Welcome to the session. Why Turnover doesn't mean starting over on transformational gifts. On the right hand side of your screen, you will see a window with a chat, Q&A feedback and notes Tabs. You can use the chat box to chat with other attendees, but please use the Q&A box to send questions in for the presenters. You can also upvote questions in the Q&A panel if you would like to see the question answered at the end of the session, we will answer as many questions as we can. The Notes tab is there for you to keep your own notes during the session. If you would like to. We also ask that you complete the brief evaluation found in the feedback tab at the end of the session. We will use feedback to continue improving what we offer, so we truly appreciate you taking the time. And without further ado, please join me in welcoming our presenters Alta Compton, JoAnn Browning, Taylor Phelps, and Jennilee Garza. Hello everyone. My name is Jennilee Garza. I serve as senior director of Development Communication Options for the University of Texas, San Antonio. And before we get started, I just want to give you a little background on our university. We were founded in 1969 and we have a student enrollment of 34,344 students. 45% of our students are first generation, 57% of our students identify as Hispanic. 70% of our undergrads receive financial aid. We are a Hispanic serving institution. We received the Seal of Excelencia designation in 2020 and then receive the Carnegie R-1 Research status in 2022. We boast over 1400 faculty, over 5000 staff in more than 151,000 alumni. We span five campuses across our beautiful city of San Antonio, and we are also halfway through a ten year, $500 million capital campaign. It is called Be Bold, A Campaign for Our Future. And it's the largest campaign in the history of our university. So right now, UTSA is experiencing immense growth and development and it's a really great time to be a road runner. So with that said, I'm going to turn it over to one of my wonderful colleagues, Taylor Phelps, to kick off our discussion today. Thank you. Jennilee, and thank you all for joining us today. We're going to talk about turnover and how that applies to transformational gifts and kind of how we can flip the script a little bit on the negativity surrounding that. But also, I think the points and topics we'll discuss today are really applicable to fundraising across the spectrum. So we use a case study of a transformational gift to UTSA, but I think the fundamentals are the same across all the work we do. So we're going to get started. So our one big idea again, kind of pointed out in the title of the presentation, but I'll turn over a new relationships can lead to positive outcomes with donors. You know, often times when working with donors, we look at turnover as a as a negative. And a lot of times we also try to harbor relationships to ourselves or to the connections that we've made with donors. And we really want to, again, flip the script on that and show how turnover and the new relationships and growth that can come to that can actually be positive outcomes. When we're cultivating relationships, it's common sense. We have a few you see looking through here. Yep, there we go. So using that inevitable turnover to your advantage, we have four main points that we want to cover and we'll cover those a little bit more in depth. And we'll also talk about our experience with the specific case study of a transformational guest here at UTSA and how we each play a different part and role in that. So the first point we'd like to make is that really relationships with donors should be more than just 1 to 1, right? You oftentimes see either an academic dean, maybe a president, a development officer really harbor those relationships, close to their chest and maybe don't allow others to get involved. And we want to promote getting others involved and really facilitating those relationships through the work you do as a development officer or an academic dean. So more individuals across your campus, you can really achieve new growth within those additional relationships as well. Many times when you add a new perspective or a new position into the relationship, you can learn things from a donor that you normally may not in a certain position. You know, a donor may talk to a fundraiser about their philanthropy more than they might. So an academic dean that they may talk about their interest more on campus to a dean, or they may talk about leadership to a president, or they may talk about their individual experience as a student, to a student. And so the more introductions we can make, the more we can expand that knowledge and information that we can give from a donor and find out maybe what their interests are, where they fit more into the institution. One of my favorite parts, as we talk through this topic, was about shared cultivation and the ability to really not have all the responsibility. Just be on one person. That's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of risk associated with the relationship with the institution. But when we include others, we can share that duty as cultivation. And inevitably, whenever you're close to an institution, there's going to be times when you may be upset about something or maybe something a person does in an institution. And when we expand the relationship just beyond just beyond one or two people, we can really share that duty and actually mitigate that risk in anything negative, maybe influencing their relationship with the university and and another that's the final point would be a built in consistency. I think every all of us have seen it multiple times in a relationship where one person leaves that person portfolio kind of drops and takes time to replace and maybe they become disengaged with the institution and they find other priorities or or really just no one is responsive to them or includes them in activities they used to be a part of. And if we can grow more connections, the odds of that happening hopefully