Our Curriculum

Strategic Questioning and Listening
(101 – 301 levels available)

Whether you're a seasoned veteran or just getting started, we guarantee taking your donor visits and solicitations to the next level. Join us for a hands-on, experiential, fast-paced, and information packed session. Together, we will uncover your listening weaknesses, discover solutions that work for you and expand your questioning skills. Enhance two life skills that are essential to productive relationship building and securing leadership and major gifts.

How to Never, Ever Get a "No"

All the planning, engagement, interaction, and stewardship only set the stage. In the end, you need to make "The Ask!" This highly interactive workshop will help everyone artfully ask for gifts in a sure-fire, fail-proof and compelling manner, resulting in an abundance of "Joyful" commitments. This session can be tailored for development staff, administrative staff and board members or volunteers – or a mix of these groups.

Major Gifts, Moves Management and Strategy Development

"Moves Management": you've heard the term but what does this really mean for the relationships you're building with top donors – to events or outright gifts you're soliciting face-to-face? In this session we focus on building your working knowledge of how to apply advanced strategy development to your work with leadership annual donors, major gifts, and in high-end events. We'll discuss how to identify top prospects, build the right messages into your visits and events to raise sights and overcome objections.

Advanced Strategy Development I and II
(201 and 301 levels available)

Working through complex, real-life case studies over two sessions, this workshop provides sophisticated visit planning and strategy development for relationships that build from discovery through solicitation for a major gift. This session includes refresher training in moves management; strategic questioning; and offers intensive role-playing. It is guaranteed to solidify skills and increase confidence in making purposeful face to face visits that result in larger, sustainable gifts.

The Ins & Outs of Donor Visits
(101-301 levels available)

These intensive sessions covers all the core elements of successful relationship building from the first time you meet a prospective donor through the "Joyful Yes!" to the gift you want. You'll practice strategic questioning and listening skills, discuss how to get the appointment and plan your visits from discovery, through engagement and solicitation, solidifying skills and confidence on the spot. It's guaranteed: everyone will have successfully solicited a gift by the end of this session!

Stewardship 101: The Foundation for the Next Gift

Donors report that accountability is now as important to them as belief in your mission as a reason for giving. As donors become increasingly selective and loyal in their support of fewer organizations, providing outstanding stewardship to all our donors at every level is critical to our success. Often though, stewardship is delivered to only endowment or scholarship donors; or stewardship efforts are shelved entirely as the drive to raise funds outweighs the time to report on gifts closed. During this session, we'll redefine the elements a great stewardship program, discuss the benefits of providing meaningful, universal stewardship to our donors and outline steps everyone can take to create a strong foundation for the next gift from their donors.

Stewardship 201: The Second Most Powerful Move

Here's a tool for everyone and a plan that really works. Asking for the right gift at the right time is the most powerful donor initiative you can implement. Demonstrating the IMPACT of that gift in ways that are meaningful to the donor is a very close second. In this session, we'll discuss how to deliver stewardship that inspires increased giving, donor loyalty, major gifts, and viral marketing. You'll come away with concrete action steps, tools you can use and the inspiration to use them.

Building a World Class "Giving and Getting" Board (or Advisory Council or Volunteer Committee)

You work hard, develop sophisticated donors plans, and run outstanding events. In the end, however, you need help – help from volunteers, alumni, friends, and community leaders who know the right people and are willing to open doors. Your board (or volunteer committee) is the key factor to real success. In this practical, inspirational workshop, we'll help you develop a board or volunteer committee transformation plan that will work for you and the implementation strategies to put it into motion.

Creating a Culture of Philanthropy, Engagement and Stewardship (Trending)

What if everyone – CEO, physicians, deans, faculty members, program leaders, senior staff, board members, volunteers – understood, embraced, believed in, and acted on his or her role in philanthropy in a collaborative and donor-centric manner? What impact would that level of cooperation, integration, understanding, and passion have on your ability to raise maximum gifts? What if the entire organization believed in customer service and productive and satisfying donor engagement? In this powerful workshop, we'll help you define a culture of philanthropy, engagement and stewardship for your organization, assess where you are today, and map a road to success.

Campaigning From Soup to Nuts: Understanding Risk & Readiness

This highly versatile workshop is ideal for staff leaders and volunteers planning their first campaign or for new staff who need to understand the nuts and bolts quickly so that they are in step during a campaign. It is perfect for helping volunteers understand campaigning and their critical role as well as for mission staff and their roles. We define terms, explore the phases, discuss roles and responsibilities, answer "burning" questions and identify the areas most critical to address to build campaign readiness and mitigate campaign risk.

Managing Up, Down and Out

A favorite from the CASE Management conference! This economy demands that, from top to bottom, we all become more and more "generalists", stepping up as is needed, as single-purpose, specialized jobs become a luxury. One of the results is the strong drive toward increased collaboration, and the need to flex management style and skills. This active, practical, skills building session will provide participants at points in their career with strategic management questions for different scenarios, the opportunity to practice negotiation skills, a discussion of situational leadership, applying the right management approach at the right time. Each person will leave with a better understanding of their own management style and preferences, and plans for how they can adjust to work more efficiently and effectively with others on their team and throughout the organization.

Power Packaging: Making the Case, Powerful Vision Meetings

In this hands-on, creative workshop, we'll help you craft powerful cases for support that you can write, speak and spread, inspiring larger gifts for the right purposes. We'll examine the fresh idea of power packaging, a unique way of selling your priorities that will work for you. Through discussion, role-plays, and exercises, you will walk away with the tools and confidence you need to make the case to everyone of your annual and major gift donors.

Fundraising for Mission Staff
(101 and 201 levels)

Deans, physicians, faculty members and program staff – everyone has a role in telling our story, identifying and engaging potential donors, and providing powerful stewardship that invites new gifts. In this practical, content-rich workshop, we enroll mission staff in the fine art and joy of fundraising. They will leave with new enthusiasm and comfort and increased skills. Your immediate follow-up plans will solidify the experience with action and results.

The Transformational Partnership: How CEOs, CDOs and Board Leaders Can Become a Motivated and Successful Team (Trending)

Join your peers in a rich discussion of roles, performance, accountability, and relationship building. We know that when this partnership works organization growth surges. We designed this session for CEO/CDO and board leadership teams to work together on clarifying roles and responsibilities, developing strategies, solving problems, identifying best practices, and sharing fresh ideas that work.

Managing Your Time and Energy... and Still Having a Life

Your world is full of mixed messages: Close, close, close gifts – but respect the donor's timeline. Get out the door but… document what you are doing and attend (lots of!) meetings. Find and qualify new donors while providing stewardship and keeping current donors. It is a tough balancing act. You know that you could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week and never be finished. Couple that with the fact that success brings more work and you understand why you're always running as well as running out of time and energy. This problem-solving, interactive session is designed to help you (and your team) effectively manage your conflicting responsibilities, growing portfolio, time, energy, resources, and responsibilities and still have a life. We'll diagnose the problems, assess skills and circumstances, and develop sure-fire solutions that you (or each member of your team) can take home and apply immediately.