Hello, everyone. You're here. Good morning from the West Coast. Welcome to the session journals. Optional practicing what you learn and gaining momentum. Please feel free to utilize the chat box to chat with other attendees. Please use the Q and A for questions. The speakers questions will be answered at a time allowed at the end of the session. Please join me in welcoming our presenters Nancy Jackson and Emily Rankin. Thank you, Myra. It's nice to meet everybody. I'm Emily Rankin. I'm the assistant vice chancellor for development at the University of California, Riverside. And I am Nancy Jackson, and I am both the co-founder of Generous Change and very suddenly the senior vice president of development and chief development officer at the University of Kansas. So I'm joining you in two capacities today, and it's nice to have all of you here today. We originally presented this at the District seven conference just this past March, and we presented it at the beginning of the conference, in part because the goal of this session was really to talk about what do you do with a conference you attend? You go to all these sessions, you get these great ideas energized. You're going back to your campus and you get right back into your day of the pieces that are coming together. You kind of remember the conference or you come back with ideas that you think might be great and entertaining and things that you want to implement and that you want to talk to your teams about. And again, everyday life in the fiscal year is coming up. All these different pieces come to pass. So how is it that we can move through all of these different areas and utilize our professional development opportunities to the best of our professional and personal development in addition to our teams and the different pieces and things we do. So this probably had a better effect in room, but I always joke that I have all of these journals. I always pick one up at a table wherever I am at a conference. This is the one from generous change that we went through different people and I go in and I take my notes and I move it through and we look through it all. And like I said, we're trying to move those back. So Journal is optional. Some people like to take notes in their iPad minis or other various electronic devices and they can carry it with them and move through all of that. But Nancy and I have been involved in conferences and as volunteers and participants for a very long time. We first met generous changed as a conference that focuses on women in advancement called Uplift. And last year it took place in Phenix. This coming year, in 2024, it will actually take place in San Diego at the Paradise Point Hotel. So you can go and visit that. And it was a really tremendous conference. But what it really allowed Nancy Knight opportunity to do was to talk about this and how at that conference we're gaining momentum and what we're learning and doing and how we're then taking back and moving that word within all of the different places of what we do. So again, this was maybe a little bit more productive in a room, but we're going to make it work on Zoom, too. If you could go to your chat real quick and let us know how many of you are new to fundraising. So type in new if you're new to fundraising, if you've been doing this for a few years already, type in few. And if you are managing teams, type in manager that way gives us a little bit of an idea of who's in the room. Thank you all so much. So we've got several news, a lot of views and quite a few managers. It looks like I like them more. If you were humoring us, that's so awesome of you. It helps you to move through it on all the different areas and we're just so glad that you joined us today. So we know that you had a full day of session yesterday. There's a full day to day and all of these are being recorded. So I know that we can share them with the teams and we can move through on all those different levels. We're also happy to answer any questions here and any questions afterwards. You can find us on LinkedIn. We're going to offer our our emails at the end as well for contact. So as part of our presentation, we just talked about you. This is who we are talking through those spaces. Again, I'm a slider to behind on our presentation and I'm excited about meeting everybody. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about an interest stories we're advancing I come from. So I have been in this industry higher ed in general for over 20 years. I started my career the first decade in alumni relations. I was able to move up in a major to fundraising, campaign fundraising, and I've been doing that for the past decade in this role, most recently at UC Riverside, I've had the opportunity to actually work at managing fund raising teams within specific units. I manage the humanities side, and in the past year I switched over to managing the STEM side. One of the things that I have found the most important in working through my career is my involvement of getting to know people where I am. So I'm a yes person. I'm always if somebody says, Hey, can you do this session? Can you volunteer for this? I am the person that I need to learn to say no a little bit more. But I have always enjoyed saying yes and stepping forward and getting involved. I had started. I had the opportunity to work the first part of my career at my alma mater, Scripps College, and in doing so, I had a colleague who said, Hey, I'm volunteering