Hello, everyone. Good morning. I think I'll get started. We don't have very many people joining us this morning. I think maybe because this is relatively soon after Christmas, we've got very, very small, small numbers, but this meeting is being recorded, so I'll share it out to everyone on the call and everyone not on the call later. Just as a quick introduction, my name is Christina Powys. I'm the head of membership here at CASE. I'm based in our London office, which for those of you who know London is right next to Liverpool Street. We moved offices relatively recently. We're in a very nice new office, so if you ever are in London or in this part of London or you need either space for kind of hot desking or something, you're always very welcome to come visit us here. Welcome to today's membership benefits webinar. The purpose of this webinar is to give an overview of everything that you have access to as a CASE member. This will be a very kind of practical overview and what I've done and what you'll see in front of you now is a collection of tabs open from our website to give you a bit more of an understanding of what you can access on our website and how to access it because there is a wealth of benefits at your fingertips as a member of CASE. Just as a quick introduction to CASE itself, we are the global membership organisation, the global professional body for people working in what we call advancement and that is everyone in alumni relations, fundraising, marketing communications, student recruitment, admissions, everyone who is working in the kind of externally facing parts of your organisation. Or supporting those parts. I hear people refer to the areas we support as everyone who supports the kind of stakeholder journey from the cradle to the grave, so everywhere from sort of student recruitment, admissions, all the way through to legacies, fundraising, so it's a kind of this wide spectrum. And our members include universities, schools, colleges, non-profit organisations, charities, cultural organisations, that kind of thing. So again, a really interesting kind of broad spectrum of organisations. And I am based in our London office but we have colleagues all over the world. We have our largest office in Washington DC and then offices in Singapore and Mexico City which support our members in those parts of the world. So we're a truly global organisation with members in I believe over 70 countries. And when you are a member of CASE, you have access to that kind of global network. So I will speak a little bit about the different ways you can connect with people, with institutions in different parts of the world, or very close to you. And I'll also speak about ways that you can kind of use our benefits online. So the very first tab that I've opened here is our homepage. We have some lovely new branding on our website because we are celebrating our 50th anniversary this year. So there's lots of exciting stuff coming up over the course of the year to celebrate that. More on that later. And I just wanted to show you this page. This is the Explore Your Membership page which includes lists of all of the benefits that you can access kind of divided into a topic so to speak. So this is a good place to go to if you are perhaps just getting started with your membership and you'd like to take a look at different parts of the CASE website or different pieces of what we offer here at CASE. So I would like to start off with talking about the kind of networking, connection building side of CASE. And a way that a lot of people first come to CASE or first hear about us is through our conferences, our educational programmes and our training opportunities. We run let's say around 20 to 30 programmes, maybe slightly less than that in Europe every year and then many more outside of Europe in North America, in Asia Pacific, in Latin America. And our conferences in Europe range from our largest which is our annual conference which some of you may have already attended last year. It was in Glasgow, excuse me, last year it was in Edinburgh, the year before it was in Glasgow. And this year, this upcoming year, it will be in Manchester and that is our largest conference in Europe which takes place at the end of August every year. But the timing of that will be changing from 2025 which we are all looking forward to. It will be at a slightly more convenient time of the year for everyone. And that is the largest meeting of professionals in the sector in Europe annually and that is our kind of flagship conference I guess. It has tracks for alumni relations, fundraising and marketing communication so there's really something for everyone there. And it's a great place to go to kind of meet the wider community and really get a bit of everything. But we also have lots of smaller conferences. Let me see, starting next week in the States we've got the Case Nath Independent Schools Conference which is in the States but it's a kind of global schools conference and that's not small at all actually. There are more than a thousand delegates there so that's a huge one. And then the next one we have coming up in Europe is our Alumni Relations Institute which is in Loughborough and that is one of our institutes which are more of a kind of deep dive into this one's obviously alumni relations. But we also have our Spring Institute in Educational Fundraising which is fundraising of course and then our Marketing Communications Institute. But then later in the year we have kind of smaller one-day conferences which are deeper dives into one