We’ll have more than 30 sessions, so check back for additional sessions, session descriptions and the complete schedule. Speakers are unlikely to change – but they might.
An Introduction to Annual Giving and the Northeast Annual Giving Conference
(Tuesday Afternoon Pre-Conference Workshop)
Theresa Lee, New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill
Annual Giving is both an art and a science, requiring strong fundamentals, smart use of data, and intentional relationship-building to succeed. This session offers a practical, end-to-end look at how to build, manage, and grow an effective Annual Giving program. Theresa Lee will cover Annual Giving essentials, including goal setting and benchmarking, marketing demographics and campaign planning, segmentation and personalization strategies, and the anatomy of a compelling appeal. Participants will also explore how data analytics can inform decision-making, strengthen donor retention, and support thoughtful upgrading, leadership annual giving, and loyalty recognition programs. The session will conclude with a focus on stewardship as the connective tissue that transforms one-time gifts into long-term commitment. Attendees will leave with actionable tools and frameworks to strengthen participation, increase revenue, and build lasting donor relationships.
Annual Giving, AI and You: Who’s Using AI To Do What – Right Now?
Bob Burdenski and Kathy Howrigan
You’re the contributors for an instant inventory and discussion about who’s using AI for exactly what at the moment. Using open-ended Menti questions on the various uses of AI, we’ll compile and discuss the uses in the room for:
Your First “Gateway” Use of AI in Your Personal and Professional Life
– Using AI To Write “First Drafts” of Content or Messages?
– Using AI As a Search Engine to Find Answers to Questions?
– Using AI To Create Graphics, Video or Designs?
– Using AI To Review Your Work For Clarity, Voice, Biases, Etc.?
– Using AI For Summarizing Content or Notes – Meeting Recording Minutes, or Groups of Messages?
– Using AI For Automation/Coding/Programming?
– Other Ways You Use AI?
– What Tools Are You Generally Talking About When You Say “AI”?
While there are still many proud non-adopters (including those with environmental concerns), join us for a look at who’s incorporated AI into their work – and how.
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? And what of AI? 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.
Annual Giving for 50 Million Alumnae? Building a Girl Scout Donor Pipeline With Scale (and Without Cookies)
Eliza Boffen-Yordanov, Girl Scouts USA
The Girl Scout challenge: How do you design a fundraising strategy that meaningfully engages a vast and diverse alumnae community? This session explores elements of a new comprehensive, data-informed fundraising plan to reach and inspire 5 million Girl Scouts alumnae across generations, geographies, and levels of affinity. They will discuss segmentation, scalable personalization, multi-channel engagement, volunteer networks, leadership giving pipelines, and the role of storytelling in strengthening lifelong connection. Learn some scalable insights for setting priorities, aligning resources, and creating measurable goals, while balancing broad participation with major gift growth.
Annual Giving For Athletics: Engaging Fans, Families, and Champions of Your Program
Keven Morency, Endicott College
Athletics programs inspire deep loyalty and pride—but how do you turn that passion into meaningful philanthropic support? This session will share strategies, challenges, and successes in athletics fundraising. Topics will include building strong partnerships with coaches and athletic leadership, engaging alumni athletes and parents, leveraging events and game-day energy, cultivating major and leadership gifts, and creating a sustainable annual pipeline of support. Join this session to exchange ideas, compare approaches, and leave with practical insights you can use to strengthen fundraising for your athletics program.
The Best of Both Worlds: Properly Blending Direct Mail with Digital Campaigns
Theresa Aide and Kate Cominsky, CFRE, Suttle-Straus
Direct Mail is still the most effective tool for fundraising today, but when blended with a well-timed and coordinated digital campaign it becomes even better. Learn how 7 different techniques can be orchestrated together for a 30-day campaign where digital ads act as an accelerant to put “fuel on the fire” to get your donors to give more and give faster to achieve your goals in record time.