for this case conference. It's down the road, come with me, you'll get to meet people. And so I was like, Great. So I went. I met people, subsequently joined the committee that year, and now I'm sharing District seven. So a 20 year history of volunteering with Case. During that time, most of all of my career advancement opportunities have come from the networking opportunities I've made through case being on the committees and the getting to know people being part of the cabinets and the boards that have come through and really just the opportunity to network with where we are, the different pieces of what we're doing. And then I'll turn it over to me to talk a little bit about her trajectory. Yeah, and you got to go scripts. Emily If you didn't see it in the chat now, that's probably only from me in every crowd. So everyone. Hello, I'm Nancy Jackson. And like Emily, I've had, as you can see from my gray hair, quite a few years, definitely more than 25 years in university life. The first ten of those was actually as an editor and acquiring editor at a University Press and then in advance, not really the most of the rest of the time, with the exception of last six years, when a former colleague and then business partner and I created generous change we've worked with, I'm hoping many of you here today on just inspiration and execution. And that's really what we want to talk about a little bit today. And so both Emily and I are obsessed with professional development. How do we all grow? How do we connect for ways and how do we identify what's most important for kind of the next steps in both our career and our personal growth? And how do we use a conference like this to really achieve that? And so we wanted to just give you this moment of intention amidst all of the intake of the conference, to do some reflection. And we really wanted to just celebrate and embrace inspiration everywhere that you find it and give you a chance to think about what you're looking for when you're looking for inspiration, and then also to take some of our time together to really prepare for implementation. Because as Emily said earlier, very often we go to a conference and we get so excited. We take in all of this amazing knowledge. We leave thinking, Oh, I'm going to do that, right? We leave a session. We're like, I'm doing that and we get back to our desk. And a lot of the time we think, Oh, if we even remember it by that time, as Emily said, because you get back, you get back into your life. But if you still have that intention, you sit down at your desk and you're like, How do I do this? Right? Because because we don't always take the time while we're out of our normal circumstances to actually create a little bit of a plan so that we can then execute that plan. So right here, as we're together, we would love for you to just thinking to thinking about how to keep inspiration just alive and renewed. Right? So take everything back and keep it alive. Put new ideas into practice. How are you really going to do that? Meet people on purpose. I think this is a thing, as Emily said earlier, it has been really powerful in her career and so many of ours too, to connect. But often those connections have been accidental. And we're working to encourage you to do today is to look at the entire program for this conference and think about who do you want to intentionally connect to, right? So that you're really making a plan and executing it. And then finally, how do you go back to your amazing team and give others who didn't attend today some of that amazing inspiration? So that's what we're here for. Myra, if you'll do me a favor and pop that document in the chat for everyone to be able to access, I would appreciate that. So you this is a document that we want everyone to use as a workshop. You can also just open up a word document or grab a pen and scrap paper that you have next to you on your desk or wherever you might be. And what we're going to do, you know, as Nancy mentioned, thinking about this. So you had a day yesterday. You're working through your day to day. You've had other conferences you've gone through. We're going to give you 3 minutes here real quick and it's going to go faster than you think. We're going to give you 3 minutes to list your top five, like top five things that you want to find in your career, what you want to take back from this conference. If it's not related to anything that's going on in these different ways, how is it that you are moving through those different things? So just think about the top five. Use that document if you can, and move through it. And we're going to stay silent here for 3 minutes. Don't. Okeydoke. Everyone I know that feels like a fair bit of quiet time on Zoom, but I can see lots of heads still looking down and writing. So if you're writing, keep doing so. And what we're hoping is that just that process of thinking for a moment of what your top five look like has already given you some guidance in terms of how you want to think about your professional development. And now we'd like to offer you the challenge that's on the screen in front of you. Another 2 minutes. If there's a timer at it, think about a couple of things. Where are you in your career right now? Where would you like to be? And pick your period? But we're picking three years, something that's aspirational but not so far off. Right. And when you really think about both of those two things like where are you now? Where