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 40 sessions at this year’s MOTM Conference, so check back as we confirm our topics and update the content…
Opening Plenary Session:
Be Mindful: All The Sessions You Don’t Want To Miss…
Welcome, Introductions and Conference Highlights
Bob Burdenski with Conference Speakers and Sponsors
We’ll launch the 2027 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.
Opening Plenary Session:
What Next For Our Work?
Rodger Devine, Pomona College
Session description to follow.
An Annual Giving Directors’ Forum: Participation, Pipelines and Pivots
Panel 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.
Beyond Affinity: Building an Interest Code Strategy That Drives Engagement
Mark Longo and Andrew Chang, Caltech
Interest codes can transform how institutions understand, segment, and engage constituents, yet many organizations struggle with outdated, inconsistent, or underutilized coding structures. At Caltech, a cross-functional team conducted a comprehensive review of interest codes to determine whether existing data structures aligned with current business needs and future engagement goals. In this session, attendees will learn how Caltech assessed its interest code framework, engaged stakeholders across advancement functions, developed a new taxonomy, and created a roadmap for implementation and governance. The presenters will also share how Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs) were used to support analysis, identify patterns, and inform the development of a scalable and sustainable framework. Participants will leave with practical strategies for evaluating and modernizing their own interest code structures, improving segmentation and personalization, and strengthening fundraising, alumni engagement, communications, and prospect development efforts. They will also gain insights into how AI can augment human expertise when addressing complex advancement data and taxonomy challenges.
Beyond the Match: Navigating the Challenges of Matching Gift Processing
Joyce Lee and Erin Gale, UC Davis
Matching gift administration involves more than processing employer contributions. Along with traditional corporate matching programs, the landscape continues to evolve with the growing use of donor advised funds and other forms of matching. This session focuses on the day-to-day processing challenges of tracking outstanding matches, identifying which donations incoming payments belong to, reconciling multiple payments, and managing delayed or unidentified matches. We will share practical approaches to tracking and documentation that help honor donor intent, maintain accurate gift records, and give relationship managers better visibility into matching gift activity.
A Big Giving Day Forum
Chelsea Clouser, UC Berkeley and co-hosts TBA
Whether you’re launching your first Giving Day or looking to refresh an established tradition, this discussion forum will share ideas, challenges, and success stories from the front lines of Giving Day planning and execution. Topics will include volunteer and ambassador engagement, digital strategy, stewardship, matching gifts, athletics and student participation, campaign branding, and post-event follow-up. Participants are encouraged to bring questions, examples, and lessons learned as we explore what’s working, what’s changing, and how institutions of all sizes can create meaningful donor engagement and fundraising momentum through Giving Days.
The Campaign Has Ended – Long Live the Campaign! A Timeline for Tasks Between Campaigns
Becky Frantz, UC Davis
Session description to follow.
Data Hygiene
Zac Spurlin, University of the Pacific
Session description to follow.
Direct Mail Still Delivers
Matt Sulzer and Sara Pond, MCR
Direct mail remains the primary driver of donors and dollars for most annual giving programs. Join MCR for an interactive session that explores classic best direct mail performers, as well as cutting-edge ideas to get your mail opened, read and churning results. Together we’ll dive into:
◾ Audience Styling – unique campaign packaging, creative marketing, as well as eye-popping designs and copy for your core segments
– Leadership
– Renewal/Retention
– Acquisition
◾ Priming & Timing – connect your message with other channel
– Giving Days
– Donor Journeys
◾ Ask Strategies – when, where and how much to ask
The Donor Love Language: Making Impact Reporting More Personal, Visual and Meaningful
Caitlen Bowen, University of San Diego
You don’t need a graphic design degree to create impact reports that captivate donors. This session explores how the University of San Diego’s Donor Relations team leverages Canva to transform text-heavy, data-dense content into clear, visually compelling stories. Attendees will walk away with practical design techniques and processes to elevate their stewardship reports, driving donor engagement and providing development teams with new ways to reinforce donor confidence and inspire future giving.