plummet and they stay connected to what we're doing in our mission. This image, I think, is a perfect example of what goes on in institutions. This image of Gandalf from Lord of the Rings making sure that nobody else passes through. We want to eliminate this. And it's it's kind of our mission in this topic, in this presentation to to break down that stereotype of professionals saying, well, they need to really go through me because the relationship is with me and instead try to grow the relationship beyond yourself. And we've even so many times that has positive implications for the work we're trying to do and we achieve greater results as a result. We don't actually lose anything. I think it just blooms and flourishes more so. And I'll kick it over to Alta for the next slide, Hopefully y’all can hear me. My computer's being a little weird. Just great. So when you're thinking about your donor and their relationships on campus, most often there is one person who is that key relationship holder and then the relationship is supported by the people kind of lower on the pyramid. And the thing to remember there is that it is not always the dean or the development officer who is that one main influencer. And it's really our job as the folks who work in advancement to figure out who that influencer is. I worked at an institution once where they alumni were very connected to their department that they graduated from. And so oftentimes faculty members or heads of departments or the people that the donor felt most comfortable with on campus and would go to first. So they were the number one influencer. But then our office and the work of others on campus supported that person. Having the one relationship is vital, but making sure that the other people are allowed into that relationship or allowed to build their own relationships helps to grow and strengthen things. As Taylor mentioned previously, you want to think of donor relationships kind of like you think of employment benefits in way. Pay is one component and it may be the most important, but the quality of life or flexibility of benefits, location, all of those things matter in satisfaction. And it's the same way with a donor. If you just know one individual, one individual at an institution, your relationship will not be as strong. If you allow an individual to know multiple people at an institution. Thank you, Alta. One other just point to make about this graphic is many times maybe the influencer might leave the institution, right? Maybe it's a president or a dean or the VP of advancement. And many times the person in this next tier or lower tiers kind of slides into that position. And what's great about that is that it increases connectivity, the relationship doesn't drop off, and that there are several other options in terms of staying connected. And the more you can grow this pyramid, the more kind of triangles and the greater it gets. I think just a better experience. The donor has of the institution. So let's look at the traditional kind of cultivation timeline that everybody outlines and discusses with new employees of how fundraising works, right? Donor may come on your radar. You get lunch or coffee, learn more about their passion, their experience with an institution. They may make some type of test gift, and then they start to learn to meet other academic leaders or those who may be brought in for a more major gift. Ask for transformational ask, and they may get on a board or something like that. And eventually Colton cultivating or culminating in some type of major gift, right? That's kind of all of our goals. Find somebody, cultivate the relationship, make a solicitation and then steward them and then start all over the process. Right. But in real cultivation online world, you can see that sometimes there's a search and there's maybe a lack of leadership in a certain area or a lack of direct mission or vision at that time from the leader. You may have a temporary idea. And we've all seen statistics and kind of the this this presentation came about just from the knowledge of development officer turnover and turnover in all of our positions across advancement and how that impacts the work we do. So you oftentimes see different people coming in and out of roles and you see a temporary dollar sign that maybe doesn't always work in that area, but at least it holds a portfolio to keep people connected. You'll see a new DOE hired that needs to get introduced to the to the stakeholder, and then eventually they may meet the president. An event that you don't orchestrate right? We all have community events and we may we're not as much as we'd like to think. We can gather all the information and all the different connections possible. It's it's out of our out of our hands and our possibilities. What we can control. You may hire a new dean halfway through a process of cultivation. And so that leads to introducing a new individual. And they may express interest in a department that you didn't initially anticipate their interest. We've seen it all the time in an engineering was in our college of individuals who had a father who was an engineer or a mother who was an engineer or a family member, who that made a profound impact on their life or they they owned a company. And the engineers, of course, were influential in the innovation of the products they were able to offer. And so we see people all the time understand the benefit of STEM or the arts or athletics or any of the various support groups on our campuses. And so they may they may gravitate towards those more than just what they graduated with themselves. You know, a donor meets students and mentors and that changes their perspective and and meets a department chair. And all of this may happen in 18 months. And they take four years and they take six months. We've all seen relationships that you hammer away at long term and and that leads to something great. And you may see relationships that you pick up new and things are fast tracked. But with average