Well, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. It is my pleasure to welcome you to Roadmap to Advancement. Today, we have over 65 delegates representing 10 countries, which is well and truly beyond our expectations. So welcome, and thank you very much for joining us. I was looking over the registration list and note that most of our delegates, our early career were some in their first year working in Advancement, with several others who have over five years experience, and we have over 10 of you with up to 20 years experience. So there is a lot of knowledge in the room, and I hope we hear from some of you over the next few days to share your experience. So for those of you who do not know me, I am Heather Hamilton, Executive Director of CASE Asia Pacific, and I will be presenting the first session today on the dynamic world of Advancement. I am based in Perth, Western Australia, and responsible for our CASE members from the Middle East, south to Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and further east where I'm sitting, to New Zealand. I have peers in Latin America, Europe, and North America, and my Advancement journey goes back almost 10 years, 10, 20 years before I knew what Advancement was, but then it was better known as Development, and primarily focused on fundraising. I have worked in higher education, school sector, and with the Medical Research Institute. In all my roles, I have had responsibility for fundraising, alumni community relations, marketing communications, donor relations, industry partnerships, and what we now call Advancement Services. So essentially, an integrated Advancement portfolio, which I am a huge advocate of, and we'll discuss more as we go through this presentation. Also I'd like to introduce my colleague, May Ng, who has joined us today. She's sitting in Singapore, and many of you may already know May, as she has been with CASE Asia Pacific for close to 10 years already, so if you have any questions around logistics, she's very happy to help, and she will also facilitate our Q&A session. I know that I also have Carly Walbridge with us, so she's also with CASE, and she's in, I want to say Perth office, but she's not quite in the Perth office, because we don't, she's a remote worker as I am, and I'm sure like many of you are during the pandemic, or have reverted to that. So Roadmap to Advancement is typically designed for newcomers to Advancement, and early career professionals, so it's providing an overview of the exciting world of Advancement and its disciplines, as well as practical tips to guide you through your Advancement journey. So I hope that those of you with greater experience will also find the program valuable, as we have some outstanding speakers joining us over the next few days. During this next few days, you'll hear from me, just with the big picture, and I am your only presenter for today, so I very much encourage interaction and sharing, so we hear other voices than just me. I understand that you were sent four pre-listening on-demand sessions, they were four 20 to 30 minute sessions, which I hope you have had the chance to listen to. If you have not yet done so, I encourage you to do so before the Q&A session tomorrow. Tomorrow you will participate in the Q&A session with our on-demand speakers, which are outlined here. We've got Mark Schroeder, and I won't go into the details of them because you'll get broader introductions tomorrow, and Jimmy Buck, Eliza Boffin-Yordanov, and Joanna Watts, which are all very experienced practitioners. You will also hear from Ziva Salman and Beth Chuhl, who will do a session on Alumni Relations 101. You will finish with a career panel session, so you want to change the world, and you'll hear from Emma Silva, Jiuqiao Chen, and Joel Terwilliger. So an absolutely fantastic line-up of speakers. The big picture, the dynamic role of advancement, ideally when I finish, you will have the key takeaways and clarity around what advancement really means and why it matters, the interconnectivity of advancement disciplines, which is integral to institutional success, and I'll also go through some current emerging trends in advancement. So people often confuse fundraising and or development with advancement, whether in higher education or schools, and often think of CASE as association for fundraisers. I hear it all the time, but this isn't true. CASE advocates very much for an integrated advancement model, which encompasses all the disciplines, which working in a professional capacity to advance our institutions. So while fundraising and development fit within advancement structures, other disciplines such as alumni relations, donor relations, marketing communications, enrollments, admissions, and recruitment, which predominate in schools, also sits neatly within advancement. So I'll share more about this later throughout my presentation. So what is advancement? So advancement refers to advancing an institution from where it is today to where it would like to be in the future, as much as I can crystallize the definition. So it's very much critical that an advancement strategy is aligned with your institution's vision, mission, values, and the overall strategic intent. Process of advancing your institution requires very much intensive planning alongside your institutional strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, both internal and external. The internal is very important because you have to bring your institutional, your colleagues along for the ride if you want to have success. Diversifying funding, and I use the word diversifying funding because it's not just philanthropy. So it's through philanthropy, your foundation's corporate partnerships is very much a part of it, which I've done a lot of work in, in one of my previous roles, and grants. And also the marketing communications efforts. So many institutions still refer to the development office rather than advancement, and models vary greatly from institution to institution. So I will go on record to advocate for an integrated advancement model. I created this model back when I was working, I think it went back 15 years ago in my first role with the University of Western Australia. My wise boss, the Dean of the Business School, talked about the virtuous