A Donor Relations Forum: Building Stronger Connections and Lasting Loyalty
Caitlin Bown, University of San Diego and Co-Hosts TBA
Great fundraising doesn’t end when a gift is made! Join fellow DR professionals for an interactive discussion about donor stewardship, recognition, gift acknowledgment, and creative ways to keep donors engaged. Share successful strategies, discuss common challenges, and exchange practical ideas for strengthening donor relationships, improving retention, and building a culture of gratitude.
The Eight Classic Principles of 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!
Face-to-Face Fundraising: Tackling Your Biggest Fears
Andrea Taylor, Andrea Taylor Consulting
Andrea Taylor has spent more than twenty years in leadership advancement roles at California universities, and she has a new book – Philanthrophobia: How Reluctant Fundraisers Can Conquer Their Fear and Embrace the Art of Asking. The session will focus on what we dread most as fundraisers: the initial visit, and the ask. It will be a tactical, hands-on session with lots of opportunities for participation and questions.
Favorites From the 27th Annual Giving Appeal and Idea Exchange
Bob Burdenski
For 27 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 fundraising ideas.
The Fearless Volunteer
Iyoni Rice and Lauren Eckerdt, University of Southern California
Iyoni and Lauren will discuss their volunteer fundraising programs at USC and how they move board members and volunteers past the “fear of fundraising” and train them to become confident ambassadors.
Gift and Pledge Administration – A Forum Discussion
Quamrun Salam, Pomona College, Anita Lawson, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Danielle Rae Burgess, UC Davis
This audience participation session will attempt to answer fundamental questions about gift processing and entry that have raised concerns for decades! The session will begin by asking the audience to identify the gift processing issues they face in daily operations. The panel will attempt to suggest solutions and share national best practices. They will also come prepared to discuss various topics, including gift dates, receipt requirements, gift processing metrics, copying/scanning requirements, and recurring giving challenges. (Feel free to email your discussion topics beforehand if you prefer to be anonymous!)
Integrating Annual Giving and Advancement Services Practices
Dr. Wayne Combs
Annual giving strategy depends on the systems, data, reporting, gift administration, and stewardship expertise of advancement services. This session presents an integrated operating model built around shared planning, audience definitions, campaign calendars, performance measures, service expectations, and feedback loops. Participants will learn how to reduce handoff friction, resolve business-rule conflicts, and improve acquisition, retention, upgrades, alumni engagement, and the overall constituent experience.
Gamification in Digital
Ryan Lawrence, Alex Rodriguez, Chelsea Clouser, and Katherine Schiff-Welsh, UC Berkeley
Session description to follow.
A Healthcare Fundraising Forum: Patients, Physicians, Providers, Policies, and Pipelines
Dr. Wayne Combs and co-presenters TBA
Healthcare institutions offer their own challenges (HIPAA) and opportunities (grateful patients, healthcare professionals, companies and the community) for annual giving fundraising. Join us for a special annual giving forum all about healthcare. Join us for a two-part forum that will share group information and discuss topics including:
◾ What does the prospect journey look like: from acquisition to renewal to major giving prospect?
◾ Using digital options to the fullest: emails, unique web landing page, ongoing impact updates;
◾ Tribute and 3rd-party giving-making the process easy and meaningful;
◾ What’s new in stewardship;
◾ Valuable vendors – Who are you using? Email vendors? Print? Business Associate Agreements?
◾ Giving initiatives: Doctor’s Day, Giving Day, Nurses Week? Do these help?
Human-Centered AI: Smarter Annual Giving, Stronger Advancement Services
Dr. Wayne Combs
Artificial intelligence can expand capacity across annual giving and advancement services—but efficiency alone does not create trust. This session explores practical applications for segmentation, communication drafting, workflow automation, data analysis, coaching, and scenario testing. Participants will apply a disciplined framework for asking better questions, setting useful constraints, evaluating outputs, and protecting accuracy, ethics, privacy, and human judgment.
Integrating Annual Giving and Advancement Services Practices
Session description to follow.
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.
Leveraging AI to Match Donor Passions with Purpose
Jen Jurgensen, Santa Clara State University
Session description to follow.
