This community, led by Savannah Schuermann and Greg Driscoll is charged with engaging UVA alumni, parents, and friends through a recurring and structured platform to:

• Create collaborations for efficient use of resources and an improved alumni experience
• Network with colleagues to harness the collective experience and intellectual resources of engagement professionals across Grounds
• Propose solutions to address community-wide challenges
• Learn from industry experts, both internal and external

Alumni relations and engagement staff across the University are encouraged to participate. Submit a ticket to the Help Desk to join.

This community, led by Megan Poole and Brad Neathery, shares and discusses best practices on a wide array of annual giving topics, including direct mail, donor acknowledgment, and leadership annual giving.

Annual giving staff across the University are encouraged to participate. Submit a ticket to the Help Desk to join.

Resources

• May 30, 2024: Meeting recording | Slides
• November 8, 2023: Meeting recording | Slides
• Slides from September 27, 2023 meeting

This community, led by Ellie Myers, aims to increase corporate and foundation giving across Grounds by:

• Sharing best practices for soliciting and stewarding foundations and corporations
• Solving common problems
• Creating partnerships between the University Advancement Corporate and Foundation Relations team and schools and units
• Collaboration

Fundraisers and others working to solicit gifts from corporations and foundations are encouraged to participate. Contact Ellie Myers to join.

In order to make data-driven decisions, units across Grounds rely on informative analyses communicated through innovative tools. This group, led by Teresa Liu and Sarah Sawtelle, provides a forum for analysts to dive into the nuts and bolts of the data. By sharing data practitioners’ combined knowledge, ideas and expertise, the Data Community of Practice aims to iteratively shepherd new resources into production and foster successful analysts to best serve the Advancement Community. 

Understanding that Advancement Professionals who consume data have a vested interest in new information and tools at their disposal, this group will convene special sessions to share newly incubated resources and provide training opportunities with the broader Advancement Community.

Meetings are aimed at a technical audience, and interested parties should contact Teresa Liu or Sarah Sawtelle to join or for information regarding future meetings.

Resources

The University offers a number of on-Grounds, data-oriented workshops and events throughout the year. Most, if not all, are free and open to members of the UVA community, including those of us in Advancement. For those looking to broaden skillsets or brush up on some rusty toolsets, these are ideal ways to do so.

With the Fall semester underway, most of the organizing groups posted their fall schedules – the links to each are below.

University Library Research Services – 1-2 hour workshops with Tableau, R, Python and Excel.

Health Sciences Library – While some sessions are focused on health-related topics, 1-3 hour workshops on wrangling and analyzing data (with R and Excel) or basic statistics are more general.

Research Computing – 2-hour sessions in R and Matlab. More focused on computing at scale.

Humanities Informatics – Weekly meetings presenting new research around data ethics and application.

Scholars’ Lab – These sessions are more focused around GIS and makerspace (and Sewing Basics!).

The UVaR R Users Group, UVA Tableau Users Group, R-Ladies Charlottesville, PyCho,  and Charlottesville Data Science meetups hold sporadic events throughout the year as well.

The Data Science Institute hosted this year’s Datapalooza on November 1.  If you missed it, you can view the recorded live stream here.

Improving and Strengthening Community

This community, led by Cate Liverman (Director of Constituent Relations, Medical Alumni Association) and Tiffany Morris (Assistant Director of Strategic Stewardship, University Advancement), is a key animating force for implementing and evolving DEI efforts over time and in every aspect of our work

• Join this group to add your experience, voice, and action in support of our shared goals
• Meetings will include:
  • Profiles of DEI best practices at UVA
  • Historical highlights from UVA's BIPOC community
  • Opportunities to learn and share how we can all infuse our work with DEI principles

All Advancement Community members are encouraged to participate. Submit a ticket to the Help Desk to join. Click here to join us in Teams.

Resources from Previous Meetings

• December 6, 2023: Slide deck
  If you have any questions about the Points to Ponder newsletter presented in the December 6 meeting, please contact Emma English at eje2tw@virginia.edu or Sadira Glendenning at sg8fx@virginia.edu.

Related Information

• Visit the DEI Resources page for Advancement Community DEI updates, learning resources, organizations, and to read about diverse perspectives from across Grounds.
• Request copy of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Advancement by Angelique Grant

Maximizing Future Gifts

This community, led by Dane Ferre and Elizabeth Hilles, is focused on increasing planned giving performance by helping others learn more about planned giving as it relates to prospecting, blended gift conversations, gift vehicles and assets, legal issues, tax considerations and successful current gift discussions. 

Fundraisers from across the University interested in learning more about planned giving are encouraged to participate.

This community, led by Carrie Jordan, enables increased coordination for our international advancement work across Grounds, and allows our advancement community to hone skills and explore best practices related to development and engagement globally. 

Make the Most of Your Portfolio

Led by Bo Greenwood and Whitney Wilson, this group provides a welcoming intellectual environment for front-line fundraisers to discuss and share best practices for effective and efficient major gift fundraising, develop meaningful professional relationships with partners across Grounds, harness and have access to the collective intellectual capital of the front-line fundraising community at UVA, and propose solutions to community-wide challenges. This group is open to all fundraisers who carry a portfolio.

Improving the Donor Experience

This community, led by Caroline Livingston and Karyn Rader, is focused on

• Collaborating for efficient use of resources and an improved donor experience
• Networking with colleagues to harness the collective experience and intellectual resources of donor relations professionals across Grounds
• Proposing solutions to address community-wide challenges
• Learning from industry experts

Development staff across Grounds with an interest in donor relations and stewardship activities are encouraged to participate. Submit a ticket to the Help Desk to join.

Resources

• May 30, 2024: Meeting recording | Slides