I think we can start now with our own hand on the dot, let's do it. So good morning everyone, it is my pleasure to welcome you to another CASE webinar. My name is Cristina Marocchi, I'm the Director for Corporate Relations at CASE. Today, we are partnering with Salesforce to bring to you an important discussion for advancement professionals and operations. This webinar with the topic, a new age of engagement, how AI and technology will transform alumni and fundraising. In the next 45 minutes, we will explore how technologies such as Salesforce and AI will transform advancement in the coming years, and how institutions can proactively build and adjust their strategies and approaches to this shifting landscape. But before we start, a bit about how this webinar will be organized. Firstly, Salesforce will talk a little bit about AI and its impact on higher education. After that, the speakers will move on to a discussion based on key questions about AI and advancement. Unfortunately, we won't have time for questions during the webinar, but I will share with you at the end of this session, the email address you can use to send your questions. This webinar is being recorded and will be available at CASE's learning portal afterwards. You will receive a message in the next 48 hours with instructions on how to access it. Right, so let's start our webinar. I am pleased to introduce you to our speakers today. First, I would like to introduce you to Gene Pembleton, Director of International Education Product Marketing at Salesforce. In this role, Gene leads Salesforce's higher education product marketing strategy for Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Prior to joining Salesforce, Gene worked in advancement at Stanford University, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the University of Chicago. And our second speaker is Carrie Jones, Head of Alumni Engagement at LSE, the London School of Economics and Political Science. With her team, Carrie leads engagements with LSE's 230,000-strong alumni community, of which 70% are based internationally, in support of their Shaping the World campaign. Before joining LSE, Carrie worked in alumni engagement roles at St. Paul's School, the University of Westminster, and the University of Reading. I will now leave you with the experts and invite Gene to lead us through these discussions. Gene? Wonderful. Thank you so much, Christina, and good morning, everyone. So I am so delighted to get to talk with Carrie about all of this. This is something that, as Christina mentioned, I come from the space. I'm very just excited about the possibilities here. But I thought it might could be helpful to root us and anchor us in where we are right now with respect to engagement and AI here. So, Christina, if we go to this slide here, we wanted to just kind of set the foundation here for alumni engagement and fundraising with AI. And on the next slide, a huge thank you all to tuning in here because, again, this is a conversation that's exciting to have. It's exciting to talk about, and we really appreciate you all being part of this conversation. So on the next slide, I think it's always important to think about where we are with respect to our constituents. And possibly one of the biggest things, if we go to the next slide here, facing today's advancement and alumni engagement, and I say advancement, alumni and fundraising, advancement is this broad term. But one of the biggest things that we face as those in the industry is we know that our constituents, our alums, our parents that we might be engaging, even students, future graduates, they are living, we are all living in an experiences economy. So we recently did a survey and we asked people, essentially, what are your expectations with respect to your institution? And 84% of constituents said that being treated like a person, not a number, is very important to winning their support. And 88% of constituents said the experience an organization provides is as important as its products or services. So we know that at the heart of all of this is personalization, but that that experience is really an expectation right now of our constituents. And on the next slide, you know, when we think about this, we may know over on the left here, we have our constituents. Over on the right, we have our institution. We know that this is an expectation, but there's a gap. And, you know, that's unfortunate, but it's an is in many cases. And what is in this chasm, if you will, this gap? What's preventing us from being able to offer that experience and that level of personalization that we know our constituents, as we've just seen, do expect? Oftentimes it's chunky legacy technology, siloed data, no personalization and an inability to scale. We may be able to do this one off, but we might not be able to do it across an entire department or school or unit. So we know that it's there. We know that it's an expectation, but we have some real barriers to to executing on that. And on the next slide, you know, we also know that these constituent expectations have changed. So, for instance, we know that for different constituents, it looks different and it looks different than it did even 5, 10 years ago. 15, 20 years ago, there wasn't the expectation that when you turn on your smart TV, you know, Netflix greets you with your name. There's personalization everywhere to a level now that there wasn't again, even two decades ago. And so the expectations of our of our constituents have changed recently, but certainly over time as well. And in my opinion, the onus is on us as an industry to respond to that with technology. So on the next slide here to support these expectations, I think it's important to look beyond kind of what we've been doing and look to what we can do. And what does this look like on the horizon? So you'll you'll notice today is a lot about, you know, what exists