development officer tenure being around 18 months, which we then say is at the beginning, but we want to make sure we're not advocating for turnover, but we want to try to work around that and see how we can make the most of the current state of our industry. So really what we're looking at is the more year that we have involved in the process, the more we're going to hear it, the more we're going to learn. Again, people will tell individuals things that they won't always tell. So certain other people with different roles, rights, they may tell the student something different than a dean, than a president, than a development officer. And what we're trying to do is expand the information that we're able to obtain to really create a better experience for our donors, especially in the transformational space. So we're going to talk about Margie and Bill Klesse, who made a transformational gift here at UTSA a couple of years ago. I'm going to start by bringing on our our the dean at the time. JoAnn Browning, And that's a whole other story in itself through the cultivation timeline. But I'll let her kind of introduce the story of Bill and Margie and her role in the Gift at UTSA. Thanks, Taylor Yes, I'm JoAnn Browning. I'm the interim vice president for research at UTSA, but actually just about two and a half weeks ago, I was the dean. As Taylor said, Taylor's my partner in crime. We do everything together and trying to advance the mission for UTSA, especially within our College of Engineering and Integrated Design, which is now the classic College of Engineering and integrated design. So go ahead, Taylor, and we'll go through this cultivation timeline. What's really interesting here is you'll see, you know, here we are in 2023 and really this starts back in 1993. And so we're not talking about 18 months for that total cultivation timeline, although I think you'll see that we certainly had an acceleration of that towards the end of and when this this transformational gift was was realized due to the great generosity of of our our partners. So Bill Klesse was the CEO and chairman of the board for Valero Corporation which is in UTSA days backyard and he had a great relationship with our former president President Romo. They had helped each other out and a number of ways and a really warm relationship. And so back in 1993, he had attended a progressive dinner, had spoken to our College of Business, to one of the courses there, and had made a significant gift. And in the millions of dollars range to both the College of Business and the College of Engineering around scholarships for graduate education. And this is about the time that I came into the picture. So in 2014, I joined UTSA as as the dean of engineering, and I had come from a place where chemical engineering was a very strong program. And I got to UTSA and saw that here we were in South Texas and we didn't have a chemical engineering program. So I had a lot of interest in building that because UTSA is really about access and and promoting educational opportunities for San Antonio and for South Texas. And so I knew there would be a number of folks that would really benefit from a chemical engineering education. And it's really the piece that can pull together all the other engineering disciplines and provide that that glue that really makes the science exciting. And so I immediately started thinking about how could we cultivate some support for this because chemical engineering is not a cheap program to start the equipment. The facilities are pretty high end. The development officer at the time, Janet Kennealy, and I put together a lunch with Bill and President Romo, and at the time this was really about can you help us to develop a better relationship with the new leadership with Valero? Because we knew that our graduates would really be serving them. And so we had that lunch and that was wonderful. But then I had a follow up lunch with Bill just on my own, and we would talk about sort of plans and and he was trying to help me develop some ideas of people that we could approach that were in the oil and gas industry. And I we had another lunch in 2016. I had a change and development officer to Lindsey Land and at that lunch he was telling me, you know, I'm not sure that we're going to be able to cultivate what you need right now from these other people. We've been talking to you. And he stepped forward and said, you know what? What could you do if I gave a gift of $1,000,000? And that's what we needed to get chemical engineering on the board. We needed that for our our lab and for the teaching facilities that were going to come into play. So President Amy was hired in 2017. And so at that point, President Romo had left. And so that was a change also in, I think, Bill's original connection to UTSA. And we had lunch and and we talked about the lab again, Bill and I did. And so I was continuing to show him how we were going to build it, what it was going to look like and how it would influence our students. And we built a state of the art lab that students in chemical engineering programs around the country would just be very, I think, jealous or or envious of of what our students have access to. And then he also gave additional funding besides just the equipment for the lab to fund scholarships for students. Now, at first it's interesting because Bill was a little hesitant about doing scholarships. He didn't think it would really make a big difference. And so I talked to him a lot about how our students work 30 or 40 hours a week, like 80% of them work at least 30 hours a week. And so even getting $1,000 or a 1500 dollars scholarship really allowed them to focus more on studies and could be a game changer for them to be able to stay in school and complete their degree. And so we also had lunches with the students every year. He had a chance to meet the students that he was sponsoring, and he really enjoyed that. And students would take him up on offers to talk afterwards and he would spend time with them. And that was an