program that developed a digital engagement strategy from the ground up, now generating over $1M annually. Learn actionable tips for streamlining your digital outreach efforts, discover valuable resources, and receive practical samples to implement in your own organization. Benefit from the experiences of seasoned development officers who have navigated this digital frontier, and leave equipped with the knowledge to elevate your donor engagement and fundraising success.
Donor Journeys : Green Lights, Cross Roads and Stop Signs
Rachel Spencer, VanillaSoft
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?!!
A Donor Wants to Give Us WHAT? ! Accepting Nonstandard Gifts
John Taylor, John H. Taylor Consulting LLC
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!
An Employee Giving Forum
Danielle Roane, MLK Community Health
Session description to follow.
Ethics in Fundraising – When “Yes or No” Answers Aren’t So Simple
Bob Burdenski and John Taylor
Fundraisers can often find themselves in tricky (and murky) situations. What if a casino business wants to support your organization? What if a donor wants an explanation of your “prospect research?” What if a prospect in your portfolio takes a little too much of a liking to you? Or picks up your dinner check? Or leaves you something in their will, but not your institution? What about the fundraiser who switches organizations, and takes donors with them? Or even what about those frequent flier miles you collect from your business trips? Join a discussion about the many ethical considerations in our work, and some (usually) effective ways to manage the murky in fundraising ethics.
Getting – and Keeping – Your Advancement Services House in Order
Zac Spurlin, University of the Pacific
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.
Gift and Pledge Administration – A Panel Discussion
Jessica LaBorde and Grant Potter, UC Davis, Vidya Kagan, Menlo School
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!
High Impact, Low Touch: Redesigning Your Annual Fund with Giving Loops
Lisa Vandergriff, Mayfield Senior School and Holman Gao, Boost My School
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.
Independent School Favorites From 25 Years of the
Annual Giving Appeal and Idea Exchange
Bob Burdenski
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.
IRS (and State) Sticky Wickets
John Taylor, John H. Taylor Consulting, LLC
Back by popular demand, join John Taylor for a review of specific IRS issues impacting charitable giving. This session will focus on the complex legal issues that can impact gift solicitation and gift acceptance by your organization. We will cover the following:
✔ State Fundraising Registration Requirements
✔ Binding & Non-Binding Pledges
✔ Donor-Advised Fund and Family Foundation Issues
✔ Quid Pro Quo
✔ Donor Influence & Control
✔ Finish Line Topics Including Gift Dates, Scholarships, Cryptocurrency, & Corporate Sponsorships
John also wants to address related issues that keep you up at night! So please email him (johntaylorconsulting@gmail.com) with those questions; he’ll incorporate them anonymously into the presentation!
Leadership Annual Giving – Fundamentals of Personal Solicitation and (More-or-Less)
Face-to-Face Fundraising
Ray Watts, CSU San Bernardino
Annual Giving is a dynamic and changing field, no longer solely focused on mass marketing through direct mail and student phonathons. The “new normal” for annual giving is a team-centered approach with a group of individuals who have personal prospect portfolios and expectations of much more face-to-face identification, cultivation and solicitation work. This workshop will be structured in an interactive format, with a focus on real-time learning and specific coaching. Come prepared to share experiences and learn strategies and tactics to make you a better development professional as you get on the road and work with donors one-on-one.
Leadership Annual Giving – Key Components to Building your Program
Karina Chappel and Christine Camacho, Scripps College
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.
Nuclear Narratives: Simple How-To’s for Crafting Stories That Motivate Your Audience
Crystal Gammon, Pomona College
Our brains are wired for stories. A good story can warm hearts, engage minds and inspire goodwill – and it can drive your audience to take action. Learn how to craft narratives that motivate as we deconstruct the art of storytelling into its elemental units. This interactive session will get you thinking like a storyteller, and you’ll leave with strategies for delivering your most important messages through narratives that connect, inspire and drive impact.