now, but also just as exciting what's to come. And in a recent McKinsey research report, which I find very interesting here, education was identified as a top industry that will benefit from AI. So benefit in the sense of impact on revenue and benefit in the sense more holistically as well to other areas of operations. So when we think about education as an industry, it is one that we have these expectations, many cases for personalization, efficiency, all of these other things that we just discussed. Our constituents expect it. We know that there's a gap. Now we're in an age of AI, and it's exciting to think about how that can impact our offering to our constituents. So on the next slide, you know, what are some of those ways? So across advancement from the operations side of things to marketing and communication to information technology, we know that AI can impact and can drive, again, personalization and efficiency. And this exists across an institution. But today we'll be talking about advancement and advancement is in many ways a microcosm for the larger institution because we have a lot of the same functions. And these are some of just, you know, a sampling of some of the many ways where we see AI having an impact on the way that we operate as advancement teams. So on the next slide of things here, we may know this, but we also know that there are real obstacles to adopting AI. I just asked everybody on this webinar here, how many of you have a robust AI program already in flight? I would be surprised if everybody did. And at this point in time, that's OK. But we know that there are some real obstacles that exist to adopting AI, whether it's in just the foundational strategy, the creation of it. Getting everyone upskilled on some of the technology, data, adoption, technology, models and tools. There are a lot of different opportunities for institutions to really integrate this as a foundational strategy into their work. But there are some real obstacles that exist today, and those are some of the things that we're going to talk about. So I'll just end here before we go on to a quick resource for you all on the next slide and then into the discussion with Carrie. But I wanted to highlight here Education Cloud for Advancement and Alumni Relations. So this is Salesforce's offering with AI Incorporated for advancement. Many of you will likely already be familiar with this, but this is really our solution to advancement. And we have elements that cover alumni engagement, fundraising, the operational side of things. But I wanted to make sure to highlight this as one way that institutions across the globe and advancement teams across the globe are really taking this opportunity to modernize, to drive efficiencies and to personalize their engagement with constituents using technology, in this case with Salesforce. So the next slide here, just wanted to offer the opportunity for you to pull out your smartphones, if you like, and download our guide to alumni giving. So this is just a resource for you as you're thinking about how to navigate this next stage, perhaps, of how you are engaging with your constituents. But wanted to make sure, again, to offer this as a resource before we jump into the conversation. So with that, I am delighted to engage in this fireside chat conversation with a fellow advancement professional. So, Carrie, so delighted to have you here today. And thank you so much for taking the time to join us. I know that Christina did a quick introduction of you, and it's really just wonderful to get to have both the alumni engagement and fundraising, sitting around a virtual table chatting about all things on the horizon. So thank you so much for taking the time. We really appreciate it. Not at all. It's so lovely to be with you this morning. And thank you to everyone joining us today. It's certainly an interesting time in the sector to be exploring this stuff. And we've only started on our journey, so hopefully I can provide a few early thoughts. It would be interesting to have a discussion on where we're heading. No, I mean, you know, you've mentioned kind of early in the journey. I think one of the things that I'd be curious to get your thoughts on is how you see, because we talk a lot about AI, but it's kind of sometimes difficult to do anything with AI unless you have data behind it, unless you have good data to be able to use. So I'm really curious, from your perspective on the alumni engagement side of things, how do you see this integration of data and AI playing out in terms of the future of alumni engagement? And which technologies or really ways of operating do you see being most impactful on the horizon? Oh, a big question to start, Jean, of course. It's too early, isn't it? I've had a coffee, it's fine. I think it's really interesting for the sector. One thing I would say is, I think Advancement Universities are really well placed in the AI sphere. We have a wealth of data. We've been capturing data on individuals for decades and most businesses don't have that benefit. So what a privileged place to start from when you think about personalisation, actually. And I know everyone complains about their databases and the quality of their data. But actually, we have a huge amount more than most other institutions, organisations do in different sectors. So I think it's a really privileged place to start from. Before we joined the call, I was talking to Christina very briefly about the Thomas report and actually thinking that over the last 20 years, there has been a huge professionalisation of the sector and data has been even more important through that time. And we've always spoken about it, that we need data to be able to deliver that personalisation. That was even before AI comes into the picture. But something I've been thinking about recently is that alumni engagement historically has been quite one to one or one