life cycle of everything that we did. And then I subsequently carried that through to my future roles. And then when I just recently worked in a school, Brisbane Grammar School, I spent a lot of time explaining to our board of trustees and the leadership team, just about how it is this virtuous life cycle, and how it's important to engage all your stakeholders on that lifelong journey. So as I said, many institutions refer to the development office rather than advancement and models vary greatly. So contrary to what many think, advancement efforts do not center on fundraising only and begin with current students and or alumni. So advancement begins with, to me, the recruitment process of which I believe is, if done well, will be the beginning of a lifelong journey. I, as I mentioned, view it as a virtuous life cycle. So in advancement disciplines, which I mentioned earlier, can include recruitment, enrollment or admissions, education, student experience, alumni, parents, when you're in schools, it's grandparents, all your volunteers, donors, and the general community. So I'm aware that we've got a lot of higher education within the room, practitioners, but we also have quite a few schools in the room. So I have worked, as I mentioned earlier, in both. So I appreciate all the different stakeholders that both institutions have. But again, it's very similar processes for stakeholders. So sometimes our disciplines are structurally aligned. Often they are not. At minimum, they must be strategically aligned and operating towards shared goals. That's one of my concerns when the groups or the disciplines are not together within the same reporting structure, it's very hard to have shared goals. And I've seen where that's fallen apart and created silos and created difficulty in achieving your outcomes. So depending on the age of your institution, if stewarded well, your students may eventually again become parents, volunteers, donors, and legacy donors. And that's really what this virtual life cycle is trying to reflect. And this is, again, very evident in established schools. So, well, and I mentioned Brisbane Grammar School, it was a 150-year-old school for boys. We had legacy families who had five generations of history and who contributed to the school in so many ways, which through what I call time, treasure, and talent. Time is people giving their time and volunteering. Treasure is obviously donations and talent, which I think we've all heard this term, time, treasure, and talents, but the talent is, in particular, when I was in the business school, people gave back through doing guest lectures and mentoring. So marketing communications and alumni community engagement, I often see as very much the enablers to support that lifelong journey of your stakeholders. And to me, very critical that the marketing communications team isn't just worried about the brand of the institution, but supporting the fundraising efforts, because it's very difficult to do a case for support, whether it's be design or whether it's just the messaging in it without having the support of some form of marketing communications. Often people outsource it, but it's nice to have it internally. So it is during this process and journey that an institution introduces a culture of philanthropy among new students, your alumni and your parents. And it's about creating relationships that really encourages investments in the school or your university. It also means nurturing relationships and educating donors and potential donors about the value of your institution. So while advancement is broadly the strategic process by which institutions advance their mission, development and fundraising really is an aspect of that process. So fundraising, as many of us know, focus on connecting prospective donors to the institution's vision and mission in a way that is relevant to a donor with the objective to raise funds and contributing to the overall advancement efforts. So advancement disciplines, I've mentioned those already. We've got alumni and community relations, fundraising, advancement services, marketing communications, and I add enrollment and admissions for schools. I haven't really seen much in the higher education sector where student recruitment is part of the advancement office or the advanced discipline, but in a school, it's an often, it's a known model or seen model. So generally, advancement efforts, as I said, fall into these categories or to these disciplines. And you will do a deeper dive during the on-demand session and Q&A tomorrow. But I did want to have a little bit of a closer look at each of the disciplines. So alumni and community relations is a critical discipline within advancement. For me, again, that's why I'm such an advocate of the integrated advancement model. I think it's a fundamental goal of alumni relations is to foster lifelong relationships with your alumni and your community, not just alumni, who can support the institution through advocacy, volunteerism and greater investment. And again, I go back to that time, treasure and talent. And to support the university's intended endeavors, alumni must be involved. As a result, mutually beneficial relationships should be developed in a way that is relevant and meaningful for both parties. The alumni relations team should work to incorporate alumni into the vision and institutional goals of the institution. And there are various ways that alumni relations engage with alumni. Often they plan and execute special events, including reunions, lectures. During our 150 year celebrations, when I was at Brisbane Grammar School, we had approximately 40 events, which I think in general is too many for a small organization. But it was a celebratory year, including a royal tree planting, open day, gala dinners, and all of which raised funds as well. We worked very closely with the fundraising team, which covered costs and funded bursaries for students in financial need. So it's critical to ensure that the relationship between alumni relations is always mutually beneficial. So alumni pride and affinity within the institution is critical for greater involvement. Fundraising. So every institution, small or large, relies on fundraising to thrive in an increasingly complex and competitive environment. It