important part of our cultivation. But then in 2019, he he asked me, you know, are you do you have enough? I know that, you know, the first funds that you give aren't always exactly what you planned for. And he was right. You know, we're trying to outfit this lab. And so I started talking to them about how we could purchase additional equipment and really make it so when the building opens that it's ready on day one for every unit operations that would happen in that lab. And he did. He stepped up and he funded that as well. And he continued to meet our our students. And we at this point got a new vice president for development, Karl Miller Lugo joined us. And so a new face again into the mix. So in 2020, in the middle of a COVID, you did things changed a bit. I could not have the students who couldn't come in and see them at a lunch setting. We set up a virtual update for the lab and gave him a tour virtually. But in 2021 we were able to bring him back onto campus and actually show him the lab, and we set that up in a way, at this point, my development officer is Taylor Adkins and was very, very smart. I love the way he did this in showing him not just at lab, but showing him different spaces around the building that we had been able to open the new makerspace, 17,000 square feet of space for our students to work in with their hands, really get involved, also do outreach and bringing students in, and then took him out to show him the theater operations lab and we told him at the time that based on all of the the work that he had done with us, we wanted to name this lab after him. And he was he was very happy. And he he accepted that to name it the Margie and Bill Klesse unit operations laboratory. And in that same visit, he said, you know, JoAnn, we'd like can we talk for a few minutes and this is also a lesson, I think, in how success across campus and across different parts of your organization can can really be a lead to success in places you didn't even imagine. So in the discussion with Bill, he brought up the a naming gaffe that had occurred for another college, and he asked how that had come about. And I. I know I had to ask him, are you interested in this? And and he said, Well, yeah, I am. And so this became something, I think, based on the trust that he had built with us, even across a number of people and all the ideas that were coming in that that he would do this. Now I need to mention one more thing. That day when I was showing him around the lab, he also had a chance to meet Eric Bray, who was the chair of Chemical engineering and biomedical engineering at the time, who also had worked in oil refineries in the past. And and they really connected well. And so as we did this, I made your guest and the whole team here. I remember working with Daniel Garza on trying to get some of the communications pieces out in in a timely fashion. Because when Bill, when you tell Bill you're going to do something, he really wants to see it done. And I think that's where we had built all this trust over the years. And the team really came together to help develop and deliver on that. But as you know now, after we had all of this celebration, it honestly just just culminated in this past January. I had this tremendous opportunity to move into a new role. So I have moved into the interim vice president for research and still connected with Taylor and the rest of the team. But Eric Brey, that department chair, has moved into the interim Dean position. And so, again, by having many connection points and him meeting with Bill with the students in the lab and elsewhere, you know, he actually came back to me with the office and heard that whole conversation about the naming gift as well, I think really helped to set us up for continuing this cultivation and this great relationship that we have with the classes. Thank you, JoAnn. Just to add a couple more points, as I pulled up there, our original four key points from earlier, you can see, obviously that there's much more than just one relationship involved in this timeline. And this is only a snapshot of some of those who are who are involved, as JoAnn mentioned, Dr. Eric Bray, the chemical engineering chair who's now in the interim dean role, as has continued to be involved in the relationship with Bill. There's other individuals at the institution. We had V.P. turnover in development through this timeline. So I mean, more or less every year there's some new individual, at least one coming into the picture or leaving the picture. And so we've been able UTSA did a great job before any of us got here of setting us up for good position. And we hope to do the same when when we're gone as well. So I'll pull up my slide, just introduce myself. I know I've been talking for a while. The Taylor Phelps I joined UTSA only only a little less than two years ago, and I began working with Margie and Bill immediately. Bill was more involved than Margie at that point, but she has certainly increased her involvement with our college since since the gift was made. And I have regular outreach with with Bill, at least monthly, if not more, some some months more, some months less. But I also try in my role to really push and work on the other relationship holders to make sure we're making regular touchpoints. So on. On Bill's end, he doesn't necessarily know that all this is orchestrated. He probably is smart enough to figure some extent out, but there's usually a little touch points between all of us who are involved in the relationship of our chair of chemical and interim. They may ask me, Hey, did you tell Bill about this? And I might say, Oh, no, mate, why don't you send that out? Or vice versa? And the same with JoAnn in her new role, or the same with communications, and maybe doing a story on a gift that he's made in our president of thanking them for some additional gifts. They've made all these different touch points. We stay in tight communication with one another and try to make it an overall good and seamless experience for for Bill and