to 30 in terms of engagement, even when you have the data. And our communities are growing. We're talking LSE, we've got 230,000 alumni. I looked up a few others. Manchester has more than half a million, 2.3 million students went through the Open University. I mean, you can't talk about engagement without talking about real data and real AI to engage that kind of size of population. I mean, it's just impossible. We can't rely on the old programmes that we used to run or still do run for the future, because it's just not scalable. We're talking about hundreds of thousands. And I know there's pressures on teams with campuses opening overseas, executive education, online programmes booming to expand that community even further. So I think we really need to be resourcing early investigation into AI and data analytics to ensure we can engage at scale. And we're not relying on 30, 40, 50 people events go on. At LSE, we started looking at AI in 2022. It was slightly just before the GPT boom, but we found someone who was doing something quite interesting around connecting students and alumni through AI. And we implemented a programme called Ask an Alum, which is essentially a tool where students or alumni can go to a website, ask a question. The AI scans their question for keywords, scans our database, finds the 15 most relevant alumni and sends them that question. I mean, we couldn't have done mentoring programmes on that scale if we were hand matching what student need and student question was. But the data was there to do that with AI. And we've seen the resource available to our students boom in the last just under 18 months that we've had the programme live. I'm really excited to think about other ways that we could use AI to scale and other different programmes in that way. Where was that when I was in college? That would have been amazing. Oh, no, I love that. I think on the advancement side of things, it's, you know, it's similar. And I think there's a lot of opportunity to, as you mentioned, we are in a unique position having relevant data on our alums. I think the interesting thing is always how to engage not as someone was, but as who they are or who they will be. And I think being able to essentially leverage the data that they have provided to be able to engage them, again, based on characteristics that they've had in the past. But using that to contact them through channels and ways and with messaging that resonates to them now is kind of the best of both worlds. And I think that that definitely goes for whether you're engaging or soliciting a constituent. And I think that's really exciting and an exciting place to be. Kind of along those lines, I'm curious your thoughts about personalisation and the role that personalised communications and experiences. It's not just, you know, kind of an email, but sometimes it's an actual experience that someone has. How does all of that play into this? And, you know, how can educational institutions use these technologies and these concepts and this really AI technology on the horizon to drive that personalisation? I mean, this is where I guess the most exciting part of AI is for me. I guess going back to when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people, there is just no way you can personalise effectively without using some of this new technology. And I think historically, we really have treated our communities like one homogenous group. They went to our institution and that is the only factor we're basing a communication or activity and experience on. Or if we were personalising, we were doing it completely manually and maybe creating 10, 50 different versions at max. And that takes a huge amount of human resource to segment data, to write different copies, to make sure it lands in a specific way. And that it can only ever go up to what a human can do in that amount of personalisation. And I think AI will really help us break down that bad habit that we probably all are guilty of, of treating our communities like they are all the same person and they all want the same thing from the institution. And it's the exciting part and something I couldn't have imagined even five years ago. When I think about really practically the implementation, there's so much opportunity here. We take an example of an event that's happening. Imagine that AI could understand what that event is, understand who your data is and then create different lists and different versions, depending on what that constituent might want. Take an event in Berlin, there's an academic speaking, they're hosted from the class of 87, they're talking on sustainability. All of those data points can create both better lists of people we're targeting, but also better copy to make sure that their conversion rate is higher to attend. Doing that manually right now, we certainly are still sending one email that says there's an event in Berlin. Maybe you might get two versions, depending on if you're a recent grad or you're a donor. But doing that, so almost every invite is slightly personalised. I mean, that is that's the dream, right, that we can we can get to. And I think that's really exciting, that kind of dynamic marketing around that. And also based on what you were saying, Jean, not even the data we hold, but that predictive modelling and what we think that they might do based on the data that we hold. And that kind of archetype type understanding of our data so that it's not just based on our current data, it's based on what we think they might do in the future and targeting them more effectively. I think there's also something in, without there even being an event or an activity to tie it on, the idea that we learn something new about someone and something is triggered to go to them. Whether that's an update about school, a really exciting project, a fundraising appeal, that we're actually not having to have a human