2025 Foundation Leadership Forum: Schedule

In today’s challenging higher education landscape, annual giving provides the flexibility institutions need to navigate budget constraints. This presentation will explore how unrestricted dollars from annual giving serve as a financial lifeline for institutions and how you can effectively demonstrate their impact to donors. We’ll also cover how annual giving strengthens the donor pipeline, cultivates lasting relationships with alumni, and ensures ongoing support for your institution. 

Foundation boards can be among the most persuasive advocates on behalf of their institutions, representing community and business leaders who are often among the institutions’ most generous philanthropic investors. Leaders of the University of Maryland College Park Foundation and the CSUSB Philanthropic Foundation will share the ways in which their boards are engaged in community, state, and federal advocacy; approaches to conducting and supporting that work through standing board committees; and examples illustrating the ways that foundation board advocacy have benefited their partner institutions.

Governing boards are typically responsible for oversight and assessment of their chief executives’ performance, but goal setting and assessment can pose unique challenges for both foundation boards and CEOs. Foundation CEOs often have a dual reporting relationship, and their goals and priorities are typically informed by both institution priorities and foundation board expectations. This session will provide an overview of fundamental principles for board assessment of the CEO, developing an assessment model adapted to your structure, setting goals collaboratively, and positioning the CEO for success.

Most institutional investors have a strategic policy portfolio, and they often say they take a long-term approach and will stick to their policy. But to paraphrase former boxer Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get hit. It is never pleasant to think about negative scenarios, but it is certainly easier when times are relatively calm than when a crisis is unfolding. Asking a question as simple as “What are we going to do if our portfolio drops 20 percent?” can help set expectations that can guide you through challenging conditions when they arise. But it’s important to recognize that there are many layers to explore when creating a comprehensive “crisis playbook”—not the least of which is considering all the various types of crises to consider. Many investment committees spend time on the quantitative aspects of scenario analyses and stress testing. But it is also important to ask, “What are the likely behavioral reactions of your investment committee?” In this session, our experts will share examples and recommendations to help you create a framework for your crisis playbook. 

High-impact foundation-institution partnerships require close strategic alignment. Developing and communicating a unified, consistent vision can, however, pose serious challenges. This session will feature a case study that illustrates how foundation and institution leaders at the University of North Dakota collaborated to develop and deliver a closely integrated communications and marketing plan to roll out a new strategic vision and initiate the public phase of a campaign. Addressing both internal and external constituents, the plan has contributed to record growth in enrollment and philanthropic support, and yielded other benefits for the foundation and university.

Foundation board members and staff leaders play a crucial role in shaping the future of your institution. As the philanthropic landscape evolves with fewer donors making larger contributions, university foundations must adapt their stewardship practices to successfully navigate this new reality. This session will explore innovative strategies to:

1. Optimize your foundation’s stewardship operations to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
2. Create personalized donor experiences that showcase the impact of their contributions and reinforce their connection to your institution.
3. Leverage the power of storytelling to communicate the transformative impact of donor support.
4. Engage board members in foundation stewardship efforts.

Even for the best boards, self-assessment can help elevate engagement, refine focus, and energize the board culture. This session provides an overview of a robust self-assessment process undertaken by the University of Illinois Foundation Board of Directors, insights about directors’ perspectives on their roles as volunteers, and ways the board and foundation staff have drawn on the assessment to develop individualized engagement plans, more actively leverage the board as philanthropic leaders, and provide strategic focus for the work of the board.

We all know that culture can eat strategy for lunch, but how do you turn a feeding frenzy into feeding to fuel? Leaders of MSU Denver’s Advancement division undertook a multi-year initiative based on Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead curriculum to transform their staff culture that was challenged by lack of accountability, staff turnover, and underperforming productivity. Starting with an assessment of staff and organizational culture they went through a yearlong program followed by self-developed practices that have transformed their organizational culture and become a model for the rest of the university. These changes have resulted in a quadrupling of fundraising outcomes, staff feedback that they have grown professionally and personally, career advancement for many, and the attraction of top talent. This session will share their process and provide insights on fostering a healthy staff culture that will feed your strategy, not serve it for lunch.

Artificial Intelligence, Zoom, social media, advanced analytics, and instant messaging are all tools that can streamline work for advancement professionals. They can even make fundraising appear as straight forward as following instructions for assembling a birdhouse. At the same time accelerated turnover among institution and foundation leaders and remote work are making it harder to maintain close collegial partnerships. Without forgoing the benefits of new technologies and tools, how can foundation leaders create and sustain the relationships so critical to the work of boards and foundations. This session will focus on the competencies and practices that keep the art and soul alive in our work and organizations by asking: How do we build lasting relationships with key publics? How can we work through complex scenarios and get to the heart of matching the prospect’s goals with our organization’s needs? How do we help our staffs grow as trusted advisors rather than impersonal transaction machines?   How do we foster a vibrant board culture and healthy collaboration with institution leaders and advancement partners?

For institutions facing enrollment declines, identifying alternative revenue sources will be more important than ever. Foundations can play a valuable role above and beyond their work raising philanthropic support. This session explores the ways foundations can help to monetize real estate, research capital, and other campus assets in conjunction with corporate and philanthropic partners.

Good governance entails far more than compliance with fiduciary standards, adherence to policy, and oversight of executive functions. Effective trusteeship can be transformative. This session illustrates how a strong board chair-CEO team worked together to move beyond entrenched practices that were impeding the foundation’s ability to support the institution. Over a period of about 5 years, they completed a merger with their alumni association, cut an over-sized board in half, diversified board composition, elevated board engagement, streamlined committees and meetings, developed the foundation’s first strategic plan, and positioned their foundation to grow fundraising.

Foundation board members and staff leaders play a crucial role in shaping the future of your institution. As the philanthropic landscape evolves with fewer donors making larger contributions, university foundations must adapt their stewardship practices to successfully navigate this new reality. This session explores innovative strategies to 1) optimize your foundation’s stewardship operations to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness, 2) create personalized donor experiences that showcase the impact of their contributions and reinforce their connection to your institution 3) leverage the power of storytelling to communicate the transformative impact of donor support, and 4) engage board members in foundation stewardship efforts.