requires consistent and increased funding to maintain academic excellence, fund scholarships, faculty chairs, help to build and support infrastructure and create new programs. And the financial support really just helps an institution achieve its goals and foster the advancement of the institution. Institutions typically raise funds through applying gifts, foundation gifts, corporate gifts, major gifts. A fundraising team engages with the internal stakeholders across an institution to determine what the greatest needs are, but also ensure donors wishes are met. And as I've mentioned, fundraising efforts are often integrated across the organization and directed to alumni and corporations. So it's very much very critical that it's integrated, in my view. So in summary, advancement is about building a community around a common cause so that intangible advancements are made. And fundraising is asking for the money and sharing the specific purposes for why that money is needed. Advancement services, we can't forget them. They're absolutely critical to what we do to achieve our goals. So other professionals working in our department may prefer duties that are not directly related to fundraising, but in support of our efforts or fundraising efforts, which some activities include gift processing, database management, accounting, benchmarking and research on prospective donors. Then you've got your marketing communications, again, which I mentioned earlier, is absolutely critical. I believe marketing communications plays a pivotal role in advancement. In one of my roles in higher education, I was director of marketing communications for advancement. I was also responsible for the annual fund, corporate partner management and donor relations, which is a bit of an eclectic mix. But I tended to pick up anything where there was gaps and it wasn't happening. So that's how I ended up with that mix of a portfolio. So you need people who can effectively communicate the institution's mission. So alumni, corporations and all prospective donors feel connected to the institution. It's really about telling an authentic story that makes alumni, general community donors feel really part of the journey and mission and want to support your institution. So, again, marketing communications, which I mentioned earlier, is an enabler to support the overarching advancement objectives. And then enrolments, admissions. I know it's not just for schools, but the construct of Australia. It's very much schools and I've seen it in other regions. An enrolments team works closely with the advancement team or in the school environment. It is important to commence the journey with prospective parents as they will potentially be with your institution as a parent for 12 years. And so that lifelong journey and virtuous life cycle begins, as I mentioned earlier, 150 year old school with five generations of family. I see parents, students, grandparents who all get incredibly involved in the school and continue to on a regular basis. It was a really good opportunity for me to see that full life cycle, having worked in higher education for so long, where you focus mostly on the students, young alumni and donors. It was definitely a great opportunity. So why advancement? Advancement has a very critical role to play within an institution in addressing social and economic challenges in our communities. And with the declining government funding for education and recent impact the pandemic has had on operations and budgets, philanthropy is more critical. I think that's something that we've noted over the past 18 months. We were really concerned for a while there that our fundraising dollars were going to decline. A lot of the research that we've done over the past year within the higher education sector predominantly has shown that fundraising has not declined. In fact, a number of institutions have seen greater benefit. We've seen some campaigns close beyond expectations. So it's quite amazing to see how essentially all our communities have really come together to support. And it's not just for COVID-related research. I've seen it across for scholarships and just generally supporting the mission of the institution. But fundraising has definitely increased. So as I said, it's critical in supporting our operations budgets and fees alone do not really cover the cost of new infrastructure scholarships outreach and all our research. So alumni and community relations, you know, developed our advocates and brand ambassadors for institutions. Again, I mentioned time, treasure and talent a few times, and marketing communications manages our institutional brands and creates our messages and stories to attract students, leading faculty increased funding and more. So that's sort of a summary of what I've just presented. But you again, we'll hear more about some of that through the on demand programs. And during the q&a session tomorrow and other sessions, key trends in advancement, a few things that I've seen. And as I said, I'm an advocate of again, is advancement integration, or integrated advancement. Historically, and I've seen this in every institution I've worked in business school, higher education, and in the school, there is a tension between traditional alumni relations and development. I know alumni relations teams, I've heard it, they don't want the concern about the alumni being asked for money. It's a constant conversation. But it's something that is needs to be dealt with. So but what we have seen the trends that advancement integration, with some of our surveys, nearly three quarters of institutions that we surveyed have integrated alumni and development operations. So it's it's moving in that in that direction. I worked in higher education at the University of Queensland. And the marketing communications team was completely different, had different reporting structures. Hence, I was hired as the director marketing communications to work specifically for advancement. And it was a challenge having different reporting structures, completely different reporting structures. So if if nothing else, integrate or combining or evolving the reporting structure so that you at least have the same reporting structure, you don't necessarily have to be integrated, is very helpful, I