do you want to be? What's the space in between? What do you most need or want from case from this conference to help you get there? So just two quick minutes to think about your list of five and then add these questions on to really determine what your goal is here. Get ready, get set, go. 2 minutes. Okay. It goes fast. Emily, you're up. 2 minutes. Thank you for indulging us and moving through this process. I was actually filling out, so if I pull to fill it out a new one and just see what you're thinking on the day I've been rolling through things. Also, kudos to all of you that have already reached out on LinkedIn. It was a very fast turnaround on. That's the way to go. I will say we are going to now we've had this introspection part. We're going to break you up into groups here in just a minute. Groups of about ten, but only for about 5 to 7 minutes. And then we're going to bring you back for the next part of the day. Please don't leave. It's going to be great. It's not hard moving through all those different areas. What I was going to say is so some of just some examples of the things that I have brought back before is the opportunity I have put on my calendar. Every Friday for me, I put as a no meeting day, so I can use that as a day to go through, to look through the architecture of what my next week or month looks like, try to plan things. It doesn't always work. Meetings creep in on that day, doesn't always happen, but it's something that I do intentionally with an effort to do that. I also put it on my calendars as a part of what I'm doing so that my team can see that I'm trying to strategize and move through things and I'm trying to bring into practice what it is that I am preaching through all of these different pieces. We just had the Case District seven conference and I had my team on this conference too, for these couple of days. What I'm also doing is tapping into those that have participated and gone through for brown bag lunches that we can do both in-person and on Zoom. So I had the opportunity to attend the RFP conference, the ICON conference in New Orleans this year, and it's a conference that we don't often get to go to because it's not just higher ed focused. It's nonprofit focused in some different areas. But there were some really tremendous ideas that came back from it. So there were about five of us for my team that went, and we've come back and we've organized. They're optional. So like I said, brown bag, it's usually over the lunch time or from like an 11 to 1130 something. It's a quick hit and then folks can always come back to us for more information. But we downloaded the presentations, the different opportunities that came through from these sessions. We found very important. In particular, we've been looking at donor advised funds, so we had some really great sessions on that. So we're bringing that back to our teams and moving through it. I've also added a monthly kind of like meditate session on my calendar about what it is. Again, this intentionality, especially with the New Year starting for us on July 1st, how we're going to implement that and move those through in different places. So just my ideas from my side on how we strategize and move through some of those different areas. But what we want you to do when you're talking to each other is what are the things that are on your list that you're hoping to do? Not all of us are extroverts. Some of us are introverts. Some of us move through all of these different spaces and different ways. So while I may tap everybody on LinkedIn and try to connect and do things, others may be more intentional about where they're moving through and the types of connections they want to make. Understand who you are and who those folks are that you're connecting to. Also important, understand the type of people that you have on your teams. I one of the things that I took away from this in our first iteration, I in my agendas often do like a topic, like a first question, like what's your favorite holiday memory or what are you going to do? What's your summer vacation read of moving around? I had a team member that finally expressed to me that it gives them anxiety to have those questions at the beginning of a session, and it was something that had literally never occurred to me. Not intentionally, but it's just something that I've always participated in. And I want to get to know folks on some different levels. And I said that is I really appreciated the feedback on that and was then able to ask, where does that comfort level come from? And what I'm trying to accomplish in my way, how you accomplish that in your way? What are ways that would make you feel comfortable in doing that? That was a one intentional thing that I wanted to come back on learning how to be a better manager along with like and also for my staff to understand how to manage up and to ask those questions of me and move through that. So just those kinds of ideas and moving back and forth is sometimes easier to do with one another in groups. So like I said, we just want to give you a moment to get to know each other a little bit more intentionally in a breakout room. Maya is going to work on about 10 to 12 and each of those rooms, we're only going to do it for a few minutes. So get in there. What you can or make connections. And then we're going to bring you back together with this. So, Myra, if I'm going to give you the go ahead to break everyone up and we'll look forward to