Hi, everyone. Welcome in. Thank you for joining us. Right now I'm just allowing a few more people to come in before we get started, but I will and I do want to respect everyone's time, so we'll be beginning very, very shortly. Thanks again for coming in. Hello, everyone. Welcome, welcome. Hi, guys. Welcome in. Thanks for joining. Alrighty, I think. Good morning. I think that we have given a little bit of time for some of our attendees that are coming in to join, and we're going to get started. So hi, everyone. Welcome to the CASE Philanthropy 2030 Emerging Trends, Opportunities, and Challenges for Advancement Programs seminar. I am Lauren Briscoe. I am the Education Program Specialist, and I'm delighted that you guys could join us. So before we get started, I have a few housekeeping notes. This webinar is being recorded and will be provided for all registrants. You all will receive a follow-up email after the event with instructions for accessing the recording. The presentation slides are also available for use in the learning.case.org platform. Once this presentation begins, I will put more specific instructions in the chat box for you to be able to receive the presentation notes as well. I also want to let you know that we will be taking questions. So if you have any questions, please utilize the Q&A box that is at the bottom of the screen to be able to put in any questions, and if time allows, and depending on how much time allows, we'll be able to get to answer any of those lingering questions that you may have. So without further ado, I would like to go ahead and turn it over to our incredible presenter, Don Hasseltine. Welcome, everyone. I'm delighted to be with you today. We have, I think, a full and rich set of slides here in which to share some insights and knowledge about what is happening in our industry. And first, I'd just like to do a quick introduction of the Aspen Leadership Group. Some of you may be aware of us. We are an executive search firm and a consulting firm, and our main focus is on advancement search and has been for the last 13 years. We've done over 1100 searches in that space and are the leading firm in the country for chief development officers and nonprofits. That's across all of the nonprofit industry. A couple of things specifically about us. We are the only firm that uses senior advancement leaders as our senior search consultants. So the people that are involved, like myself, have been in the field for a long time and have sat in the chairs that we hire for. The other piece and part of the reason I'm before you today is our firm is really committed to the industry in terms of being thought leaders. We're currently doing a series of articles on the trends in philanthropy, and today is a condensed version of that conversation that we started in September. We'll wrap up in June, and I hope that you'll go to our site and either register to receive the article or read the articles through our website. And lastly, we have the only chief development officer network in the country made up of several hundred chief development officers, where we bring both knowledge and conference workshops and other things together on a regular basis. And lastly, along with our executive search work, we do strategic thought partnership primarily in the areas of executive coaching and in advisory roles to help you solve particular problems. So that's it for my note on the Aspen Leadership Group. Let's turn to today's program. Again, I was delighted to see so many of you register for the conversation today. As a background of my experience, so this expertise and this knowledge that I'll share with you has built up over 30 years in the field. My doctoral program was in higher education administration. And over the last seven years, I've worked at the Aspen Leadership Group and have worked with anywhere from 50 to 100 higher education institutions, placing talent and working specifically with organizations. And through those conversations, the information about the trends, what is going on in the field have become clearer to me. And today, I want to impart that knowledge that I've gained from talking with hundreds of you across the space and giving you some insight about ways you will want to consider elevating and changing your program over the coming decade. And so let's jump into it. We live in a philanthropic era of accelerating change driven by three main drivers. Technology, demographic shifts, and the increasing wealth concentration that we see across the country. These three accelerants will drive how we do our work into the future and will require us to think differently about our work. Before we do that, I think you are all familiar that higher education is facing a number of headwinds. The demographic shift in traditional college-age students is declining and will do so through at least 2028. So there will continue to be stresses on enrollment through this period of time, especially at regional and regional universities and smaller liberal arts colleges. That will put increasing pressure on operational dollars and support for mission. The model, the financial model, especially in private institutions of high tuition, high aid, is struggling to sustain itself. And as you've read, probably all too frequently, public confidence in higher education is at its lowest point. However, it's not all doom and gloom. As many of you are experiencing, higher education fundraising remains strong. It was off just a little bit last year, but still remains very robust. Our higher education system remains the envy of the world. So we still have the world's best higher education system. And the reality is we have faced challenges before and we've overcome them. And in this shifting political climate, we are also dealing with other changes that we're likely to face. But I remain cautiously