Crowdfunding, Continued…
Shannon Wood, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and Julie Philips, Holyoke Community College
Shannon returns for a crowdfunding forum, including a year two update on the program at UMASS Dartmouth. In October 2024, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth launched a brand new initiative – the inaugural Registered Student Organization Crowdfunding Campaign. In collaboration with the Office of Student Affairs, this campaign was a remarkable accomplishment with 43 student organizations participating. Aside from total donors and dollars raised, the effort was successful in many unexpected ways; engaging students in philanthropy, gathering updated contact information and bolstering on campus relationships. Julie will provide an overview of HCC’s micro-philanthropy campaign. Holyoke Community College’s “Your Gift. Your Choice.” was designed to engage constituents who were not responding to traditional appeals focused on large, centralized funding priorities. By offering 9–12 tangible projects at $5,000 or less—such as microscopes, loaner MacBooks, and smart pens—HCC created accessible, mission-driven entry points for support. This approach successfully reactivated long-lapsed donors, attracted future and first-time donors, and revealed previously untapped supporters with significant capacity who were inspired by specific projects. In addition to strengthening donor engagement, the campaign built meaningful momentum internally, earning strong buy-in and credibility with faculty and staff while serving as an effective internal PR initiative.
A Crowdsourced Current Collection of AI Ideas for Annual Giving
Bob Burdenski with Kathy Howrigan
You’re not only the audience, you’re the contributors at this live group inventory of who’s using what AI applications (and how) in their annual giving fundraising today. With the help of Mentimeter, we’ll collect. collate and discuss uses of AI, and provide you with a takeaway document full of current time- and resource-saving ways your colleagues are using AI in their fundraising.
A Day in the Life with Bad Data
Cindy Novak, Accurate Append
Imagine launching the perfect campaign — only to hear crickets. Emails bounce, phones are disconnected, and direct mail goes nowhere. The culprit? Bad data. Did you know 42% of email addresses go inactive each year and 35 million phone numbers are reassigned annually? Outdated data can turn a winning strategy into a losing effort. Join us to discover how data appending and enrichment can transform outdated contact lists into powerful assets. Learn how to turn your data from a black hole into a goldmine — and make every campaign count. Data is the new superpower. Are you ready to harness it?
Designing Engagement at Scale: What Actually Moves Donors to Act
Christine Soutter, Gravyty
Annual giving teams are being asked to deliver more participation, stronger retention, and greater pipeline growth — often with the same (or fewer) resources. At the same time, donors are navigating economic uncertainty and more giving options than ever before. Simply increasing outreach volume is no longer enough. In this session, we’ll explore how higher ed annual giving teams are redesigning engagement across phonathons, Giving Days, everyday giving, young alumni outreach, and digital channels to drive action at scale. We’ll examine why traditional volume-based models struggle, and how intentional engagement can improve response rates without increasing workload. We’ll cover:
• How fundraising teams are modernizing phonathon strategy to prioritize connection, timing, and donor engagement signals
• Why engaging 1-5 year alumni early builds long-term participation, retention, and pipeline growth
• How student fundraisers can create authentic, relatable Giving Day moments that cut through donor fatigue
• Where video communication and AI-powered tools drive scalable personalization without sacrificing authenticity
• How to design smarter outreach flows that help teams do more with less
Throughout the session, we’ll highlight real institutional examples and case studies from higher ed fundraising programs to show what’s working in practice and what attendees can replicate immediately.
A Digital Fundraising Forum
Meg Cummins, Bryant University, Catie Hsieh, MIT, and Francisco Paguero, Boston University
There’s more to digital fundraising than your giving day! Join a terrific team of hosts for a chat about all things digital fundraising. What’s actually working right now—and why? From email and social media to giving days, automation, personalization, and donor journeys, participants will explore practical strategies that drive engagement and inspire giving across online platforms. Come ready to discuss lessons learned, compare tools and tactics, and exchange ideas you can immediately apply to strengthen your digital fundraising results.
Direct Mail Still Delivers
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.
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!
Faculty. Staff and Employee Giving Campaigns
Vicky Cedeño, John Muir Health Foundation and Julie Phillips, Holyoke Community College
This faculty and staff fundraising forum will discuss how to bring together internal campus partners to explore how collaboration, storytelling, and shared purpose can inspire their philanthropic support. Bring your ideas, real-world examples, and practical strategies for engaging employee donors in ways that resonate. How can faculty and staff play a meaningful role in fundraising efforts—helping to inspire giving, build trust, and advance the institution’s mission together?
Favorites From the 26th Annual Giving Appeal and Idea Exchange
Bob Burdenski
For 26 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.
A Giving Day Forum (Part 1)
Molly McGarry, St. Peter’s Prep and Kellie Sullivan, Boston University
A duo of giving day experts join forces for a catch-all giving day Q&A. Bring your successes, challenges, trends and ideas for the future as Molly and Kellie lead a giving day conversation.