Margie so that they they're really something they're proud of and their involvement and what they do here at UTSA. And I'll kick it over to Jennilee. Thanks, Taylor. I've been at UTSA since 2016 and in 2018, I assume the current role that I'm in and I'm just going to tell you a little bit about how we try to leverage communications efforts in both the cultivation and stewardship phases and working with the donor. So I manage a creative team and we're comprised of a lead writer, a lead photographer and a videographer, a lead graphic designer and a lead web developer. And building a team like this just creates a lot of resources for our frontline fundraisers to be able to leverage in turn to when working with a donor. So year round, we work on controlling and conveying the narrative of philanthropy for the university. We produce a multitude of creative materials in-house, but we also regularly collaborate with our Central university marketing and strategic communications teams, which is really important because they control a lot of the main channels that reach our target audiences of stakeholders of our donors and alumni. So working in collaboration with them really helps us get out, get the message out in front of the right target audiences that we want to communicate to. So when it came to the classes in the cultivation stage, we were and this is prior to their transformational gift, they made a transformative, transformational gift of 20 million to name the College of Engineering and Integrative Design prior to that, we were mostly just involved with producing spotlight videos or highlight videos that would highlight the scholarship recipients if there was any support needed for the course scholarship events, Of course we would attend that or try to capture video, but a lot of our pieces prior to the announcement of the transformational gift was really focused on highlighting their scholars. And that was always really important to Margie and to Bill and really see the impact of their work. And so being able to put that together in a video piece that could be pushed out on social media or pushed out on a website, pushed out through an E communication piece that really just, I think, spoke more volumes and conveyed their impact in a more sophisticated way. And when it came to stewardship after the $20 million gift was made, my team spearheaded the entire communication strategy for that effort. So again, we worked with central marketing and strategic communications to publicize the gift announcement. We produced 90% of the content and graphics and we leveraged the support of the central teams to deliver that message across all of our main university channels. We wanted to make sure that the classes felt greatly celebrated and honored throughout the campus community and with the college community, the college alumni groups and as well as the city of San Antonio. So we worked closely on making sure that there was solid web presence across particular university websites from the home page to our main use page, and then presence on and working up the the new website for the college. We had segmented email announcements going out to each group. We had a strategy around news media and pitching to the media. We pieced together those press releases, appropriate photos, captions. We worked on social media strategy as well and pushing those out to segmented audiences and then, of course, coordinated appropriate media interviews with university leadership as well as with Margie and Bill. And so we made a really large splash, especially with the local news media outlets, to celebrate the second naming in the history of the university. We had only named one college prior to the policy college being named. So this was a really historical moment and that was something that we really wanted to amplify through all of the pieces that you see on the screen and even some that didn't make it to the screen. There was just a lot that we we produced and pushed out in the year following the announcement. We remain involved by capturing the course recognition events and we produced a recap video of that event with our target audiences, both those that were in attendance at the event and those who weren't able to make the event because again, we wanted to keep the celebration going. We wanted to keep everyone involved and engaged and informed of how we were celebrating such a transformational and impactful gift that was really going to this is already changing lives for our faculty and our students in the college. That piece was really, really well received and it was just pieced together in a really beautiful way, captured soundbites from Dr. Amy and just, you know, highlighted the classes interacting with the students, which is what they care about most. And then it was accompanied by a beautiful note that was authored by Dean Browning at the time and went out to a really target audience. And so we received lots of compliments for that piece. But again, you just want to kind of keep a steady drumbeat going after you make a big splash in the media. How can you continue to celebrate the narrative and think about telling the story in different ways and think about different opportunities for touchpoints throughout the process? Because while they've made this transformational gift and it has a major impact, we want to keep them engaged, moving forward and continuing to talk about, you know, their they're not only that gift, but they're their scholars program as well, I think is really, really important. So that's just a little bit about what we did and how we worked and kind of how we operated to publicize a really historic moment for the university and for Martinsville. Okay, So I joined UTSA on the same date Taylor did in October 2021. So we like to joke that we're day one buds. And obviously I began, you know, when we started, when I started, it was a little like, there's something coming in engineering. We're not being to open about it yet, but just be ready. And so the gift was made in