optimistic about the future. And I believe that philanthropy will play a big role in the future of how we succeed moving forward. Now, can fundraising save the day? We've probably all heard that fundraising is all about showing advances. It's about showing success. It's about solving problems. It cannot solve all the financial, demographic, and perceptual challenges that we face, especially the budget balancing and lower enrollment. However, as it always has been and will continue to be, it is a source of excellence. A source that supports inspiring leadership and ideas and a source that creates new knowledge, discoveries, and initiatives that help support the human condition. That will continue to inspire philanthropists and we should be very proud of the work that we've done. Just in this past week, it's probably been just probably a couple weeks now, I continue to see transformative gift from my clients. And what I want to point out on these, so I'm a trustee at a small college, we just received a $10 million gift that's supporting renovations to a Novitz Science Building and offering scholarship. Another $20 million gift that came to a client of mine just this past week, largest in history. A $75 million gift from another client out on the West Coast for investment in STEM and science. A colleague of mine, a former institution received $130 million plus gift for scholarship to make the institution need blind. And then lastly, many of you may have read about this, I think it's been a month or two where Mr. Bloomberg invested a billion dollars in making John Hopkins Medical Education free for anybody who goes there. So there are indications and continue to be indications. And I imagine across the spectrum of institutions participating today that these types of gifts continue to come our way and will continue to make a transformative difference. And so we should be optimistic about the future of philanthropy and what it can bring to us. Our work in this climate, however, makes our work even more critical than it ever has been before. And interestingly, of all the revenue sources, theoretically, there is no cap on how much money we can raise. And I know if you looked at your organization and you thought specifically about ways that you could improve, different ways that you could make a difference, there is plenty of room for us to continue to grow and continue to find increasing resources for our colleges and universities. So let's shift to the the first accelerator. What's going to happen here is I'm going to give you some information and present various data and items that will indicate why this is an important item. And then I will shift and share with you a set of questions, strategic questions, that I will plant in your thinking with the idea that the key thing that we want to get out of the experience today, or at least what I'm hoping you'll get out of the experience, is twofold. One is that there will be one to three questions that I will pose today that you haven't been thinking about that you will now be thinking about. The second goal of today is to give you data and information that will allow you to go back to your organization and potentially think differently about how you're going about the work and different ways that you need to strategize, different ways you need to work together collaboratively with your community, and different ways for you to think about the skill sets, talents, and other things that you're going to need to be successful into the future. So let's go to this slide on influence of wealth concentration. It's been probably a decade or more where we left the land of 80-20. I am old enough where we talked about the 80-20 rule for most of my professional life. It started to shift, I would say, in the mid-2000s, early 2000s, like 2004 or 5, where it was becoming increasingly, the concentration of wealth was becoming an increasingly bigger issue in the way that we were going about raising money. And I would now say that we're in the era of 95-5, meaning 95% of our money comes from less than 5% of our donors. It's probably like 98-2, but for today's conversations go 95-5. So the pyramid continues to narrow, and one way to look at that is if you looked at your fundraising from a year ago and you took the top 12 gifts, my guess is that that is more than a third of all the money you raised. And if you went to your top 25 gifts, you probably received 50% or more of your total fundraising total from those 25 gifts. What that means is in those 25 gifts, your large portion of the rest of your fundraising is, again, important, but this narrowing means that we need to rely on this top even more than we ever had before. Next piece, philanthropy remains an older-person sport, meaning that 80% of our gifts of a million dollars or more came from people who were over the age of 65. There's some really good news there, demographically, if you haven't been tracking this, and I am getting closer to this every day, there are 12,000 baby boomers every day turning 65 or older, or turning 65 over the next three years. And again, if you look at the demographics, what sector has the most money? It is the boomers. So you're actually moving into a period where there'll be increasingly more people who have the capacity to make larger and more significant gifts. It also means that if you go to the fourth bullet around women involvement in philanthropic decisions, there's a couple things going on. One is women live longer than men, and women make many of the philanthropic decisions or are partners with those philanthropic decisions. So those are key components. So you have a growing number of 65-year-olds, you have more women involved in making decisions about philanthropy. Question is, how are you working to think about that integration and that involvement of the family in those conversations? The