Curriculum Session 2
Friday, February 1 - 1:45-2:45 p.m.
The Secret Sauce of Direct Mail
Sue and Ron Rescigno
Your direct mail program should run like clockwork, and knowledge of the fundamentals is essential to increasing donors and dollars. Having run successful annual fund programs for 30 plus years, Rescigno's will share with you its proven process for creating and improving direct mail campaigns. You will learn that by following this proven process, you will develop a sustainable direct mail program that will grow and prosper year after year.
Gain Trust in the Wake of Nonprofit Scandals: Differentiate Yourself From Bad News
Gain research-based insight into how nonprofit donors feel about the scandals that are impacting some of our most trusted NGOs. Learn about their significant level of lost trust and what it could mean to your innocent nonprofit in terms of donations. Understand what donors need to know to open their hearts and their wallets and make future contributions to your mission.
Specific examples and methods of how to regain trust will be offered, focusing on surveyed donors' requirements for contribution reengagement.
Donor Visits: Should I Take Someone With Me?
Scripting Joint Visits with a Non-Development Colleague
As gift officers it is our role to be the chief architect and strategist for each donor visit. There are occasions where it is beneficial to bring along your organization’s president, a volunteer leader, another major donor, a faculty member, or colleague. A co-visitor can be influential and helpful in cultivating donors, but without a careful plan of who will say what and when, the visit can easily go awry. Attend this session to learn more about taking others on donor calls with you. We’ll discuss pre-planning essentials and strategy, visit scripting tips, and the importance of post-visit planning.
Optimize Your Fundraising: Transform Your Organization One Experiment at a Time
By testing using a rigorous scientific methodology employed by Fortune 100 companies, we've debunked traditional fundraising best practices and uncovered breakthrough principles that will help you produce transformational results.
In this rapid-fire session, we will look at dozens of real-world online experiments with nonprofit organizations and share the secrets to acquiring more emails, donors, and dollars through the web. We’ll demonstrate how you can apply these principles today to your own online fundraising campaigns. By attending, you will:
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Learn a new systematic methodology for increasing the performance of your online fundraising campaigns
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Be able to implement effective conversion secrets by reviewing optimization experiments and key learnings from top nonprofit organizations
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Understand how to exponentially grow your online fundraising revenue by improving three key metrics
Creative Charitable Planning Under the New Tax Act: A Deep Dive
This session will cover the planning opportunities under the new tax act. You will learn:
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How tax law changes generally have less impact on giving than people think
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How new noncash research reveals best practices for major lifetime and testamentary planning
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How retirement plan Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) are expected to accelerate
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How Donor Advised Funds will be used even more by high net worth donors
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How estate planning broadly and life insurance assets more specifically will be impacted by the new act
Leadership Through Questions — Harnessing the Power of Your Team via Questions
Have you ever noticed how a well-timed, powerful question can change everything? Your success will largely be determined by the quality of the questions you ask yourself. This workshop will use the latest coaching principles to illustrate the outcomes below. You will learn to:
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Discover your deeply held beliefs and values towards a path to greater fulfillment
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Use questions (asking) versus directives (telling) to increase team engagement and innovation
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Delegate via questions to increase ownership and build skills
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Improve your ability to retain information and problem solve
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Create an environment that fosters trust, support and growth
This workshop will focus on using questions to: a) increase your own leadership abilities and path to fulfillment and b) build, lead, and develop an effective and inspired team.
Do Something Special for the Church You Love: Major and Planned Gifts for a Congregation
In a pew near you sits a member of your church who can make a gift much larger than you dreamed. He or she can do something now and also leave a legacy gift that will strengthen ministry and glorify God for generations. But will the parishioner make that gift or gifts? Learn how major and planned gifts in your congregation can impact the life of your church. We will discuss strategies and look at case studies to help not only increase gifts for your church, but also uplift fundraising as a part of your church’s ministry. The major and planned gift work centers around the foundational question: “What Brings You Joy?” It is critical that churches participate in this conversation with members. Growing both the number and size of gifts to your church not only helps your congregation, but ultimately, the various ministries your church supports. Let’s find ways to help our members make beautiful gifts.
Chapel Time
Chapel time revolves around keeping it simple. Together we will walk through practical resources that fit your context and ministry gifts to spark a fire under your children’s chapel time.
Igniting a Social Media Fire
In the world of social media, it’s easy to get lost in too many options, especially for schools. In this session, we will cover which platforms will be most effective to reach your students and parents; how to set up the accounts; and then basic tips and secrets for managing the accounts with limited time.
Curriculum Mapping: Keeping a Focus While Reaching For the Stars
This workshop will assist educators in learning various approaches to map what is taught in each grade level, and how to design a landscape with clear paths that ensure students will be exposed to all they need to learn in your school. Emphasis will be placed on meaningful learning and teaching with innovation that allows possibility thinking while aligning within the structure of required standards.
SPONSORED SESSION: Partnership Opportunities With the LCMS Foundation
David Fiedler and Phil Krupski
The LCMS Foundation was created 60 years ago to help LCMS members and ministries carry out work in planned giving and the investment management of those gifts. That means we exist to serve YOU. Come to this session to find out more about how the Foundation can help grow the number of estate gifts your ministry receives, as well as how our expertise can help you develop other long term funding sources to
carry your ministry forward in the future.