think. So you can support one another. The next one is around how we effectively merge talents across the advancement organization. I think that just working on bringing the alumni development communications marketing together for optimal benefits for the institution stakeholders, just not simply for the units themselves, that's really part of that integrated advancement trend. That's definitely a challenge and something that as a British Montgomery School, because it was a small organization, and I started with a team of three or four, and we grew it to a team of 10. It was a bit easier to do it, it was a bit easier to bring the leadership team along for the ride. It was a culture shift, but it worked. The other thing I did, I asked to change my title from Community Relations to Advancement, Executive Director Advancement and Community Relations, which was really part of changing that culture as well, particularly with the Board of Trustees and the broader community, so that they were understanding what I was trying to achieve. So I'm starting to see that evolve now at a number of schools in the region, where they're losing the reference to development rather than advancement. The next trend that I'm seeing a lot of is the acceleration of digital first practices. This is no surprise, I'm sure, to all of you. 18 months ago, we never imagined that we would all pivot our work, or at least I didn't imagine that I would be pivoting my work to be spending, for me, upwards to five hours a day on Zoom. I was employed with CASE as a remote worker, but I was meant to be traveling around the region and meeting with members and working with members and delivering programs such as this in person. So within two months of me expensing my role with CASE, I ended up working from home, and I still work from home today. So I'm lucky that in Western Australia, where we are, we've been fairly protected from COVID, which has had its benefits and disadvantages because it's hard to get vaccinated. Vaccinations have been slow, but I've been able to get out and have meetings quite regularly with people within the vicinity, which there's five universities here, which has been lovely. But ideally, I really look forward to at some point getting out and meeting people throughout the region, personally, rather than Zoom. But Zoom has had its benefits. We've been able to still build relationships globally that I probably wouldn't have built relationships with without having this platform, or utilizing this platform. And even with my colleagues with CASE around the world in Latin America and Europe, it's been absolutely fantastic. I'm looking forward to meeting them in person, and I'm sure that you're all in the same situation with alumni engagement, etc. But in addition to the digital first practices with the pandemic, essentially, we've leapfrogged consumer behaviors ahead several years from pre-pandemic predictions. So those who are slow to embrace digital engagement communications, there's a disadvantage to them. I've heard a term through, I can't think it was the Napa about Amazon level of personalization. Amazon knows what I want. So why doesn't my institution know what I want? And that's something that I'm thinking about all the time and what we do and how we deliver our work with CASE. So, and that's really part of that acceleration of digital first practices. And social media is definitely an increasingly core tool for multiple types of engagement. I'm sure essentially we've all been relying on social media for our engagement in our mobile apps. And just only a few years ago, the buzz around social media's popularity was its impact on our traditional communication tools, such as our magazines and newsletters, direct mail. But now, you know, we've had to utilize it, integrate it into everything that we do. Adapting to new generations with different behaviors and expectations. The next generation of our major gift donors are younger, also our alumni, and accustomed to digital relationship tools. There's a number of us who've actually done fundraising and closed gifts online. We've been holding alumni functions virtually and surprisingly, you know, although people are getting a little bit tired and getting Zoom fatigue per se, even having 70 people here today or 60 people here today goes to show that there's still levels of engagement of people, despite the fatigue, are still choosing to go online. But interesting statistic around the donors are getting younger and accustomed to digital relationship tools. The average age of donors worth 25 million and above has dropped by 11 years. The average age, I think, in 2014 was 58, while the average age in 2019 dropped to 47, according to a report that I read now for report. And younger donors, such as millennials, are much more mission driven now. So we've got to be very aware of the different behaviors and experiences. How do we remain viable and relevant in the lives of multi-generational alumni and donors, which I experienced that at Brisbane Grammar School, because of the 150 years of the school, I had a lot of alumni that were in there. We celebrated 100 year birthdays, as well as the young alumni. So it's not just for donors, but for alumni engagement. You've got to be almost driven by personalization, individual affinities. Meaningful career resources and connections. Alumni are expecting to be helped find a job as a student, and the majority of alumni surveys have ranked career support as one of the most important services young alumni want, which I've seen that again, in particularly my last two roles. Lifelong learning opportunities match to life stages. So that virtuous life cycle, you know, particularly in the higher education sector, providing opportunities for our alumni to engage, whether it's short courses, long courses, postgraduate courses, and even in the school sector, providing business breakfasts, all sorts of different educational opportunities. And loyalty and return on investment. I've seen it again, in my roles, that our alumni and our donors are really looking for a return on investment. That conversation is coming up often. You know, they feel that they've spent a lot of money for their education, and they're expecting institutions to be both innovative and well managed