other part is, in the decade ahead, there is anticipation of some 30 to $68 trillion that will be passed on to the next generation, or will be given philanthropically. And so how are we thinking about our engagement? And then lastly, it appears we are turning back the clock. This narrowing of the pyramid looks very similar to what the turn of the century looked like during the industrial period. Where there was a group of families like the Carnegies, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts, who had a concentration of resources that became the key philanthropist for a variety of reasons during that period of time. We're starting to see something similar here, where there is uber wealth concentrated in a small group of families across the country that will play a role in our philanthropy and how we work in the future. A couple things about the philanthropists themselves. And for those of you who do principal gift work, you're living in this every day. Donors are increasingly driven to direct their impact towards people, programs, and initiatives. And if you go back to those gifts I just mentioned, Bloomberg's gift was in support of people and offering opportunity for people with economic disadvantage to go to medical school. Big idea. The gift for, it was at Washington and Lee, for becoming need-blind was again, access and opportunity. And the other two gifts, one was to enhance an academic program. And the other one was to elevate the STEM program at an institution. So you can see that even in the gifts that I mentioned there. So doesn't mean that we won't receive gifts for facilities. Doesn't mean we won't receive gifts for annual giving. Doesn't mean we won't receive gifts for endowment. What you're likely to see though in your top end of your pyramid with the 50, well, could be 10, could be 20, 50, a hundred million dollar gifts. Those are likely to be directed towards people, programs, and initiatives. So that's important to keep in mind. The other piece that is trending and we're beginning to see is wealthy individuals and families are starting to use third parties to manage their philanthropy. For those of you who've been in the field long enough, donor-advised funds have only been around since 2005 or 2006, and they have come on like gangbusters. There's now $250 billion in donor-advised funds, has grown dramatically even since 2019. And what that shift has done, as you recognize, is it has created a new layer of distance between you and the donor. And it also happens with private foundations that are increasingly out there. So we need to learn how to work across an extension of the donor themselves and learn how to do that effectively. And then the last part, and not surprising, that the expectations of greater involvement continue to grow. So especially among younger donors, their engagement, their involvement in helping to create and develop a big idea is something that they're demanding and requiring. So we have to be thoughtful about our own internal work to develop big ideas, and then how do we engage and bring the philanthropist into those conversations to help evolve and develop them to consummation of a big idea and a big gift. So shifting now to the strategic questions that I think are important for you to give consideration to. How much time is your team dedicating to principal gifts? When I was a vice president, I would find that I was spending 80% of my time on 20% of the dollars. Now that doesn't mean it's probably the inverse, right, in terms of probably 80% of the donors and 20% of the money. However, I think in this 95-5 world, we need to think about, are we expending enough time and energy on the top end of the pyramid, and are we putting the resources towards that? Secondly, do you have a strategy for your top 25 prospects? I continue to be surprised when I go out on my consulting or when I'm doing my coaching, if I ask that question, it is not an automatic yes. It is sometimes, I think we have that. What is critically important is that your vice president, your principal gift officers, your operations folks have a clear line to who those top 25 are, and I would say it could even expand depending on your size, your top 40. Anytime you get beyond that, you're not going to manage those people well. I oftentimes hear people talk about their top 100 or their top 150. You do not have the capacity or the ability to deal with 100 at a time. So who are those 25? Do you have a strategy? What are the next steps? Who's doing that? Really spending time developing out that strategy, that would be critical to continue to grow your program. Is your planned giving program robust enough to engage in wealth transfer? For those of you, as you know, 98% of planned gifts are estate gifts, and if we can create a pipeline of people who care about you, who decide to put you in their estate, that wealth transfer, as we become an older and older population, is going to be a wealth of possibilities for us. It's interesting that one, it's hard to find the talent for those positions, and two, I would offer that we often ignore that because it's not money on the table, and I know our institutions are demanding current use money to address issues, but that's a real missed opportunity in not creating a pipeline of future support that will come to you over time but will be critically important to your long-term success. Do you have a big ideas creation process? I don't mean a couple of people get together and think about what you could do organizationally. What is your process for big idea creation? How are you engaging your academic community? How are you engaging your president? What are those ideas if someone came in and said, I want to give you $100 million, or I want to give you $10 million, depending on where you are in your program? What's your answer? You should have