touchpoint of each of those data changes, that actually the systems are supporting us to get that new information to that individual. I think our communities, and Jean, you were talking about it in that experience economy, our constituents expect us to interact like any other organisation that they are involved with. They don't see emails from their universities as any different to emails from anything else they're involved with. So I think that we certainly need to step up on that personalisation angle. And I'm really excited to see what technology is gonna come into the sector in the years ahead to help us do that. Yeah, I completely agree. I couldn't agree more actually. And I think your point about using data and AI and technology to really gather a picture of someone and essentially market to them appropriately in a way that sometimes involves even having an actual person come and engage with them, or that's where we're bridging technology and a real experience. And I think that that's really powerful because I think a lot of times, people think about technology as just being the static robot. It can actually lead to a very humanised, personalised engagement, but we have to know how to engage them first to be able to set that up. So I think about this from a fundraising side of things, in campaign creation, or where should we send institutional leadership to meet with donors? What should their trip look like? How can we map that out pre-campaign, during the campaign for high-level solicitations or for even regular giving? And there's a lot of opportunity to bridge that. We're looking at a data, at a set of data, and then that's really translating into a very real human interaction, which I think is really exciting. And I think that's the interesting bit around, I think people get fearful, that it feels less human to implement AI, but actually what we've seen at LSE in our Arsenal and programme is, it's almost amazingly human. It's the most personalised. We wouldn't be able to do it, especially at that scale, without the AI to do it. Wallace Spence, who's our project manager, I think is on this call somewhere, who leads our tool here. She's always talking to me about, have you seen this match? Have you seen how this AI has matched this student who has this real need, with this alum who has this exact specialism? With 230,000 records, no one in our team could do it manually, but it is really human. That feeling that the constituent gets when they get the right ask is, yeah, it's just transformational. Yeah, I love it. And I think along those lines, you mentioned that a lot of people think that this is kind of just a robot, something very inhuman and impersonal. I think there are some real concerns that institutions have around data privacy. And that is a top priority. That's always been a top priority. You mentioned as institutions and as those in the field, we are stewards of a wealth of data, and we have been for decades. That doesn't change, and that hasn't changed. But with this discussion of AI, I'm curious your thoughts on how institutions can strike a balance, if you will, between leveraging AI to engage their alums, parents, constituents, recent graduates, while also ensuring the protection of that sensitive data as well. Yeah, I mean, it's just, I mean, it's just crucial. I mean, if we are seen to be using data in a way that impacts our constituents in a negative way, we lose all trust with our communities. So I think it's really essential we get this right. And in some ways, the benefits of universities being slow and bureaucratic might help us in these instances. But actually, unlike lots of companies, we can't quickly implement something. We actually do have a huge amount of heaps to jump through. And perhaps, although frustrating, that might be a good thing at a moment like this when there's new technologies coming in that just make us go through all of the checks and balances that we're required to do. Because we are stewards, and we do, there's a huge reputational risk if it goes wrong. So I guess in our experience, we really have to treat our data protection, cybersecurity colleagues as partners in implementation, really trust their expertise, get them on board, and work with suppliers and providers and our cybersecurity experts to ensure it was a standard that the institution was happy to take any risks involved on. I also think it's interesting because lots of these companies work globally and might not work in Europe, where a lot of data protection regulation is quite rigorous and perhaps slightly different to other parts of the world. So ensuring that, because it's a global market now, we can bring in suppliers from anywhere, but actually ensuring they understand the European markets, they understand GDPR, European regulations is just crucial. And when companies are new, it's really important that we get through that together and have everyone up to the same standards. I think on the positive side, and LSE is not doing this, but I have heard from other institutions who are bringing in chief AI officers or similar kind of champion posts. I think that's quite exciting because it really breaks down the fear around it and actually puts you in a proactive position to engage in the topic, to find ways, pieces of work around the institution where AI can really benefit both the institution, the individuals, your students, your constituents, whoever you're serving. I think that is really exciting because having someone championing it at the highest level, having someone who has that institutional support from your senior board who is exploring that, I think kind of helps balance, as you're asking, Jean, the concerns around data protection and AI, but also the opportunity, the enormous opportunities that there are to make the programs or our work much more efficient and serve our constituents better. I'm excited. I think it's