P2P Texting Compliance: The Boring but Important Stuff
Rachel Cleary, GetThru
Join Rachel Cleary from GetThru for a discussion on all things texting. Rachel will kick things off with a quick overview of texting and a breakdown of what you need to know now about texting compliance, including demystifying 10DLC, and what the FCC and TCPA have to do with your texting program. You’ll come away with the knowledge you need to make sure your P2P texts get through. Then, they will shift gears to have a wide-ranging conversation on what we’ve all learned since texting went from the hot new thing to a digital engagement must-have.
Preparing for a CRM Conversion: Large or Small, We All Feel the Same Pain!
Jeff Callaghan, UC Berkeley and Natalie Greenhouse, Occidental College
Whether you’re a small hospital, a large university, or somewhere in between, the challenges of CRM conversions are universal. Transitioning from outdated legacy systems to modern CRMs brings unique pressures to public, private, and independent institutions. While the process may seem daunting, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. This session will uncover common pain points of system transitions and demonstrate how leveraging guiding principles, bold decision-making, and project management best practices can turn a complex conversion into a seamless transformation. Discover practical strategies to align your team, overcome obstacles, and approach your CRM journey with confidence and clarity. Let’s reimagine this challenge as a bold step forward for your institution!
Principles of Ethically Influencing Annual Giving
Clark Gafke, LEAD Philanthropy
Discover the science behind donor motivation in this engaging and insightful session! Principles of Ethically Influencing Annual Giving will equip you with eight proven principles—Authority, Consistency, Contrast, Liking, Reciprocity, Scarcity, Social Proof, and Unity—that inspire donors to make meaningful gifts to their university. Rooted in the groundbreaking research of the Cialdini Institute, these principles provide a framework for authentic and ethical donor engagement. Clark Gafke, a Cialdini Certified Professional and Ethical Influence Practitioner, will guide you through the subtle yet powerful elements of everyday communication that drive generosity. With practical examples and actionable takeaways, this session will empower you to build stronger connections with donors and achieve sustainable results in annual giving. Whether you’re a seasoned fundraiser or new to the field, this session will improve the way you approach donor engagement!
Prospect Development – Herding Moves Management Cattle (& Keeping Track of Them)
Eddie Padilla, Cal State LA
Fundraisers have much to do, and updating the database with data isn’t at the top of their list! From entering contact reports to updating prospects’ statuses, classifications, and proposals. Help them help you keep track of their performance and needs! Join this session to dig in on ways Cal State LA addresses the urgency of keeping good fundraising data in the donor database to produce accurate reports and pipeline projections using dashboards. From the dashboards, fundraisers can see how they are performing, what data may be missing or inaccurate from their portfolio and pipeline of gifts, and where they are not aligned in the moves management process.
Records Management 101 – A Panel Discussion
Grant Potter, UC Davis, Jeff Callaghan, UC Berkeley and Zac Spurlin, Univerersity of the Pacific
Please join our group of industry experts prepared to discuss your records management concerns and conundrums! We will encourage audience participation as you are the experts, too! We will come prepared to discuss topics including data governance, deceasing best practices, common data entry errors, when – and when not – to create a spousal/partner record, matching gift company management, daily and weekly data integrity edits, and whether you really need to create a new record when you receive a gift from an existing donor’s estate. While we will be happy to discuss these topics with you, we also want to review what is most important to you! We will add your suggestions to our list at the session’s opening.
Why is AI All Up In Your Business?
Felicity Meu, GiveCampus
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.
Women in Leadership in Advancement
Kalyn Rose Miller, Pomona College, Gizel Avina, Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University, and Panel TBA
Women make up the majority of nonprofit employees, yet they are underrepresented in leadership positions across nonprofit organizations. In this panel, we bring together women leaders and aspiring women leaders of nonprofits to engage in discussion about relevant issues and foster meaningful relationships. How can we understand both the challenges and the opportunities presented by women’s leadership? How do issues like gender roles, work-life balance, and mentorship shape women’s leadership?