at least two or three big ideas in your back pocket for that day when someone knocks on your door and has the capacity to make a transformative difference for you. You've got some ideas, and you need to systematize that exercise. You need to help to grow the muscles of your team to think in big ideas. Next one is, what expertise do you have that elevates the human condition? Whether you're a small comprehensive college in a rural area, or whether you are a major university in an urban setting, you have specific expertise that will influence the human condition. If you're in a rural environment, how about rural economics? How about rural work? How about rural technology? How about how do we create health and well-being in those environments? You have that expertise that you can bring to the table. Have you thought about how you bring that all together and can have a big idea that would not only impact your college or university, but ultimately would have an influence on society and your community? And then the last piece is, do you have access to expertise that helps with complicated gift structures? When you start talking about gifts that are of significance, it isn't often that they're just going to send you a check. It often involves securities. It might involve different assets that they have. It might involve a trust. There's a whole bunch of different things that will be involved. And if you don't have the expertise, seek it out and make sure that you have it on hand. And that doesn't mean you have to hire it. It just means that you should seek it out and find it and make sure that is part of your dynamic as you think about your principal gift program. Number seven, are you educating your team about the changing way top donors are giving? Make sure that you're having roundtables, conversations, reading books. Ron Schiller wrote a book. He's my boss. He's the founder of the Aspen Leadership Group, a book called Belief and Confidence where he interviewed 60 philanthropists across the country and talked about why they give and what is giving them the confidence and the belief that they can make a gift of this kind. I think that's the kind of information that your team needs to continue to engage in and understand. Are your stewardship and naming policies elevated enough to offer the kind of personalization and engagement that top donors need and want? That goes back to my earlier comment about time and effort. What we usually rely on is our stewardship across the board to handle all different types of gifts and it all housed in one place. Some of us are lucky to have more than one stewardship. Some of us have a half a stewardship person. What I'm offering here is we need to make sure that there's enough time and effort going into stewarding our very best donors and our potential best prospects and thinking about that and spending time developing that strategy is critically important. In terms of naming policies, one of the things in this very uncertain environment and a politically charged environment, you're likely to run into people who want to support you who may have earned their money in a way that may be counter value-wise or something else that may not match up that you'll want to figure out how you might handle something like that. And then other pieces are if they have certain types of views, how are you going to handle that in terms of naming and are you going to be comfortable with that person's name on your building? I can tell you when I started my career, that wasn't a conversation we would have. Today, that is much more of a sensitive conversation. So are your naming policies up-to-date and how are you thinking about those potentially challenging conversations with donors in terms of their recognition? Operationally, do you have systems in place to manage the relationship with your top prospects and donors? And that means do you have, so for example, are your top donors receiving their direct mail appeal for the annual fund? Do they receive mail for every event that you have? Do you have any controls in your database about who gets what and have you reviewed those and acknowledged that that may not be the right way to be handling the conversation with certain types of donors? I'm sure you're doing that with trustees. Maybe you extend that out to being a little more thoughtful about who's in your close circle that you want to make sure you're treating in the right way and the way they want to be communicated with. And that number 10, that bled into my point on number nine. So accelerant number two, younger and older donors. As we have all experienced, and it's interesting, I would say, all experienced, what I would offer is the world changed dramatically in 2007 with the onset of social media. It seems like it's been with us forever, but now we have a generation of young people who are going out in the world who have only known the social media world and the way that we currently interact with technology and information. The question is, are we transitioning the way that we think about soliciting and engaging young people in the life of the College of the University? So again, when I started the profession, everybody was sending us a check. Checks have essentially gone away, except for a small community of people. People are making gifts online today. So what other tools? I work with a small college, I'm a board member. They just recently got Apple Pay and Venmo and other ways of making gifts. Are you engaging in different ways that people can make gifts to you? And 15 years ago, there weren't donor advised funds. What's going to be the next piece? So the conversation around crypto, are you going to accept crypto gifts? What is the next level? So be curious about the different ways that people are giving and are you finding the tools and the ability to accept those types