really important, but I think having champions in your institution to explore is essential to move it forward. Otherwise, we're not gonna move anywhere. I agree. I think it is so important to have that central figure, if you will, that anchor for the strategy. And as you mentioned, championing it, I also think that the technology itself is vital. Salesforce has a trust layer, a lot in that that's critical to ensuring that institutions are using technology that is working with them and in support of their commitment, again, to constituents. So I see that as being important, especially on the advancement side, where we're talking about giving and donations, and there's financial information in there. It is critical, in my opinion, that the technology works with, not against you when it comes to really prioritizing data privacy. I'm curious because we've talked about higher education and advancement. Sometimes I think we tend to kind of look in only, but I'm curious your thoughts if we take a step back and look at other industries. What are some things that you see fundraising and alumni engagement teams, advancement teams, what can we learn from other industries that have already begun using AI? What happens when we kind of step outside the advancement box and look around? What can we learn from the landscape that's out there right now? Yeah, I think it's really exciting. We do have to be looking externally. Universities aren't the best at modernizing quickly. So we can look, we need to look at other players who we can find a slight alignment with and learn from them. There's two kind of areas of work that I often look at here. One which is anyone who has a membership-like kind of a setup. And I often look at airlines or hotel chains for this. I think they do this really well. If you're a member of an airline or fly frequently with them, or if you are like a particular hotel chain, I think they do some really interesting things especially the big, big global brands and what they're doing there. Specifically on that kind of acquisition, onboarding, engage, retain that kind of customer journey. I think they do some exciting, exciting things there. Obviously airlines have also a physical space, hotels have a physical space where you're going to see them in person. So they're a really good comparison for us to deliver online for a global community, but also on our campuses. What does that first point of contact look like when you walk up to any desk at your institution? So I think that they're really exciting. The other side is any customer of service or customer experience teams as a whole. We know in our world that we get thousands of inquiries every year. We know most of them on three topics and we are still delivering all of those manually. And we know that customer experience teams around the world are doing this better and we could take enormous learnings from them. I was reading an article over the weekend around A-B testing on customer experience and engaging customers and consumers. And it was saying that with AI, they've gone from doing some A-B testing, one a day, one a week, to see how they perform. Two thousands a day of A-B testing in terms of their communications and their responses to keep honing what the best response is for their consumers. And that's really exciting. So yeah, always go back to airlines and hotels and think about what are they doing? How are they engaging with their consumers? And not that we all have apps, but I know when you log onto those apps, it's really clever and it can feel like a really personalized experience with a global brand and you're one of millions. And I think that's really impressive. So I think we've got stuff to learn from them. Yeah, I completely agree. I think everyone on this now, the next time they fly, they're gonna be asking questions in the name of their institution. I think about this from the fundraising side of things. I think there's a lot operationally too, that AI can support. You mentioned kind of the customer service perspective. I think there are a lot of analogies within kind of any industry that manages a portfolio of people, whether it's sales or anything like that, from a fundraising side of things where AI can really support with data driven insights into a portfolio to recommend not just next best action on that portfolio, but even who should comprise that portfolio, who should be included in the gift officer's portfolio and how can we manage that process even more efficiently and effectively with AI. So I think that there's exactly, as you mentioned, all of those elements that are kind of external and we can look to. I think that a lot of that can eventually be adopted internally to the institution as well and supporting the efficiency gains where we see other industries using it. The portfolio management, I think is particularly interesting because I think, you know, obviously there's only a certain amount of constituents you can have in your portfolio for that one-to-one experience, but if we were able to automate some of those, whether that's meeting invites, booking meeting rooms, thinking about all the operations around portfolio management where you're taking an action, how much could you scale up actually if some of that administration operational side of it was taken away by some automation? I think it's really exciting. It's something I mentioned before, Salesforce for Advancement, we incorporated that into the product last year and it was something that we see a lot of institutions just saying, wow, this is really revolutionizing how we determine best fit coverage and saving a lot of time there. So last question here, I think as we look to the horizon with this evolving landscape that we've talked quite a bit about here today and the changes in the expectations of constituents that we've talked through as well, I'm curious, just kind of, you know, big