seeing everyone back here very quickly. And we're back. I think we're all back. Emily, are you back? Emily's back. I'm back. It looks like our rooms are just closing my wrist. It takes about 60 seconds. It's going to sticky. I think I'll close your back. Although I don't see Nancy anymore. Oh, my wrist. You could reopen. Nancy for you. All right. Thank you. SAT out. Thanks to Myra from Kate's for helping us to put this on and organize everything. Yeah, I think many thanks to our partners. And thank you, everybody, for I can at least speak for my breakout room that everybody was wonderfully participatory. Thank you. Thank you for staying, not leaving. And thank you for your great reflections. I'll just share a couple that happened in my room and maybe Emily, you can do the same. But, you know, there was some reflection on the sessions that have been particularly meaningful. And one was yes. And the idea that we always, instead of the automat, know that we can always generate from the customarily position that saying yes and and coming up with new ideas can just be an amazing aid to build on each other's ideas. And then connected to that and creativity session where everyone was challenged to solve a ridiculous problem. And I love this because when we're presented with a ridiculous problem, we're more about solving it than we are about all the reasons we can't do it right. So it just reminds us to get into kind of a different frame of mind. And then I loved one that was shared for all of you managers about a session on metrics and mentorship, and especially because all of these sessions are recorded, it's great to mention them, so you can maybe go check them out if you missed them. That one. The reflection was we so often can get in the habit of seeing metrics as punitive. But of course what they really are is building blocks for success. So to the extent that we as managers can really put them forward in that way, it really helps our entire organization to succeed and to enjoy it. And then the last comment from a small shop was a session about why turnover doesn't mean necessarily starting over, which I loved the notion that there's so much institutional memory and all different parts of the organization. So even when we do lose someone, if we're able to plug in to all of the organization, it really all boats rise, right? So more connection, even internally is just wonderful. So those are just a few reflections from mine. Emily do you want to say a few from yours? Wow, those are great. So I wasn't put in a room, so I don't have those reflections. But what I will ask is if anybody else has some ideas, throw those in the chat because other people can relate to those. Also, anybody has a really good one. I mean, don't hesitate to raise your hand or put in the chat to be called on because in working within those of some of those good ones came up with, Nancy will give some folks a few minutes just in case you would like to unmute and give us any feedback that you might have had from your rooms. That is really great with that. I love that idea because I've been in a year of transition here at UCLA in particular. We had a new Vice-Chancellor that came on last summer. We've been restructuring and moving through all for the better. But that idea that moving through, that doesn't mean it has to be a brand new start. It's this idea that's continuing. I really love that idea. One of the things I want to highlight here too, is folks are putting ideas in different things and there's this idea of fun. So professional development and moving through these pieces. Part of this is supposed to be fun and joyful and building joy with where you work, creating that in these environments where you are getting to know people and move through it. It's supposed to be, how are you going to remember these things? It shouldn't be automatic going through when you're filing all these pieces that come together. I do have a colleague that is a very research oriented colleague and she takes a very active sleep and the notes, the different pieces that she comes to and moving through it, that that's fun for her. So that's fine because that's where she finds her moments and her enjoyment in coming through and looking at it. But make sure that it's something that that you're gathering things from. And I think it's very interesting and I'd be interested to know from folks or think on this and maybe provided in some of the feedback to the program. How is it that learning in a webinar focused like this you can find that fun or you can make those connections? I think we're continually trying to figure out how to do that. One of the things I think we're all struggling with and we have found I've seen it, especially in the research we've done here in District seven, is the question of so much more remote and hybrid work. How are you maintaining that loyalty in those connections? What is the virtual walk down the hall, the talk to somebody, or is it that everybody is in on Wednesdays? And you can actually walk down to that? I mean, there's so many different ideas, but working at higher education, our connection is to the students and to the faculty and to the campus and to the people. We want our good staff and folks to stay and for us to make those connections and feel fulfilled at work. And how are we looking to do that? I don't think anyone has the right answer, but I think there's some really ingenious ideas coming up that folks are sharing along