of gifts? Women and people of color. I noted earlier about the role that women play in philanthropic decisions, but specifically in higher education, more women have been going to college and university over the last decade than men. So you have a growing population of women who are going to be your future philanthropist. How do you engage them? How do you work with them? How do they think about philanthropy? Does your team have knowledge and understanding about that? One of our associates, Kathleen Lohr, wrote a book on women in philanthropy, and she does consulting across the country in that space. But that's really important to be thinking about that. Dartmouth 400 was one of the models that came out where they had over 400 women give $100,000 or more to a project and became a giving circle, so to speak. And so there are models out there of success of doing that, but that's really important to be paying attention to that sector of your giving population. Same thing with people of color. By 2041, this country would be a minority and majority. You're seeing that in our classrooms today. How are we creating affinity and relationships with our people of color? And are we effectively understanding how they think about their philanthropy, their relationship with your institution? So I would say both of those groups would be critically important to your long-term success. Next piece. Just as you've experienced that there has been a 25-year downturn in alumni participation, and there are still programs that are holding on that they're going to be able to reverse that trend. And I would love to hear from those who are being successful in doing that, because that is certainly a place that lots of places are struggling. But on the national level, over the last 15 years, we've seen a drop of families giving to philanthropy from 66% of families down to 49% of families. There's probably a whole slew of reasons why that's happening, but that is a reflection that we're experiencing with our alumni bodies. And so how are we thinking about that? How are we changing our behavior? How are we educating our boards? That still is a critical part in terms of getting people to participate, getting people to give lower-end gifts. However, there's a changing dynamic out there, and how are we working through that? In terms of, we talked about the generational wealth transfer. The other piece that is really important as we think about our own staffing into the future, you now have boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Zs, and emerging in our work population. My daughter's 23. She just entered the workforce. Her view on work is much different than mine. It is part of our challenge is figuring out how do we integrate? How do we communicate? How do we collaborate? How do we bring these different groups together? And it's not, well, it can be challenging. However, I think if we pay attention to it and learn and grow, we can figure out a way to make that happen because it's going to be critically important. As we know, finding talent, keeping talent in our industry has not been easy. The other piece to give consideration to as we think about our future pipeline for talent, by 2034, there will be more 65-year-olds than there are 18-year-olds. That has never happened before. And so what does that mean to our workforce? How do we think about that? It will be a critical question and one that we'll have to address as we move forward. So strategic questions. Number one, are you being intentional about your broad-based donor strategy? I would offer I don't think you can solicit everybody in your database anymore. I'm not sure that's a good use of resources or that that is an effective strategy or you get an ROI on that. So thinking about how you're intentionally approaching your community in terms of solicitation. Is your staff aligned to a 95-5 world, meaning are you allocating the resources to do that well? Do you have a strategy for women and people of color? How are you preparing to participate in the wealth transfer back to the point about what are you doing on planned giving and do you have a strategy for that? Is your team educated and strategic in how they engage younger donors? I see a number of programs across the country integrating their marketing communication staff with their annual giving team as that becomes increasing more of a marketing, social media digitization of our outreach. How do you build a team that reflects the changing demographics of society and your alumni body? When any of you come up with that answer, please let me know. That is a big challenge and we certainly need to attract more talent to the profession. In terms of strategic talent, what new skills are needed in this next era? What will we need less of? So doing an assessment of, I'll use the example of we used to have secretaries who would do memos and push out information and coordinate your calendar. Those roles have gone away. So as we move into this period of time, what roles will go away in the future? What will we do less of? What will we do more of? And I think doing a talent assessment and thinking about the future of your organization is really important. Secondly, I think of different programs either have a manufacturing approach to culture or relational. Manufacturing is we make widgets every day, that would be philanthropy, and we use metrics to measure whether we're meeting our mark. Relational is a people-first effort, meaning that humanity and how you treat people and the culture you create will generate an engaging, inspiring workforce. There have been studies out there that less than 35 percent of our workforces are fully engaged in the life of our organizations. If we could change that to 60 or 70 percent, it's like adding another third of a workforce that you're missing. So how are you going about being