particular topic. We have one on student communications, we have one on stewardship and donor relations, those sorts of topics. And we also have some more kind of region-specific conferences. We have our Nordic Summit which this year is in Riga in Latvia which we're very excited about. We have an International Schools Conference which was last year in Geneva and is looking like it's going to be in Barcelona this year, that is not confirmed so you heard it here first. And another exciting conference probably happening in Germany this year, TBC. So all sorts of conferences. If you're interested in attending let me know and I will loop you in with our Educational Programmes colleagues and we can try and find a conference that suits you. As members you're entitled to cheaper rates for conferences, it's about a third cheaper so definitely beneficial to be a member there. So moving on from conferences I wanted to share a few ways that you can connect with the wider CASE community beyond in-person events. And one of those ways of connecting, one of the tools that we have are our communities which are available to all members and are kind of online discussion forums for our members to ask questions, ask for best practice, advice on all sorts of topics. And you can join a community and then you get sort of digest emails of recent posts or you can just go into community without joining and kind of browse through. So you can see the kind of topics that we have, we've got an alumni relations community, community specifically for the Alumni Relations Institute. These are kind of event specific communities. We have our CASE Multicultural Network here which is kind of beyond the community, it's a group based in Europe which meets to discuss issues, topics, themes around multiculturalism, equality, diversity, inclusion in the sector. My colleague here in the London office Maeve, she runs this together with some fantastic volunteers and they have virtual sessions every so often and they also sometimes have in-person sessions, sometimes say next to the annual conference. And they get really interesting speakers in to talk about all sorts of things and I'd really recommend kind of looking out for those because they're always very interesting to attend. Let's see, so I wanted to give one example of how someone has used the alumni relations or used the community in the past and in this case it's the alumni relations community. I always use this example so if you've spoken to me about member benefits before you may have already heard this, but some time ago a member from Berlin commented or posted in the alumni relations community that she would like to put together an informal networking group for alumni relations professionals and there was a huge response. A lot of people were interested in joining this kind of informal virtual networking group and as a result of that case put together the alumni relations coffee chat, which is a monthly virtual networking session for alumni relations professionals. That is actually taking place today, it's taking place at 1pm London time and this is an informal five minute long session which people can drop into, drop out of and we pick certain topics and we get a few people to kind of discuss those topics and then everyone breaks out into breakout rooms and it allows members to kind of build their community and discuss really, I guess, timely, really pertinent topics with people at different institutions and kind of bounce ideas off each other. That is just one example of how one individual use the community, other people use communities to ask for, let's have a look at these, alumni membership benefits, donor stewardship dinner, alumni podcast, those sorts of things. This is a very useful space for example if you're looking for, I don't know, like a location for a donor dinner or an alumni meet-up in a particular city because they're really, really global. So those are the communities and oh and I also opened up the Case Multicultural Network community here, which yeah again I would really recommend and here is also our communications and marketing community. On the communications and marketing sort of network building side, I also wanted to mention our UMF, the University's Marketing Forum. This is specifically for communications and marketing colleagues at universities in the UK, so if that applies to you, if you're in that category and you are not yet part of the UMF, let me know and I can get you kind of added to it. It's a fantastic group that has a gist mail, so it allows for kind of communication and I guess question asking between the people in that gist list, but we also have virtual meetings with UMF and some in-person meetings, which are kind of like almost mini conferences. So if you're interested in finding out more about that, let me know. I should have said that I will be sending an email afterwards to everyone on the call or everyone who registered, so including all these links. Sorry, I can just hear some background noise. I'll just, if everyone could please mute or Carolina, could I ask you to mute everyone? We also have Carolina on the call. Some of you might know her from all sorts of emails that she sends, so any questions, please let Carolina know. Moving on from the communities to other networking tools that we have, I wanted to quickly mention our mentoring platform. I've opened up my lovely mentoring profile here. This is free to access for all members and allows you to kind of create, I guess, like a social media profile and search for mentors all around