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1st Annual Canadian Regional Workshop:
A Culture of Collaboration

Date: Friday, April 10, 2015
Location: Hart House, University of Toronto Campus | Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H3

Registration Fees

* Payment for this event will only be accepted by credit card. Thank you for your cooperation.

Please join us for an optional pre-workshop networking reception on Thursday, April 9 from 6 - 7:30 pm at Hawthorne Food & Drink in Toronto. Please RSVP during online registration.

Workshop Schedule 

Session Descriptions

Keynote | 9:30 - 10:45 am
David Palmer, Vice President, Advancement, University of Toronto

Too often we approach stewardship from the standpoint of measuring satisfaction--an important element of a donor relationship, no doubt, but more a desirable by-product than the ultimate measure of stewardship success. At its best, stewardship is a powerful tool that can drive high performance fundraising, achieve alignment with institutional values, instill a broad-based culture of warmth and appreciation, and enhance the ultimate impact of giving.

Using case studies of large and complex gifts that often involve multiple departments, and sometimes multiple institutions, the session will explore:

• what defines high performance stewardship;
• making stewardship an integral part of advancement strategy;
• managing stewardship across multiple stakeholders and partners;
• fostering a culture of collaboration;
• shaping stewardship programs that drive high performance. 

 Session 1 | 10:55 - 11:55 pm

 1A: How to Build a Comprehensive Stewardship Program (Without Losing Your Mind)
Michelle Waller, Associate Director, Stewardship and Donor Relations, SickKids Foundation

No matter what the starting point, the development of a comprehensive stewardship platform for any Foundation takes communication, creativity, patience, perseverance and a cultural shift. The end result is a culture of gratitude and stewardship takes its place at the forefront of all donor interactions. In this interactive session, you will learn how SickKids created their stewardship program, how they responded to challenges along the way, and where they are, one year later.

Michelle Waller, Associate Director, Stewardship and Donor Relations at SickKids, will share samples, stories and standards that helped to successfully build their program. Join us as we explore the world of stewardship and share tips and tricks to create a strong stewardship infrastructure.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Participants will gain knowledge and receive tools to jump-start the development of a comprehensive stewardship program.

2. Participants will learn how to prioritize stewardship projects and initiatives, while creating a mission-centric program.

3. Conversations about best practices and donor stories will be encouraged, to ensure everyone, including the presenters, learns something.


1B: Engaging and Collaborating with Corporate Partners
Christine Martysiewicz

Looking to grow and steward  your corporate partners? During this workshop Christine will share her own experiences regarding what has proven to be the key elements  to forming a successful, collaborative, long-standing corporate partnerships.  A great session to brainstorm with your peers and walk away with ideas you can implement within your own organization.

1C: Live Collaboration: An Interactive Session on Donor Stewardship
Anne Manner McLarty, President, Heurista, Co., Barnadsville, NC

Come on, let’s be audacious!  We’ll explore the notion of the BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), define individual and group aspirations for our development as stewardship professionals and make a mark on the future of our profession.  What are you doing now, what do you want to be doing and how will you make it happen?  Let’s explore collaboratively, get specific and hold one another to advancing the profession!

Session 2 | 1:15 - 2:15 pm

Through the power of strategic videos, my presentation will promote Culture of Collaboration through a step-by-step process of taking video stewardship to the next level in fundraising and marketing. Through the powerful images of authentic stories, powerful music, and strategic Q & A, the audiences watching videos truly relate to these videos on a very human level. The medium for power visual storytelling can be used in a variety of different mediums – the Internet, television, conferences, event fundraisers, and the cinema.

This presentation focuses on three main areas that enable emotional videos that will resonate with viewers:

1. The Art of Story Telling – This begins with creating an outline of objectives, key research, and the key personalities that will take part in the video – all with a powerful story to tell.

2. The Method of Operation – To every story there’s a beginning, a middle, and end with a call to action. This presentation will take you through that process.

3. Best Practices and Overall Goal – Setting a goal at during this process is the utmost importance. Is it a financial goal? Is it a content goal? This presentation will take you through some very powerful case studies that we worked on with the projects that had had financial campaign goals of reaching 500 million, and ended up raising over a billion dollars after the videos were launched and presented.

If you are looking to up the ante in fundraising, or are looking at new and innovative ways of authentic marketing, join me to present the elements of smart and strategic video production.

Raiser's Edge is the most popular fundraising database in the world because of its power to be a relational system both with its information tracking and how you can use it. Are you making the best use for your donor relation tasks? Are you taking advantage of the 6 degrees of Raiser's Edge? Are all your moves and interactions being tracked accurately?

Learn how tapping into the power of your information through the use of dashboards and reports to give you the details you need to manage your relationships and line up better asking strategies.

During this session attendees will learn the following:

1. Best practices for tracking relationships,

2. Leading standards in dashboard and reporting,

3. Ensuring Actions and Actions tracks support what steps were made and what ones should happen next,

4. Hear about some tips and tricks based on years of best practice and what works beyond theory from a leading expert.

Session 3 | 2:30 - 3:30 pm

Style: Seminar w/ Case Studies & Q&A

We all know the importance of stewarding the relationships with our donors and volunteers. However, some of the most important relationships we have are those internal stakeholders and support staff. Without their help and support, the task of fundraising and delighting our donors becomes very challenging.

This session will demonstrate why developing and nurturing these relationships is so important, and give examples of what can happen when everybody feels engaged in and a part of the fundraising goals.

Are we telling donors what we want them to know or what they want to know? This session will focus on how to make donor relationships two-way. 

Regardless of what you call them - uber donors, principal donors - you know who they are. The size of their gift or the way their gift has transformed your organization sets them apart.  How do you engage your organization's most generous donors? What unique strategies can you use to thank, recognize and engage these donors for the long term? In this session, Susan will share stewardship strategies for your top donors. Bring your own examples to share with the group!