to sustain that value. Leading teams in challenging times and unprecedented change. How often have we used that word pivoting? And I think that's one of those words that I've got a little bit tired of hearing. We pivoted to, you know, we've done this, we've done, but I can't think of how many times, and May will attest to this, where we've had to be extremely nimble from the beginning of last year, when we had a conference registrations of, you know, almost 500. To last year, we had to cancel it, which was really disappointing. It was my first year working with CASE. And then this year, you know, May itself has learned to deliver an online conference of 400 people, and, you know, extremely well. So, and I just, I really don't need to say more about that, because I think that we're all had that, been in that situation. So my final thoughts, you should know the importance of and the differences between advancement, fundraising, alumni relations, marketing, communications. You should also understand the roles and how all these disciplines fit under the umbrella of advancement. You, to remain competitive, our education institutions need advancement with clear vision that can be communicated effectively, and also relevant to our target audiences. Fostering lifelong relationships with the community and donors requires dedicated and data-driven coordination among the disciplines of which I outlined today. Also, I've said it a few times, probably more than a few, the integrated advancement model that CASE exposes is essential. Collaboration and committing to working together and to support the objectives to advancement, advance education in your institutions, and make an impact in your communities, really, I think is critical. And monitor, monitor and strategically draw on trends and best practices to evolve your advancement strategy across all disciplines. So I hope that I've given you a little bit of information and food for thought. So I've talked a lot about trends, and I've talked also a lot about integrated advancement. If you go to www.case.org resources, where some of my research is pulled from, and also based on my experience, you will find a lot of resources if you haven't already. You know, we've got a number of white papers and you can literally search on in the keywords on things you're looking for. I also meant to include in here some of our advancement checklists. We've got checklists on establishing a department, whether it's a foundation, on each portfolio I've talked about, marketing, communications, fundraising, alumni relations, advancement services, and we call them management checklists. And you can literally go through those checklists and it gives you a sense of things that you should be doing or considering as you set up your department if you're actually setting it up or new in your role. Some of the things I've just spoken about, I would have loved to have dived deeper into some of the data and trends, but we just don't have time for that today. But the key analysis and trends that I talked about are very important to stay to monitor them. And some of the latest from our AmAtlas team, you've got alumni engagement metrics, surveys, Case Ross, and the Canadian Supportive Education Survey, U.S., same one, and the Australian New Zealand Supportive Education Survey. All the most recent ones can be found at that link, which is resources, key analysis, and trends latest at AmAtlas. So they're fantastic surveys just to give you a sense of what's happening in the space, and particularly in fundraising and alumni engagement metrics. The alumni engagement metrics is fairly new, but it's growing in participation. Questions? I see Claire, or you can put it in the chat, but I see Claire Rhodes from the University of Wollongong has a question. Thank you so much for your presentation. I just wanted to ask, you said that advancement is one of the key things about advancement is that it's about advancing our institutions. This question may be a bit more relevant for Australian institutions, but just wondering, what role do you see advancement playing in terms of a university or an organization's reconciliation action plan? Is that something that we should also be factoring in and focusing on for our work? That's a very good question, Claire. I definitely think so. I think that they're a stakeholder, particularly Indigenous in Australia, but in fact, it's a DEI effort. The diversity, equity, inclusion, that case, it's a new strategic pillar of what we're looking to do is develop that area of inclusivity. I think that you've got to be mindful of all your stakeholders, regardless of which region you're in. Yes, very much so. Absolutely. Very good question. I think, in fact, I should have had a slide and a point in the trends on diversity, equity, inclusion, because it is something that case you'll hear more of. In fact, we've set up an inclusion centre and we're doing some work over the next, we've started, we've commenced work and focus groups around that very topic and just ensuring that, as I said, no matter where we are in the world, we're mindful of particularly diversity and inclusion. Roxy Jones from CQU, Central Queensland University in Brisbane. Yes. Sorry, that was too many words, so I just abbreviated. Thank you. This one's kind of a bit of a roundabout question and might be too hard to answer, but you mentioned it being really important for, in the advancement team, for marketing and comms to be included in that, having a really close connection. In the instance where that's not the case, do you have any tips or hints on how to navigate around that to just try and, I guess, bring that importance back to what we're doing in that philanthropic space and ensure that we're working as cohesively with our marcoms team as possible? Absolutely. My role at the University of Queensland, when I started working there, they hired me as the Director for Marketing Communications Advancement, and because we had different reporting structures, so not only did I report it to the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Advancement and the Marketing Communications Office reported into the CFO of the university, and I'm not sure if there's anybody in here in the room from the University of Queensland, but I'm still