those lines as well. Yep. And I do want to just hop on that comment, Emily, because I think one of these other topics and then Laura, I love your comment, so we'll come back to those in just one second. But on this list too, is people, right? And exactly as Emily was saying, when we're on a virtual environment, like had we all just been in a real room, the chances are not small that a few of you might have traded business cards, might have said, Hey, let's stay in touch. We have some similar challenges. And so would Emily. And I would love to encourage you as you just look around on the attendee list, even the people that you just talked to, if somebody mentioned a thing that is your thing to reach out to one another. Because I do want to just say and I can't say strongly enough, Emily and I both would emphasize this attendee is you want to connect to one another. And also I think we all can tend to be a little bit shy with presenters where we feel like, oh, they, they don't want to be bothered. But obviously Emily and I are presenting because we totally want to support you. And that's true of every other presenter at Case. And so just want to remind you that when somebody gives a fantastic talk, when somebody really ignited your imagination, don't hesitate to connect with them on LinkedIn. Say, Hey, so enjoyed that. That meant a lot to me. You've given me new ideas. Could we, could we be in touch? Because it's, you know, Emily and I have talked in other circumstances about mentorship, and that's how mentorship begins across or it is. So we really want to encourage you to kind of take advantage of that time here. And then, Laura, just coming back to your love of your comments, but you can see that the idea that creativity can't be prompted, but creative thinking can be cultivated with habitual practice. Oh my gosh, I kind of can't say that slowly enough, cultivated with habitual practice. And it's important to have a small creativity, practical exercise every day. I have a friend who challenges herself to have ten new ideas every single day, because as we all know, more than 80% of our thoughts we thought yesterday and we don't want to be those people. We want to have new thoughts. But that's hard to do because we're super busy. So I love that idea of our practice. And then the second thing, high performance strategic client engagement programs have individual development plans for each employee and those are reviewed. And really, I think we're all working on this and we're in different stages of beginning and completion. And I think the more if you are a person who wants that for yourself and your organization doesn't yet have it present something to your supervisor, give them give them something to consider. Say, Hey, I'd love to learn this so I can contribute back. You know, is this a thing that we could work on? Great point. And what I will say is we're going through this so the track, it fades and so we did this live in our session before. But if you are someone who would like to be a mentor, send a direct message either to Myra, myself, or Nancy in the chat and say, I would like to be a mentor. Here's my email. If you are somebody looking for a mentor and would like to be a mentee, same thing while we're here going through this, if you can send a note either to Nancy, Myra or myself, and we'll be able to collect the information from the chat and hopefully be able to bring some of those folks together. So I just wanna make sure we allow enough time for that. Being in a session as what we're doing. All of this is really great points for fodder and thinking through it. Mentor going through. I'm looking through my notes. If you can't tell the different places that we're we're going through and I've been a terrible slide advance or so I apologize but we've been going through I've been catching up because we've been chatting on the screen and we've been through all those different things. But you're they are you're you look at you. I know we've been through all those different different spaces and places. So we're going to talk a little bit. We're running down to the last 5 minutes of the session. But one of the things that we really wanted to drive home is that thinking of these types of things and moving through and doing it doesn't have to be onerous. So, Nancy, you talked about your friend that or the colleague that was doing the ten new ideas a day. That's a lot. That would be a lot for me and that would be something I wouldn't do because ten seems like a lot. So this idea of the power and the intentionality of what the power of one of moving through it and you'll see it on the worksheet that we provided as well, and my or maybe even PowerPoint to that worksheet in just one more time in case folks didn't get a chance to get we're going to put it with the slides as well. So you'll have access to that with the materials that follow through with this. But what is that idea of one moving through? I will tell you that I'm a person that really focuses on celebrating successes. I don't think we do it enough. It could be about a gift. It could be about a meeting that you get. It could be about the fact that you did your no meeting day and you were able to plan and do that. This idea of a TED list instead of a to do list, like to hear all the things that I've done. It can go along with your to do list. Like you still have to know what you're doing. But if you don't take a moment and celebrate or look back, or if