a people-first organization? Are you promoting effective managers or just high-performing individuals? This is a problem across all service industries, so higher education is not alone in doing that, but I think we need to be more thoughtful about who we have managing our programs, because the people who are high performers are high performers because they have a certain skill set, not because they manage people well. And so if we can get both, that's great, but be more thoughtful about who we're promoting into what different types of roles. Our reward system doesn't celebrate team success. Fundraisings and team support, if you're not thinking fully about how you reward and celebrate both the operational and the frontline, you're going to have some problems in your organization. And lastly, the question is, are you spending enough time thinking about how you're attracting, growing, and retaining talent? We still have a severe turnover problem in the higher education space in advancement, and I think it's a byproduct of probably not creating the environment where people feel really great about their work, or we're not giving them a growth pattern to finding new opportunities within our organization. So a lot to think about in terms of talent. And last, three, technology and the era of conceptualization. I think we're all experiencing this both in our home life and in our professional life. If we think specifically about fundraising, the cycle time from the time that we meet a donor to the time that we're soliciting for the gift has been somewhere between 24 and 36 months for my entire career. The question is, is it possible to use various tech tools and relationship software to speed the process by identifying the most likely prospects, so back to being intentional and more focused, and cut down on the inefficiencies in our pool building and building better targeted portfolios, and then using technology tools that will allow us to manage and build those relationships more quickly. So I think that opportunity is before us, and that will be one of the key movers for us in terms of growing capacity and accelerating the pace in which we are able to raise money. Enhanced engagement. I'm seeing it across the country that there are a variety of tools out there that people are using. I'll use one because I think it's kind of cool, the thank you, where you're sending personalized stewardship and recognition to donors. That is a really nice touch, and I think it's appreciated, and you're doing a lot more around giving days and texting and online work, but we need to get better at that. And it goes back to the talent that I mentioned earlier. Do we have enough talent? Do we have enough know-how in the tech space in order to do that really well? I mentioned earlier the changing methods in which people give. Are we up to date on that? Are we capturing that well? And then finally, I'll go right to leadership who can conceptualize and work from a matrix perspective. It's a whole bunch of words, but if you think about where we've been, we were in the information age where we just wanted to get data that we could track through technology. So we started with that. From that, we started to build predictive models. So I've been doing predictive models for 30 years, some successful, some not so. We're still in that era where we're using predictive models to identify people that we pay attention to. However, we're now moving into a space where with AI, we have the ability to be more conceptual, where AI can do what we were doing in weeks and months and pulling reports together and mixing and matching. And AI can do that probably in 20 seconds or 30 seconds if we put the right information in. But the conceptual part is learning what information needs to go into the system, and the conceptual part is the ability to see patterns that tell a story that we didn't know before. So that is a really critical change in leadership that needs to come to the forefront. There's a gentleman named Daniel Pink who wrote a book on a whole new mind. And if you're ever interested and you read those types of books, he really talks about this conceptual framing that instead of an MBA, he talks about an MFA. So it's those creative, conceptual people who are going to thrive and do well in this next era. And so we need to find people who are leaders who think that way and can help us imagine a different way of approaching the work. So key questions here. I find that in a number of different instances, people are over investing in technology. They go out and get all the greatest bells and whistles because they have one initial problem they're trying to solve and they over invest. And then they don't have the capacity to use those tools effectively. I would offer be really thoughtful about the technological tools you bring on to your team. One, because there's a whole heck of a work behind the scenes to make the integration. It requires training and development. It requires a game plan that's not just solve problem X today. It's a three to five year commitment on how you're going to use that tool. If you pick the right tool and you pick the right problem you're trying to solve, you will accelerate your giving. If you over invest, you will confuse your team. It will sit on the shelf and not be used in an effective manner. So be really thoughtful about the technology tools that you're bringing into your program. What strategy are you using to increase personalization without taking more time and resources? So anything new that you're bringing to the forefront for personalization and integration, is there a way for it not to take more time? The goal is how do we become more efficient and more effective at the same time? What strategy will allow you to be more intentional about who you pay attention to? That is both at the broad base, in the