quite comfortable in saying that, because it's not, that structure no longer exists. I think they did pull the structures together, so they had at least the same reporting structure, but it was very difficult to try and bring that Marketing Communications Office routine along the journey of what Advancement was trying to achieve, and what you often see is different brands developing. You see, you know, the campaign construct that you're trying to build for a campaign ends up being a bit divergent from what the university's brand is, and you really don't want that to happen at all. You want them to work together. So, I spent my first six months building relationships with the Office of Marketing Communications, which was down the hall, getting to know the Director very well and spending time alone, and rather than trying to establish our own brand for the campaign, I did work closely with his team on developing the brand that was consistent with the branding of the institution. So, it really was upon me to do that, because they didn't understand what Advancement was at that time. It was a new construct to them, you know, that we're going back over 10 years ago, and for our U.S. colleagues in the room, you might have been further along in that journey than in Australia, but 10 years ago in the university sector, higher education sector, a lot of people didn't appreciate or understand what Advancement was. They knew what a Development Office was and fundraising, but not the Advancement construct. So, I spent my first year bringing them along the journey, understanding what Advancement was, what we're trying to achieve, I actually invited them to case conferences and tried to bring them along on that journey, you know, so that they could develop an understanding. And so everything, so yeah, it was upon me to understand the university's brand, make sure that whatever I was doing was aligned. So did that answer your question? Yeah, it does. I think there's probably more challenges that we need to work through, as I'm not in a position for that to be possible. But I think just the concept of trying to bring them in and get them to understand it from a point of view where we're going to be on brand, but we just need to work together and help to educate them in that space is probably the key message I've taken out. So thank you. Yeah, yeah. Well, and to further comment on that, and I think I said it at some point in this in my presentation is that stakeholder engagement is very critical, particularly when you know, we all know that it's critical if you're going into a fundraising campaign, you need to bring all of the institution internally along for the ride, you know, along for the journey. It's not that office up there that does all the fundraising, you've got to involve all your internal stakeholders. So that goes to say that you need your marketing communications team aligned, you need financial services aligned, you need human resources in the university or in school, whether you're in a school or university, it's the same, I experienced both in both type of institutions. So it's critical that you bring, as I said, all your stakeholders along for the ride. And that's a major process that takes time, that's a couple year culture shift in working through those stakeholders and bringing them along. Any other questions? Could I ask a question, Heather? Absolutely, Dawn. Hi. I'm a bit on the shy side, I suppose I'm very new to this area. And I'm also been tasked with a pretty what I see as a pretty big remit. My background has been 23 years in higher ed in the Australian setting, but and I've had a couple of secondments to advancement in large institutions. And now I'm in a vocational education institution that's wanting to really focus on their alumni engagement quite specifically. One of the, it's a really, I guess, a pretty broad and generic question, what I'm finding is because we aren't a case member institution, and we probably won't be able to do that in the short term, I'm really trying to find appropriate resources for helping me to build on what I need to build on in my current role. So I don't know if anyone has any advice or direction in resourcing specifically for vocational education, which my experience, as I said, is all been from higher ed, which has a very different focus and point of engagement and lifecycle with those key stakeholders. So I don't know if any, that's a really broad question. But I don't know, Heather, if you have any advice or direction there or anyone else. So the way I understand what you're, so you've moved into a vocational institution, and they're just in a different place in the journey of what we call advancement, which I would say that a lot of schools were in that same position. And a lot of the, we're in that same position are still in that same situation, particularly in Australia, I can speak from Brisbane Grammar School just happened because 150 years old, had a bit more of a mature model. So the more mature in schools do, but there'd be a lot of schools that don't even have a department, necessarily, they rely on one individual, or a foundation. So you got to start somewhere. I had a conversation with a group, Korean Independent Schools Association back in February, who a lot of them had no budget, no resources, but like you, they knew that they wanted to be able to do something and really start to build that. So and also, you can actually start an alumni engagement program without much budget, especially when we're in a Zoom room. So I would say no matter where you're in your journey, if you've got a got a goal in mind, you can still you can still get there. And there's lots of people that will help you. There's a whole Zoom room here people in Australia that you could probably pick up the phone to I can say you could probably pick up the phone to Carly, who works with me in Perth, who's who used to work at the RSPCA, and has transferred her skills from a not for profit, and learning about the advancement world. It's probably heard enough from me to that, that just because you're not not a member, there's always someone here to support you. And I'm sure that there's other as I said, in the room, I see Claire Richards, who's nodding her head from University of Melbourne. Yeah, I