the world. You can pull in your data from LinkedIn. It's pretty simple to set up, set up a profile, and then you can search for people by, oh, this is me, that's just my profile. And you can search for people by services offered or industry or region or area of expertise. And it's a great way of either finding someone who has a little bit more experience than you and obviously finding a mentor or giving back to the sector, community and mentoring, or we certainly also would encourage kind of peer-to-peer mentoring, which I'm sure lots of you have also found is very, very beneficial. Lastly, on the kind of network building, community building side of case, I also wanted to highlight that we are your resource for connecting with the wider case community. So for example, if you are looking to connect with an institution or an individual in a particular region or say someone who's been working on a particular project recently, then please always feel free to email myself or Carolina. And we would be more than happy to try and connect you with someone in a particular institution or a particular region. This is just a page on a website where you can search through members and find which institutions are members. But of course you can always ask us. At this point as well, I also want to give a quick plug to volunteering. CASE is nothing, or CASE would be nothing if not for our volunteers. Volunteers are integral to everything that we do at CASE. We run our conferences in collaboration with fantastic volunteers from the sector. Our kind of governance structure includes lots of different volunteer groups and different kind of advisory bodies or different groups that we have. Those are all run in collaboration with volunteers. We are also always looking for content from member institutions. So if there's anything that you particularly want to kind of show off about, or you feel you've done a really kind of good job on some kind of project recently and you would really like to showcase that for you and your team, then let me know and we can find a way to publicize that in some of our publications or our communications. Great. So moving on from the kind of community side of CASE onto the kind of more website resources or the written resources, I want to talk briefly about our library. We have a very extensive library online, which is managed by our fantastic virtual librarians. So if you are looking for answers to a particular question, if you are starting a new project or you want to kind of relaunch something and you want examples of best practice or examples almost just like a sort of cheat sheet of how other institutions have approached a similar challenge or a similar project, then the library is a great place to go to and our librarians are really good people to ask. Just some examples of the sorts of things that we have in our library. Our librarians collate library entries together in subject guides. So you can see that they have recently put together subject guides on artificial intelligence, emotional intelligence, remote engagement, resources to help institutions respond in a time of world crisis. So lots of very relevant resources which are kind of grouped together. And within these resources, there are articles, webinars, and something that we call sample collections. So these are collections of examples of kind of member work. So you can see here, there's a collection of, if it's gonna load, communications and marketing impact reports. So that's a great place to go and essentially find inspiration, find different ways that other institutions or other members have approached a particular project, a particular task. Also within the library, we have all of our back copies of our magazine Currents. Currents is produced by our in-house, I guess our in-house journalists. And they put it together about six times a year. And you can browse all previous issues here. So there are six issues a year and some of those are online only, but all of them are featured online. And then I believe four out of six are printed. And as a member institution, you are entitled to receive two of those printed issues per printed issues, if that makes sense. So if you are not sure who is receiving the physical copy of Currents at your institution, let us know and we can check that that's being sent to the right person and that everything is up to date. Moving on from the library, I wanted to talk a little bit about Case Insights. So Case Insights is the whole, our whole kind of data benchmarking and research piece. And this is a very kind of large part of case. And it's something that you're probably more aware of if you work in the development services or the advancement services side of things. But perhaps also if you are on the, if you do anything on the kind of data side and fundraising or alumni relations. One, let's see, yeah. One core part of this is our global reporting standards, which is a set of guidelines that we have put together in collaboration with volunteers from around the world, which sets the kind of backbone, the skeleton for reporting on educational giving. And this is a great way to kind of standardize a reporting on educational giving, but it also makes submitting data into our benchmarking surveys simpler. So there's lots and lots to say about the global reporting standards. They are a very impressive set of standards. But if you want to know more about those, I can put you in touch with my colleague Divya, who is based here in the London office. And they, I should say, they are available as a very