middle, and at the top of your pyramid. You need to apply some practices and some discipline about your intentionality, because you can only do a few things at a time well. And then lastly, are you thinking about how donors will give varying assets into the future? So back to the private foundation and donor advised funds, are there going to be, you know, is crypto going to come on the page? Are there different types of assets? Are there changing tax laws that will influence how we go about getting philanthropy from a variety of our donors? And in closing, a couple of things that I just want to circle back to. I think these trends magnify the importance of our work. There's no question that philanthropy will be a key, critical, and important part of higher education and the dynamic that the leadership will play in terms of securing and continuing to thrive into the future. It'll be critically important. What I would offer though, as you think about that, with the pressures on higher education in a variety of different ways, one of the things that I find when I talk with vice presidents is they're still talking about being able to expand their teams and grow their teams. And I am offering that I think the envelope you have today of resources is likely the envelope you'll have in the future. And so you need to be creative and use these new tools and be more intentional in order to expand your capacity because the demands will only increase. As I mentioned, wealth concentration, demographics, and technology will require new thinking. I think that was self-explanatory. The intentionality. I was talking with a vice president and he was emphasizing the intentionality of the work that we do. And I think that is the theme that we all need to give real strong consideration to in the work and the way we strategize about our team. And then lastly, I'll come back to what I asked at the beginning, is what new information are you taking away? What are one of the two or three pieces of information that you didn't have coming into the conversation that you'll bring back to your team? And then what are the one to three questions that are takeaways that you will bring back for a conversation with your community to continue to delve into wherever you are on your journey? You all are going to be on different places on the journey. And I wish you great success in the future and hope I was a little part of helping you think a little bit differently about your work. So it'll help you to do better work and to have a better relationship with the new possibilities rather than worrying about all this change that's happening before us. And lastly, I just thank you for taking the time to be with me and spending the time with Case on this busy time of the year. So thank you very much. Awesome. Thank you so much, John. We have a few questions. One of them was towards the end of your presentation, you acknowledged some technological tools that people can utilize to help further their work. Are there any examples of specific tools that you would recommend where you have seen success? And then we have another colleague who she and at their school, they utilized Evertrue. And it's said to have been a game changer with them. Do you have any comments on Evertrue or any other tools that could be a resource? Well, I'm somewhat reluctant to offer specifics only because I'm not an expert on all the tools out there. And it depends on what problem you're trying to solve. I think Evertrue, it's interesting, Evertrue was beta tested at Brown when I was there. And the founder is a Brown graduate, so I know that product pretty well. And they've also integrated like Thankview and a couple other things. So I think they've been really smart about recognizing what colleges and universities need. So I think, you know, I know that one better than others. I think the other really interesting one out there is Givesy is out there where they've got an avatar that is actually asking for gifts. And kind of fascinating. And I think that the idea behind it is that there's a way to personalize the experience for our donors without it having to be a human being in so many ways. Doesn't mean a human being isn't part of the process, but somebody brings you a more personalized conversation. So that's fascinating. I think there will be people who rush to the door to want to use that sort of tool. I just come back to the idea that you've got to have the capacity internally to manage a tool like that. And you've got to be willing to spend the time. And the time you spend on that is time you're not spending on other things. So make sure that whenever you're picking a tech tool, you're recognizing the shift in the time and what that's going to. Thank you. Our second question is throughout your presentation, when you acknowledge younger donors, what range would you define younger donors to be? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think there are... I still consider myself younger, so that's not good. So I think there's demographics that we want to look at. So you've got probably the 22 to 35 year old, you've got the 35 to 50 year old, you've got the 50 to 65 year old, and then on. I would say most of when I'm talking about younger donors, I'm thinking of that 22 to probably 50 with actually a breaking point at 35 with that group being most technologically savvy. And then that 35 to 50 living in a period of time where they're creating their wealth, where they're having families. I call that period the period of accumulation where you're buying a house, you're doing all those sorts of things. So philanthropy at that point and time is different. So how you volunteer and engage at that age. And then at a younger age, what does that look like? So I would break it up that way where the 50 to 65 is probably when they're first dipping their toes into