just think that one thing about CASE, I hate the saying that used to say copy and I shouldn't even say the word may, but people used to say it was an acronym for copy and steal everything. I changed that to copy and share everything. And really, that's what the CASE community is about. So, you know, we hope to see you as a member someday. But that's absolutely not critical. You can be on our mailing list, you can still access some of the resources on our website and touch base with me. And we can help you with, we can find you a mentor too, potentially. It's great. Thanks so much. Any other, any more questions? I'll jump in with another one, if that's okay. So you mentioned that even within integrated advancement division, sometimes there's tensions between or just push and pull between development and alumni relations. What are some of the key things that you've done or that you would recommend that we do to sort of help overcome some of that push pull? Again, and I can go back to my most recent experience at Brisbane Grammar School because it was five years and a lot of culture changing and a lot of that conversations around. So one of the things, and particularly not just with the alumni relations team, but also with the community, because we had 300 volunteers who were asking that same question, always being asked for money. And there was that tension. So one of the key messages that I raised was that time, treasure and talent. So there was the time, treasure and talent that we're not just looking to our community and our alumni for money. We're looking for giving the time, which I mentioned earlier, donations and also their expertise. The other thing that I used to talk about was that it's not necessarily, we should stop talking about fundraising as being fundraising for the institution. You're not fundraising for Brisbane Grammar School or the University of Melbourne or the university. They're just, you know, the facilitator for that fundraising. And it's for going towards education, scholarships, curing diseases, solving problems, bigger problems. The institution just happens to be the facilitator. So don't be thinking of our fundraising efforts as fundraising for the school or the institution. Think of it as solving problems. And I had many of those conversations with community members who were challenging me on this fundraising question. And the other was like, a lot of people don't understand why we have to fundraise, particularly in Australia. Again, I know we're referring back to Australia, but I think the US might've been there 50 years ago, whereas the government funding, the dollars are declining. And with the government, with the dollars, the funding declining, the cost of an education is higher in some cases than what we receive in fees. So you can't build new buildings. You can't provide scholarships. You can't do research if you don't have other sources of funding or philanthropy. And that was a key message, that although we've got all these assets and a fantastic campus and a beautiful school, that doesn't mean that financially, you know, we can provide all these other, to maintain that academic excellence or to maintain the quality of the facilities, the campus, the grounds. What questions? Oh, Hilary. Yes. Hello, Hilary. Hello. I just wanted to touch on trying to keep engagement with the younger generations. I think traditionally they sort of forms of engagement, which we can't kind of have at the moment. We're in lockdown six here in Melbourne. So there's a list as long as your arm of events that have been cancelled, not just postponed, but cancelled indefinitely, because there's just too many. So if you can't engage with people face to face, I think traditionally the other forms have sort of been like mail outs, which are both expensive and you can't measure the effectiveness of it because you don't know who's grabbing it and just chucking it in the bin. And I think also a lot of the, not the younger generation, just, you know, as time has gone by, I think a lot more people are environmentally aware. So they don't necessarily like, they get the paper stuff in the mail and go, you know, what are these guys doing? This is landfill. So I guess your only other options out there are like online events. And like you said, people have Zoom fatigue. So I was just wondering, you know, you sort of talked about mobile apps that you find the younger people are sort of engaging with better because you can't kind of rely on a particular generation forever to support and give gifts to the institution. Sort of what apps and how, you know, how are you finding people implementing that in their institutions? How do you monitor that? Like from my perspective, all I'm thinking about is like, you know, Facebook and then all the trolls you get and stuff like that. So I'm just thinking, you know, what more could you tell me about that? Personally, that's a difficult, challenging conversation for me because I'm not, other than our partners that we have that are offering or developing 2Contact and Potentiality and then Blackboard, but I'm not using the device or the apps myself. I'm not very aware that we need to, or that there's a number of different products out there. And I'm actually keen to hear from anybody in the room who is doing alumni relations well and utilizing different apps and programs. You know, I think a conversation that I had with someone not too long ago who did a digital first presentation, highlighted that depending on where you are in the world, it's different too. People are using different devices and different programs and they're prioritizing whether it be, you know, as you said, Facebook or whether it's LinkedIn or whether, but yeah, it's, is anybody in the room using something that's different, using a product for their alumni engagement that you can share with Hilary? It looks like everybody's got some of the similar challenges. Maybe we'll have to have a whole session on digital engagement again. Or maybe someone's got something really good and it's a secret. Sorry, to cut in, do you mean other than the ones you mentioned? So, other than Toucan Tech or Potentiality? Yes, yes. Or just something that you're using to engage with your alumni that works. It's working really well. Here at