December 2021, and there was a lot of activity on stewardship at the time, but it also came in waves for this gift because we were still going through COVID protocols and we knew we wanted to do a large event to celebrate this gift, not only because of the size of the gift and the legacy of support of UTSA. We also had a whole new engineering building that had opened during COVID that we had never been able to celebrate. So we were able to kind of bring those two things together. And our event was held in February 2023. So the things that my office works on, we are centralized stewardship. So there's five folks and donor relations events, stewardship and leadership strategy, and we work with the college schools and units around campus to help them do these sorts of events. So we worked really closely with the college on the launch event. We like for the event. We couldn't do it by ourselves. We needed other players. Taylor and Dr. Browning have the closest relationships with the classes, so we worked with them to make sure that the event fit not only our schedule, but also the donors schedule and their family schedule. And the classes were actually able to bring in a large number of family members to celebrate with them, which was really wonderful. And through, you know, when you're hosting something like this for a donor of this and really any donor, you want donor relations to kind of be your central nervous center of information about donors, just kind of those key little things that are vital for folks to know. Like if you have a donor who has a shellfish allergy or someone who has a particular you know, one of the things I always like to do is to know what someone's favorite beverages so that we have that in reference either available at events or available, I guess, for gifts. So working on those things and then documenting those in our records so that it's available. Taylor talked about turnover for development officers, there's much less turnover for your donor relations folks. I think the last number I saw was that we stay around on average seven years. So tell us things because we're going to be there to help you to remember them. And so obviously we helped with the large launch event. That's what these photos are from. We brought in the band as a surprise and they did Our Fight song and we had the cheerleaders, we had our mascot. One of the cool things about our science and engineering building is there are whiteboards all along the wall on the first floor where we held the event. And so for a couple of days leading up to the event, we had students stop by and write thank you notes. And then we were able to take photos of those thank you notes to share with the donors. We have all kinds of cool printers and engineering things printers set up, and so we had them printing thank you messages for the classes as well at the event. So just as you're thinking about these students have touches for these kind of folks, think outside the box, think big, what can you do? What do you have access to and who can help you make those things happen? Because we could not have done that with just central donor relations. And we also couldn't create it could not have done it without us. It was really a team effort. The other things that we work on for Klesse is the Scholars luncheon. You see the picture up there. You know, they really love that every year. And then we do an annual report as well and one thing I just want to you know, and our donor relations office were really passionate about what we call stu aviation, which is cultivation is, stewardship. Stewardship is cultivation. And when you're working with a gift of this size, but also just any donor, there's no interaction that should be without gratitude. And so that's really what we try and focus on in our shop, is to just make sure that people know that we appreciate them and that they are truly making a difference on our campus. As you can see here with all the amazing numbers, 44 classes scholars last year, which is pretty spectacular. Thank you, Alta. So as we wrap up this slide and then we'll have some time for questions, I do want to reiterate how important the internal connections on our team are as well. I know in a principal gift capacity that Jenny Lee and Alyssa and others who do so much, so much help and support of cultivating those gifts are not always front and center. But the more we communicate with them, I know they appreciate it and it helps them really help us. I mean, even conversations with Jenny Lee and her team, just to give them a heads up that something might be happening helps us kind of prepare and get the information we need so that it can it can it can be more or more seamless and the same without providing information. We know about the donor that they are wonderful about figuring out how to really create an experience that I am not an expert in. So and I know that everybody would share the same thing. And so we can provide that feedback and they can really create something that's special. And so working as a team internally too, has yielded great results for us at UTSA. Just a small take away in terms of introducing a new relationship. If it's kind of sticky for some of us. And how do I just bring that up to someone that I may have been meeting with for a long time in terms of getting them exposed to someone new? You know, I think you can always start with something simple, like you'd like to introduce them to obviously the person and the reason for doing it many times and maybe something that comes up in a conversation, something they'd like to know more about at the university, instead of just going back and signing that information and funneling it back to them. I think an introduction always secures you a second visit, which I know we're all trying to make an ask and get to the next thing, but it can allow them to. How you can observe a conversation also that you may learn a lot more from. As we discussed earlier today, they also allow for questions that are more difficult in some