either high level annual giving or their first major gift. And then as the data shows, 65 and older is when most people make their most significant gifts. Awesome. Thanks for clarifying that. Another question is, will we see higher education philanthropy overtake religious giving in our lifetime? That's a great question. I would doubt that. And not because higher education isn't worthy of that. I think that religion speaks to a broader audience. I think we have to remember that less than 30 percent of the American population is religious. Where you have 360 million Americans, some of whom are practicing some sort of religion or have some focus. What may evolve is, I think, there's a growing role for spirituality and how people view that. And there may be a shift in how people view religion and how people view But I don't anticipate in our lifetime, certainly not mine, where higher education will surpass religion, especially in the current climate where there's just a lot of questions about it. So, thank you. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. So, thank you. Jessica has her hand raised. And I guess we can see Jessica's question. It is, years ago, we talked about getting people into the habit of giving. What does that look like now as we consider investment on non-appealing, on appealing to non-donors? Would you like me to repeat that? Just one more time. Yeah. Years ago, we talked about getting people into the habit of giving. What does that look like now as we consider ROI on appealing to non-donors? So, I'll go to some stats and don't hold me to this, but when I was doing this work, if you got a donor to give to you once, the likelihood they give you a second time is about 50%. If you got them to give you a second time, it grew to about 70%. If you got them to give you a third time, it grew to 80 or 85%. And if you got them to give for four consecutive years, you got a lifetime donor. So, there is some value in trying to get that first gift. I think what happens is when you get that first gift, you're spending so much time trying to get another non-donor to give, we don't spend enough time renewing that donor for the second time. So, I also would offer that that's part of the intentionality. I think we need to go in our databases and look to see if there is any engagement or involvement by a non-donor in a particular way. Do they come to homecoming? Do they go to the presentation? Have they been back on campus? Does their kid go to... I think there needs to be more attention to indicators of engagement rather than using only wealth indicators. I think when you do a wealth screening, it always comes back and it looks like you've got billions of dollars of philanthropy. And meanwhile, two-thirds or three-quarters of those folks have no relationship with you whatsoever. And so, it's just a false sense of capacity. So, I would just say we need to be more intentional about looking at indicators of engagement. The last question, just to kind of wrap everything up and then appeal to people of different services. Jennifer asked the question, could you give some thoughts on the role that alumni relations plays in the opportunities that you've outlined? Really, really important question. And there's an inherent challenge right now in alumni relations. And it's not alumni relations specifically. It is the lack of resources at our colleges and universities to support the kind of advancement program that many of us once remembered, where we would send the magazine to everybody, we would solicit everybody, we would try to build engagement with everyone. And that scope is narrowing significantly and what that has meant is that there are fewer alumni relations officers in many of our institutions across the country today. Their role in building engagement and relationships and helping to steward the college or university remains really critical. What I'm finding is that alumni relations programs are increasingly connected with the value add around career development, internships, growth opportunities to help young people find their pathway forward. So, when we think about the value proposition of a college or university education, it's now getting hooked on that we got to help them find a job. And it is turning to alumni relations to be a bigger, bigger player in that space. And so, I think there's two critical components. One, the broad-based engagement is still part of the equation that's important. The second part is in an affinity group settings, are we helping to bring people back and connecting them with the college and university? And the third piece is, are we a value add in terms of helping young people come out of our institutions and find a pathway forward professionally? And I think alumni relations can play a key role in that. Awesome. Thank you so much. That was amazing information that was shared and we had some excellent questions. It is almost one o'clock and I do want to be able to respect everyone's time again. So, I hope that you guys enjoyed this conversation and had a great afternoon. Don, if you would like to add anything or close up, say thank you. We'll wrap it up. I'm just, again, appreciative of people spending the time with me. And if you want to email me or go to my LinkedIn, I'd love for you to join my LinkedIn page. I do a blog called Coach's Corner where the conversation continues around these types of issues. So, if you want to engage in that. But, again, I wish you much success and I know that the end of the year is coming for everyone. So, I hope that you have a prosperous and really productive end of the year. Awesome. Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day. Bye.

Philanthropy 2030

Emerging Trends

Donor Engagement

Wealth Transfer

Technology in Fundraising

Demographic Shifts

Women in Philanthropy

Strategic Focus

Alumni Relations