A Giving Day Forum (Part 2)
Gina Simonelli and Alicia Johnson, University of Rhode Island, with Nicole Caputo, Quinnipiac University
A second hour of giving day discussions featuring other types of institutions, as Gina, Alicia and Nicole provide their perspectives on giving days and facilitate additional discussion topics.
Giving Days – Past… and Future? A Conversation With Sylvia Racca
Sylvia Racca, Dartmouth College
Twenty years ago in 2006, eight years before the first Giving Tuesday and well before anyone had a giving day (or platform), Sylvia Racca at Dartmouth College launched an “April Challenge” to motivate alumni giving. It was one of the first short-term “challenge” fundraising appeals that used the energy of real-time immediacy. ⏰ Featuring email messages, “internet giving” and some new “social media” fundraising channels, the April Challenge attracted 4,000 donors in a month, along with $400,000 in matching funds from five alumni donors. The results she collected, reported to constituents each Monday morning and showing the day-by-day growing numbers of gifts 📈 and enthusiasm for achieving the April Challenge goal, had not been seen before in education fundraising. (Mostly just on-the-air at PBS.) It’s an origin story for what would become the giving day – an idea that remains a fundraising engine for many annual giving programs. (She’s even a chapter in the CASE book “Online Innovations in Annual Giving.”) Today, Sylvia is in her 23rd year as Executive Director, The Dartmouth College Fund. Join us for a chat about the beginnings of giving days, how they’ve evolved in the years since, and what she sees for the future of giving days.
A Healthcare Fundraising Forum: Patients, Physicians, Providers, Policies, and Pipelines
Vicky Cedeño, John Muir Health Foundation and co-Moderators 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?
The Hot Gos on P2P: What’s In, What’s Out, and What You Need to Know”
TBA, GetThru
P2P texting is still one of the hottest tools in fundraising, but the landscape is changing—fast. In this session, we’re spilling the tea on what’s working, what’s not, and what fundraisers need to know to stay ahead. From compliance updates to engagement strategies, we’ll cover the do’s, the don’ts, and the must-tries for 2025. Whether you’re a texting pro or just getting started, you’ll leave with the latest best practices and real-world examples to elevate your P2P program.
Increasing ROI Through Data Modeling, Direct Mail, and Digital Marketing
Ryan Talbert and Allison Shore, Excalibur Direct Marketing
This interactive discussion will focus on developing a deeper understanding of your data to help impact your Annual Giving campaigns. It will include a review of the benefits of Data Modeling, and how to directly target your most likely donor matches from your current lists.
An Independent Schools Forum (Part 1)
Molly McGarry, St. Peter’s Prep and Traci Karro, The Pennington School
Join us for a forum session devoted to independent schools. Bring your questions, answers, challenges and solutions to this open discussion session.
An Independent Schools Forum (Part 2)
Katie Grant, The Peddie School and Ginny Webb, Blessed Sacrament School
Join us for a forum session devoted to independent schools. Bring your questions, answers, challenges and solutions to this open discussion session.
A Leadership Annual Giving Forum
Joe Castaldi, The College of the Holy Cross
Session description to follow.
Leadership Annual Giving – Are There Scalable Elements to Dartmouth’s Success?
Mark W. Harris, Dartmouth College and Colleagues
Join Mark and his Dartmouth Colleagues to hear about Dartmouth’s leadership annual giving “major gifts program within an annual giving program.” They’ll talk about elements including Dartmouth’s Centennial Circle, reunion and class giving, women in philanthropy parent and family giving, and their use of volunteers. What elements of Dartmouth’s program are scalable and transferable to your shop, and what’s their best advice for growing your annual giving pipeline? Join their team for an inside look at one of the best leadership annual giving programs in the country.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel: Transitioning Software, Platforms and More
Kelli Sullivan, Boston University
Session description to follow.
Micro-Philanthropy and Crowdfunding: HCC’s “Your Gift, Your Choice” Campaign
Julie Phillips, Holyoke Community College
Join Julie for an overview of HCC’s micro-philanthropy campaign. Holyoke Community College’s “Your Gift. Your Choice.” was designed to engage constituents who were not responding to traditional appeals focused on large, centralized funding priorities. By offering 9–12 tangible projects at $5,000 or less—such as microscopes, loaner MacBooks, and smart pens—HCC created accessible, mission-driven entry points for support. This approach successfully reactivated long-lapsed donors, attracted future and first-time donors, and revealed previously untapped supporters with significant capacity who were inspired by specific projects. In addition to strengthening donor engagement, the campaign built meaningful momentum internally, earning strong buy-in and credibility with faculty and staff while serving as an effective internal PR initiative.