picture question, how do you think institutions, specifically advancement teams, alumni engagement and fundraising teams, how can we adapt our strategies to stay relevant really? And what are some of the trends that you see we should be prepared for on the horizon? So we've talked a lot about kind of what is now, what are some things that we should do to adapt and what are some of the things on the horizon? The first thing that jumped mind for me, Jean, on this question was other trends that exist in the sector. So one thing that came to mind instantly was we know alumni donations are reducing globally, right? The alumni donor number is reducing as a trend around the world. And I think there were two things for me to think of there, which is what can AI do to help us buck that trend? Is it even possible? And actually, can we think about ways of higher personalization resulting in actually an increase in alumni donations? Yeah, is it possible? Is there something that we can do there? I think it's quite interesting. And on the flip side of that, and Jean, you've mentioned it a few times today, but I know a lot of teams, including us at LSE, are really still specifically focused on alumni engagement. If we had better technology, would we be expanding our constituent bases to look at other people who have affinity to the institution, to growing our constituent bases, to buck the trend of lower alumni donations in other ways by actually diversifying our portfolio of people that we're engaging and asking? I know some teams are looking at former staff, specifically professors, that's an interesting, well, professors are an interesting group of individuals, local community engagement, friends and families. I know with COVID and online programs, how we're continuing to engage people who've engaged on one online activity to add them to our portfolios if they do have affinity and we can build that. So I think there's something around donor rates. I think there's something interesting there and whether AI will help us buck that trend. Other pieces, staffing. I think it's enormous. Whether we're looking at the learning development side of how we're ensuring our teams are ready for this next challenge. We saw what it was like when social media came into the sector. I mean, that took many years for people to get really familiar with using it. I'm not sure we did a great job at training at that point, but I think we've got an opportunity now to think about how we're supporting our teams, to explore, to think, to upskill in this world. And we all know that staff retention is a real, recruitment and retention is a real problem for the sector. So any ways that we can improve the staff experience through that I think will be helpful. But also how we're creating new roles by whether expanding teams or when we're re-recruiting, what changes need to be made to those JDs to make them ready for the sector. I also think we need to be looking at our programmes as a whole. I think we often end up in a space where we're engaging and we still do this at LSE, 50, 60 people in one activity, which is fine. And sometimes it feels just fine. And I think the trend of thinking about how we're engaging en masse meaningfully is crucial. We need to be looking at thousands of people engaged in every programme. And the only way to do that is AI. So I think that's exciting. There's a note I made to myself though, which is we talk continually about personalisation around AI and think it's really exciting. If we don't have enough content for them to personalise from we also end up in an issue. So we can't create a world with all of this wonderful personalisation if there's no content to actually personalise that one. So I think in terms of our staffing piece, that's also interesting. Staff as storytellers, staff as content creators. I think there's an interesting world there as well. Those were just some initial thoughts, Julie. No, I love it. And the generative potential of AI in creating that content as well alongside staff. I think really exciting as well when we think about wanting to personalise things, taking a step farther beyond even maybe testing content or text to really meaningful, for instance, stewardship reports or things like that. I think that the generative elements of AI can provide a nice kind of launching pad, if you will, for then a staff member to review and really refine the language to make it that much more personal. Well, Kerry, thank you so much for your time. It's been such a delight getting, honestly, just getting to nerd out with you on all things, all things advancement, alumni engagement and fundraising. And I personally am very excited about the horizon, what's on the horizon for our industry and your thoughts are sparking new ideas. And it's just really wonderful to hear your perspective on all of this as such an expert practitioner in the field. So thank you so much. We appreciate it and just can't thank you enough for taking the time. Cristina, I will turn it back over to you. Thank you. Thank you both very much for sharing your expertise with us today. Just some notes to our participants. As I mentioned earlier, if you have any questions, please feel free to send them to this email address I will put here on the screen. I had some questions on the chat, some comments on the chat that the QR code was not working, but you can through this email as well, get another QR code and ask any questions you want about this session. I would like to thank our speakers, Kerry and Jean for this very informative webinar and also thanks Salesforce for partnering with CASE to bring this webinar to our members. And finally, a big thank you to all participants for joining another CASE webinar. Have a great day everyone and see you next time. Bye.

AI

technology

alumni engagement

fundraising

personalization

constituent data

data privacy

advancement strategies