the Hutchins School, we have been using Toucan Tech and it is working really well. We've had a really good take up of well over a thousand of our old boys being engaged through Toucan Tech. And we found Toucan Tech incredibly easy to work with as well. And what is the scope of what Toucan Tech offers? We've set up a community hub. We run our reunion events out of there. We run our old boys newsletter out of there. We've set up a shop. We are just setting up a mentoring program between, with our alumni. We've also just about to undertake a survey. So, because it's been up and running for just under a year, we'd like to survey the members that are using it. We're doing footy tipping, which is always good with an all boys alumni. But it's all sort of touch points and all engagement with our alumni. And we've had some great feedback, birthday emails. It's just the little things really. Yeah, fantastic. And that's exactly, that's, I was going to say, Graduate is another one that we used at Brisbane Grammar School for mentoring, but we certainly hadn't broadened using, it sounds like you're doing great work with that, with Toucan Tech. Anybody else have any ideas, any platforms that they use that Hilary can learn from? There'll be someone else using another platform, mentoring programs. So, and which I've found that we use Graduate for was the mentoring platform and Potentiality has a community platform. And as I said, there is others. We will provide the Toucan Tech details for you. And there's another few coming online. I know that I can't mention today, we'll be promoting them, that are alumni engagement or community engagement platforms that are looking at true personalization, Hilary. So, hold that space because it's happening. So, and the other thing I was just, I think I mentioned that because for example, as I said, at Brisbane Grammar School, I had alumni and community who were eight different generations. So, it's unfortunate and that's that personalization, it takes a bit more effort, but you actually have to tailor a lot of your communications for the different generations. So, what I did at the school was create stakeholder groups and age brackets that I knew that the 90-year-olds still love to get print communication. They still wanted to see it on there, but we did reduce the volume of print by a lot and reduce the quantity. But they still, and I knew they still loved that publication because they used to write to me and actually engage with the editorial and tell me when we made spelling errors in that publication, which was very common. But then you've got the new graduates or the young alumni, and particularly in a school who are 17, 18 years old, they don't even use Facebook anymore. And they don't even read their text messages half the time either. So, they're an incredibly difficult group to reach out to. I could do a whole session, as I said, on digital, because I think we've looked at trends and people's attention span has gone from 10 or 8 seconds to something like 4 seconds. And so, you've got to be... And the amount of time, just think of yourself and all the apps that you use on your phone. And the younger that you are, the greater your dexterity and the more apps that you use for communication. So, multiple different channels are required depending on the demographics of your stakeholder group. I hate to say it. So, Hilary, I'm not sure that fully answers all your questions, but you can certainly watch the space because I think that we've got some room for a digital communication platform or digital session, which we have some great speakers, don't we, May, in that space? Okay, back over to you. Thanks. So, sort of just tacking on to the last question, really. I know that we've noted a couple of times that there's quite a bit of Zoom fatigue. So, I was just wondering, sort of a call out to everyone, if your role focuses on events at all, how have you guys managed this during COVID? I guess, have you solely relied on Zoom or Teams or anything like that? Or have you actually tried different platforms to increase interaction or just any tips or tricks that you might have? If anybody's shy, you can put it into the chat or raise your hand. Love to hear from you. Oh, Hilary's got her hand up. Is that a question or you've got a response for Bec? I've got a response for once. This is something that I'm new to this institution. So, it's something that sort of predates my coming on board. But I know that recently they did a like a giving day and they use that platform charity like that's built with a D. And the head of sort of my advancement team actually did a sort of webinar thing for that company. But I know that that was highly effective. And, you know, they got the surprising sort of gifts that came from that. It was a last minute thing because of a snap sort of lockdown meant that the giving day that was going to happen as an actual proper in-person event, you know, stopped at very short notice and swapped over to online. So, yeah, charity would be my suggestion. Well, thank you. Yeah, I've seen a few good giving days and charity is definitely one that's doing some work across Australia. But there's, I'm not sure who UQ is, but they rolled out a fantastic giving day virtually. They closed their campaign over 600 million. And I'm sure the other universities giving days, you know, have been rolled out online. So, and I, yeah, there's a college, I'm trying to think of which one it was, had a very, tripled through doing a giving day online virtually. So it's possible. We're coming. You're welcome. Oh, I've seen someone put in the, you can try a platform named Kumo Space, which I haven't heard of that one. And there is a question in here. I'm only day two in my role. Okay, very new with alumni advancement. But in my previous role, we were solely Zoom. However, for professional staff conference, I'm organizing, we're looking at, oh, it's not a question at Pirate TV platform and Reg's Edge. So, okay. So I think it's time for me to wrap up. What I wanted to do is just quickly to say, thank you very much. I wanted to remind you to watch the on-demand sessions. Thank you.

advancement

fundraising

alumni relations

marketing communications

integration

collaboration

digital engagement

Toucan Tech

diversity