A Parent and Family Fundraising Forum: Strategies, Successes, and Shared Challenges
Katie Grant, The Peddie School
Parent and family philanthropy plays a vital role in strengthening schools and advancing institutional priorities—but building meaningful, lasting engagement with this important community requires thoughtful strategy and collaboration. Participants will share successes, challenges, and emerging ideas across key areas such as participation vs. dollars, volunteer leadership, major gift cultivation, events, stewardship, and engaging families beyond graduation. Come prepared to contribute, listen, and leave with new ideas, fresh perspectives, and actionable approaches to strengthen parent and family philanthropy at your institution.
Penguin Networking: How to Get Students and Alumni Involved in Philanthropy
Erica Ribeiro, Cushing Academy and Holman Gao, Boost My School
How do you engage students, alumni, and parents with a small team? Cushing Academy is here to show you how you can expand the reach of your office by making school values and culture the heart and focus of your next giving initiative. Leaning into this year’s theme and core value, “who will you honor?”, Cushing exceeded their 600 supporter goal (644 supporters!) on their April Giving Day. This session is for advancement teams, both big and small, that want to increase participation on their giving day. You will learn how Cushing socialized philanthropy and got students, alumni, and parents engaged in giving with hand-delivered “who will you honor certificates,” a strategically-placed candy bar, and a video featuring Trout the Penguin. We will then discuss how Cushing plans to build on their success with a newly-launched Penguin Networking student club. By the end of this session, you will leave with a framework for connecting your school’s unique culture and values to your giving day strategy.
Personalization at Scale:
How Advancement Teams Meet Donor Expectations Without Adding Work
Diana Poole and Bill Cote, Evertrue
Personalization is no longer optional, it’s the expectation. Donors want outreach that reflects who they are, what they care about, and their capacity to give. The challenge for advancement teams is delivering that level of relevance at scale without increasing workload or operational complexity. In this session, we’ll explore how advancement teams are connecting donor intelligence with personalized outreach across channels, including direct mail and video, to create experiences that feel one-to-one while remaining efficient. Learn how philanthropic and capacity insights can drive smarter segmentation, how personalized messaging can be automated without feeling generic, and how intentional data flow between systems allows teams to meet modern donor expectations without burning out staff. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for turning insight into action — aligning data, messaging, and execution to deliver personalization at scale.
Pipeline… What Now?
Rachel Spencer, Vanillasoft
If you’ve ever nodded along in a meeting about pipeline “development”, “sustainability”, or “vitality”, secretly wondering what on earth it means and what exactly it’s got to do with you — this is a must-attend session. We’ll peel back the jargon and get to the heart of what keeps “The Pipe” flowing. From first-gifts to major-gifts, Engagement Centers to Leadership Giving, we’ll unpack how you can make a positive impact on donor pipeline (without a PhD in ‘Buzzword Studies’).
A Small Shop Forum
Christopher Chambers, SUNY Canton
Are you a one-person annual giving shop? Are you <1? Join Chis for a little therapy and a lot of shared strategy and ideas on how to leverage your work, scale the solutions, work with third-party resources and accomplish annual giving goals when the “team” is you.
Small Staff, Big Gratitude: Donor Relations that Fits Your Reality
Laura White, Holyoke Community College
Session description to follow.
Student Philanthropy in a Capital Campaign
Marium Waqar, Rowan University
Session description to follow.
Trendy with a Chance of Impact: Data-Driven Trends Shaping the Future of Giving—and What They Mean for You
Wally Fisher, 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.
In this session, you’ll
● 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.
Unlocking Revenue Through Interest-Based Engagement
Rebecca Scott, Tufts University, Rachel Riani, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, Rob Lewis, Friedman School of Nutrition, Science and Policy at Tufts University and Elyse Wallnutt, Agility Lab Consulting
If you work for an educational institution, alumni aren’t your only potential supporters — and in this session, you’ll discover how to identify, cultivate, and convert mission-aligned non-alumni audiences into donors using interest-based digital engagement strategies. Through real-world case studies from Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, we’ll explore how interest-driven messaging, website optimization, and email onboarding can expand your donor pipeline and increase digital giving. From integrating tools that segment audiences according to their passion areas to rethinking calls to action based on audience psychology, this session will leave you with a replicable approach to identifying and activating new revenue opportunities.