large, but very useful, I've heard, physical book that you can purchase from us, or you can also access them online. You get one free subscription to the global reporting standards as part of your membership. But if you would like more access beyond that, then do let me know and we can kind of work that out for you. So I mentioned before benchmarking. We run many annual benchmarking surveys, which take in data from our member institutions. And then my colleague Divya here in the London office will put all of that data together and produce reports. One of these is the case insights on alumni engagement. Another one that you might be aware of if you work on the fundraising side or the development side in a UK university or UK and Irish university, I should say, is the Case Ross report, which has changed names recently. It's called something like Case Insights or Case Ross Insights on Educational Fundraising. I should know the name of that, but it stayed exactly the same. So these are very useful reports to go to if you are looking to obviously benchmark yourself against other institutions, but also see what comparable institutions are doing. What are they spending? What are they raising? What kind of size teams do they have? And it is a good place to go to if you are looking, for example, to make a case for further support or a case for further investment in whether that be alumni engagement or in fundraising. I've just seen a question. What is the name again about the fundraising report? I'll put that in the email afterwards. It's Case Ross. It used to be the Case Ross Report on Educational Fundraising, and it's now something like Case Insights on Educational Fundraising. It's a bit of a mouthful, but I assure you it's a great quality report. Thanks, Ramo. So moving on from the data benchmarking research side of Case, I wanted to highlight our awards because it is not just award season in Hollywood. It is also award season here at Case, not for handing out awards, but for submission time. So we have two different awards programs which are open at the moment. We have our Circle of Excellence Awards, which some of you may know, some of you may have submitted for, and some of you may have won. These are projects-based awards, I'd call them. They are global. We have, I believe, around 100 categories for Circle of Excellence in, let's see if they're listed down here. Um, but I'll send you links to all of this later. And this is a great place, or the Circle of Excellence Awards are a great thing to nominate for if you want to kind of celebrate your team and celebrate your successes over the past year. And yeah, there are categories from, I don't know, Alumni Magazine to Prospectus to Fundraising on a Shoe String. And these are global awards and they are judged by global judges as well. So finally, on the Circle of Excellence Awards, actually, if you are interested in judging the awards, let me know as well, because we're always looking for more judges. And I'm always looking for more judges from Europe as well. I want to make sure that we're well represented at the global awards. The second group of awards that we have open at the moment are our Case Europe Awards, which are our people awards. And these celebrate great individual professionals in the sector. These were on pause for a few years, but we are relaunching them this year, which we're super excited about. And we have five different awards. Two of them are kind of for senior colleagues, the Leadership Award and the, excuse me, the Distinguished Service Award, but the Ian Moore Award for Emerging Fundraising Professionals, the Martin Beauchamp Emerging Marketing Communications Professional Award, and the Emerging Alumni and Supporter Relations Professional Award. Those three, which are essentially Fundraising, Marketing, Communications, and Alumni. Those three are for people, early career professionals. So if there is anyone in your team who you think would be deserving of these awards, or if you think you would like to be nominated for one of these awards, do let me know, or do take a look at the website. You can't nominate yourself. So if you think that you perhaps could be a recipient of the award, perhaps talk to your line manager and see how that goes. So I think I have come to the end of my presentation. I think I've covered all of my tabs here. And I think we've also come to the end of our time. If anyone has any kind of last minute questions, let me know. Otherwise, we can follow up after this call. One final thing I wanted to mention, if anything further about CASE, which you would like to discuss, do let me or Caroline know. We are always very happy to run these kind of sessions, but in a more tailored way for your team. So if you have lots of new colleagues who've recently started and you really want them to be utilising CASE and making the most of your membership, then please do let us know and we can set something up for your whole team. But yes, I think that that wraps up for today. We've had a kind of small group here, but I do hope you found that useful. And I look forward to hearing from you or seeing you perhaps at a conference soon. Thanks very much, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Caroline. I've seen Caroline's done a plug for the coffee chat in the chat as well. So hopefully see lots of people there later. Thanks very much, everyone. Bye-bye.

CASE

membership benefits

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mentoring platform

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data benchmarking