relationships at a certain maturity. I find that a lot of times donors that I reach a point where I'm like, I really can't go back and ask them something that I would have wanted to ask them when I first met them, or I can't remember what they said. So it's a good opportunity to even plant some questions that you'd like a refresher on that, that someone new coming into the relationship can ask and you can remember, Oh yeah, that's why they're involved with the university and and that's why they're passionate about what they're passionate about. And it can obviously add to a new perspective and a new person to thank. So I like to think about it. When my spouse tells me that a compliment about me, I might be like, Oh, they just have to say that, right? Because. Because we're married. But when someone new says something compliments you in some way, you may have a different perspective. It too. Or you may. It's like parents telling their kids something and someone else tells them and they take that advice to heart. I think that sometimes can happen in our donor relationships that to get new involved, that can say thank you and how it's impactful. And a lot of times they're the direct beneficiary of their philanthropy, whether it's a student, a staff member who is able to run a program they normally couldn't, or a faculty member who's able to do research or impact their classroom, or a president who's able to start an initiative. I think that that person coming in and thinking and not always being the same person in front of them makes a big difference and makes a big impact. And so that's kind of our tips for for cultivating these these new relationships. And I'll turn it over for any questions. Erica, Thanks. Taylor. I believe we have time for one question. We have about 5 minutes left. How do you balance the donor being overwhelmed with having too many points of contact and having enough connections? How many is too many? How does everyone stay in the loop on every point of contact? That's a great question. I'll be brief and see if anybody else wants to chime in. I like to focus on that pyramid. So yes, we do try to keep that. Number one influencer is the main point of contact. Sometimes that's me as the development officer. Many times it's has been Dean Browning as the leader of the college and relationship she had prior to me arriving here. So she is she's a great academic leader and that she keeps me informed and we strategize about when to bring in certain people. And we have a really, really good team and engineering. I know. And all shops, it's not that cooperative, but we do have a really good team that communicates very well when we do have an interaction with the donor. Sometimes it's a 15 minute prep meeting before they meet with them. They go and meet with them and we go ahead and schedule a 15 minute debrief afterwards so that we can stay in communication. But everybody who's involved in the relationship does have a very good understanding that we need to communicate back to some central person how how the meeting went and how the interaction went so that we can at least document it and document in our CRM is so important that we know when all these different connections were made. Yeah, I would just add to that. Taylor So, so well said. And it's a great question because you certainly you want it to feel natural and you want because it is natural. It really should be a genuine relationship, right? And so I think what we've tried to do is we only introduce people if there's a purpose and there's a reason inside that just to get them in front of somebody else and make sure there's other folks. But, you know, it made sense for Eric to be there. He knows the students that are in the lab. He could actually talk about them, make sense for him to meet, you know, the president when we're already at something else together. And so I think those things are important. And I was thinking as you were talking, Taylor, again, how important that CRM was, because some of this relationship developed before any one of us had. We're at UTSA and we could rely on some of those notes to be able to make sure that that we were paying respect to all of the contributions that they had made along the line. And then not always is it a connection. So, you know, Alta and Jennilee have have knowledge about the classes and how they've dealt with different types of cultivation. And so that knowledge is retained through to their offices as well. So it doesn't always have to be a direct connection to the donor, but also just how you share that information internally. So people have a general knowledge, like Alta said, you know, do they have a seafood allergy or something else, even those little things. So a I think a caring attitude towards the person and not just the funding they're going to provide. And to a certain extent we don't you know, I certainly focus that we have somebody who's a central relationship holder, but we also don't try to control too much. As JoAnn said, you know, if Eric or JoAnn or I have a conversation with Bill, we don't always report back to each other what that may be, but we may check in from time to time and say, Hey, have you have you chatted with Bill recently or any of the donors that we all work with? You know, he's one example, but there are several other looks at that same criteria. And so we just try to stay in communication and and we always try to look at the donor. And we can usually tell if it's maybe too much, it's too much. It's wonderful. Thank you so much. And so with that, I'm going to thank Jennilee, Taylor, JoAnn and Alta for a great presentation. And thank you all for our attendees for joining. Before you go, if you haven't yet completed the session evaluation, please do so. You can return to the agenda to find your next session. Thanks everyone.

University of Texas

San Antonio

maintaining donor relationships

turnover

transformational gift

cultivating donor relationships

communication and storytelling

donor cultivation and stewardship