More Than Moves: Rethinking Prospect Management for Today’s Fundraising Teams
Elise Martin, Miami University
Prospect management is so much more than assigning names to portfolios and tracking moves. When done well, it should help fundraisers focus their time on the right prospects, identify where opportunities exist, and make informed decisions about who should—and sometimes shouldn’t—be in their portfolios. This session will focus on the practical, everyday side of prospect management: building and maintaining healthy portfolios, conducting meaningful portfolio reviews, managing pipeline and prospect movement, using data and metrics to guide conversations, and creating accountability without making the process feel like just another administrative requirement.
Operationalizing Gift Clearing Account Reconciliation
Quamrun Salam, Pomona College
Gift reconciliation should be designed into the business process, not treated as an afterthought. Join Quam for a discussion about gift reconciliation and Pomona College’s improved processes.
“Plannual Giving” – The Strategic Synergy Between Annual and Planned Gifts
Ray Watts, CSU San Bernardino
This is an interactive session examining the link between frequency of annual giving and the likelihood of a planned or asset-based gift. We will look at the connectivity behind loyalty, leadership and legacy and work together to find new and creative ways to help our most loyal donors “make the leap” from “donor” to “philanthropist.”
The Project Completers – Berkeley’s Army of “Crowdfunding Angels”
Alex Rodriguez, UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley has a portfolio of leadership annual giving donors who’s giving preference is to support and “top up” crowdfunding projects that are nearing their fundraising goal. How does this work, how do you identify these “crowdfunding angels,” and how does Berkeley Crowdfunding engage and work with these enthusiastic leadership annual giving donors?
Records Management – A Forum Discussion
Zac Spurlin, University of the Pacific and co-Hosts TBA
Please join our group of industry experts prepared to discuss your records management concerns and conundrums! They will encourage audience participation as you are the experts, too! They 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 they will be happy to discuss these topics with you, the panel also want to review what is most important to you! They will add your suggestions to their list at the session’s opening.
The Recurring Riddle of Regular Giving
Marsha Reardon, Arizona State University and Bob Burdenski
We’ve chased the elusive, effective recurring giving program for years. We’re proud that we can set up a recurring gift, but most educational institutions (and other not-for-profits) still struggle to attract significant numbers of recurring gift (monthly or otherwise) donors. There are successes to be found in other sectors (PBS) and even other countries (UK). What are the obstacles – and solutions – here in the U.S.? Come and see a collection of recurring giving strategies for promoting, stewarding, recognizing and sustaining a recurring donor base. Bob and Marsha will share and discuss a range of strategies and solutions from a range of institutions.
Re-Engineering the Annual Giving Program – A New Approach at ASU
Marsha Reardon, Arizona State University
Session description to follow.
Storytelling
Sam Camarena, CSU Chancellor’s Office
Session description to follow.
Trendy with a Chance of Impact: A Practical Guide to the Big Picture
Speaker TBA, GiveCampus
Discover the key annual giving trends shaping advancement strategy and execution—and how they apply to your institution. This session will share insights from a meta analysis of philanthropy research, GiveCampus data, and real-world examples. You’ll leave with actionable tools and data to evaluate your performance, understand how peers are adapting, and identify opportunities for meaningful impact.
Key Learnings:
◾ Understand the most significant trends currently influencing advancement strategy, execution and annual giving performance.
◾ Connect these trends to your institution’s specific goals and challenges.
◾ Gain insight from aggregated data, including patterns emerging from annual giving programs.
◾ See real-world examples of how peers are responding to these trends — at both macro and programmatic levels.
◾ Identify where your institution can take action to drive measurable impact across your advancement efforts.
Understanding What Drives Family Giving
Sarah Kleeberger, Encoura
What inspires families to give their time, talents, and treasure to higher education institutions? New research suggests that the answer lies not just in the ask, but in the relationships, experiences, and connections that precede it. Drawing on insights from more than 8,300 family members, the 2026 Family Giving Study from Encoura and CampusESP reveals what builds trust, strengthens institutional connections, and influences families’ willingness to give. In this session, we’ll explore five key research findings and their implications for family engagement and advancement strategies. Attendees will also discover actionable recommendations and real-world examples of how institutions are translating these insights into stronger family relationships and greater philanthropic engagement.
The Valuable Impact of Impact Reporting
Caitlin Bowen, University of San Diego
Session description to follow.
Women in Leadership in Advancement
Gizel Richardson, Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University, Kalyn Rose Taylor, Anita Lawson, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, 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?