you don't feel like you have enough to does and that's not working within the system of what you're doing, how can you then realize that and work to change that situation and that scenario? Here at UCR, we do everything with an R in front of it. So our house, I do our successes of moving through that. We have a development team meeting every other month and so I have my teams report out on there so they know they're coming with their or at least their top three successes that they're talking about for their team. And again, it can be a proposal. It can be a proposal that was declined, but it was an awesome proposal that's going to be helped moving through four other pieces that are that are coming forward and moving through it. Successes and failures all come together as long as it's at forward momentum and moving through those different pieces. So real quick and Nancy, I think this comes back to you, too, with this idea of power of one. Yep. And really, I think at this point, what we would love, I just typed in, I've gotten a direct message from a handful of people. So thank you. Thank you so much for alerting us that you'd like to either be mentored or become a mentor. Keep them coming will capture those. And as Emily said, this idea of the power of one idea, one person, the difference in your life or for whom you can make a huge difference as an ally and in a meeting, whatever the case might be. We'd also love to just encourage you to set an intention now, for one thing, one thing that you will take away from case and actually put into practice and or the last one, share back with your team as an inspiration to them. And so we would love for you as we as we wrap up here to just take a second to note down any intentions that you've begun yesterday or through this session as you think through where you are in your career, where you want to be, how you want to lift others up, what is your intention? We would love for you to to leave with that inspiration for yourself today. The intentions, the slides up on the intentions moving through. We would very much like group to thank you for spending your time with us today. We know that let alone person conferences take a lot of time doing webinars and staying attentive to what we're doing and moving through it and participating in the way we brought this to you. We really do appreciate your participation. We'd be happy to answer any questions that anyone might have, so you can either put it in the chat or you can raise your hand. We can also give you 2 minutes of your time back along those those ways. But while you have us and all this collective brain power online, any questions or collaboration points you like to? Yes, Amazon. Can you give an example of what you would say to somebody on LinkedIn or like if you're emailing somebody, you're looking to connect about the area that you work in or for mentorship or benchmarking, etc.? Yep. I love to simply call out something very specific that they've said or done that has inspired me and just say, Hey, I saw you wrote this on LinkedIn or I heard you actually say this and I'm really inspired because and would love to have a brief conversation if you're open to it or, you know, just me, you know, it'll do at I would say that as well. It's helpful that when you're reaching out to someone, putting in that you connected with something that someone said or they're doing something that you might want to do, or just that you went to this really great session. So it might not be anybody here, You might say, I went to the session it case and I'm intentionally reaching out and building a professional network along these lines. I would love to have you be a part of it. I'm sure you receive them every once in a while too, and you can figure out which ones are the mass outreach communications and which ones have an intentionality to it. A lot of folks, one of my mentors and somebody that I got to work here at UC Riverside with a gentleman by the name of Peter Ishida, and he has a really great when he retired from here a couple of years ago, he actually joined Marts and one day he's doing some, some mentoring and some executive coaching in different ways, but he has a very intentional intent, so I would recommend anybody follow him and see the types of stories he's posting and the people that comment and connect on that. Be sure you're following case. Be sure you're following your district in case people post all these different areas. And then it's a very helpful to reach out and say, I saw you post this article. This is of great interest to me. I'd love to connect with you and following you are moving through to Nancy's point. So I'm sort of just a little personal aspect to it or personal aspect about yourself. And while you're doing it, I think is important along those lines and anybody else who has ideas, get them in the chat around that too. Peter Hayashida Here, let me put it in a quick but there's a lot of other wonderful people that posted you. Thanks as well. Thank you. Emerson Myra, are you coming back on because we need to close. Thank you so much, Nancy and Emily for a great presentation and thank all of you for your participation and sticking through it and joining the session today. You can return to your agenda for the next session. And thank you, Bobby, for posting. Have great days, everyone.

Nancy Jackson

Emily Rankin

development professionals

conferences

professional development

networking

professional growth