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.

Upcoming Meetings

TBD

Past Meetings

Wednesday, June 21

Join us for a tour of the new Forum Hotel at Darden for the Engagement Community of Practice! If you have yet to visit this beautiful property, this will be an opportunity to see all of the spaces and amenities available for your events. 

We will begin our tour at Smith Alumni Hall, the new home of the Darden Foundation. Coffee and pastries will be available while we network.

This community, led by Allison Reed and Erin Perry, 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.

Upcoming Meetings

September 27, 2023, 11 a.m. to Noon, Virtual

In this month’s meeting, we will inform the community about UVA’s FY24 premium campaigns, hear from guest speaker Grace Castro, Director of Annual Giving Programs at the University of Florida, collaborate on testing strategies and plans, and be informed of A/B testing capabilities in SalesForce Marketing Cloud and A/B testing best practices. Register now.

Past Meetings

May 17, 2023

We learned about University Annual Giving’s FYE plans, prospect management at UVA, and the DXO program.

January 23, 2023: Giving Days

• Presentation

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.

Past Meetings

Thursday, August 17, 2023

The topic was the University’s financial model. We explained what it is and the implications for fundraising, faculty, and sponsored research. 

In order to make data-driven decisions, units across Grounds rely on informative analyses communicated through innovative tools. This group, led by Joe Mathers 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 Joe Mathers or Sarah Sawtelle to join or for information regarding future meetings.

Upcoming Meetings

TBD

Past Meetings

Advancement Performance Demo/Tutorial

Friday, September 1, 2023

This virtual tutorial led by Sarah Sawtelle guided participants through extracting participation numbers from raw Advancement Performance Data. 

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Advancement Communities of Practice (CoPs) are expertise groups with the goal of developing a shared practice by regularly engaging in discussions and joint activities, sharing information, helping one another, and solving common problems.  This CoP is for analysts to get updates on technology related strategic initiatives and share knowledge, ideas, expertise, and resources with the purpose of supporting data driven decisions.

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.

Upcoming Meetings

TBD

Previous Meetings

Wednesday, August 16

What does it take to create an inclusive space where people feel like they belong? This meeting included a facilitated conversation around creating a culture of inclusion. We analyzed different workplace and constituent event scenarios and offered resources and recommendations for creating spaces that match our aspirations for cultivating belonging.

Monday, May 15, 2023

Laura Phillips, senior manager for stakeholder relations, and Tara Telfair, chief learning officer, joined us for a conversation regarding the collection, tracking and storage of DEI data points.

• View slide deck
• View Guidelines & Considerations for Ethical Collections of DEI Data
• View recorded meeting

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 Heather Engel, 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.

Upcoming Meetings

TBD

Past Meetings & Resources

January 24, 2023: Gift Planning Strategies in Times of Uncertainty

• Slides

We are excited to announce the launch of a new Community of Practice focused on international fundraising and engagement. This CoP will enable increased coordination for our international advancement work across Grounds, and will allow our community to hone skills and explore best practices related to development and engagement globally. 

Carrie Jordan, Director of Development for International and Global Affairs, and Michael Goetz, Senior Director of the UVA Clubs Global Network, will serve as co-chairs. 

Upcoming Meetings 

TBD

Past Meetings 

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

In the previous year, our community collaborated on significant engagement and fundraising strategies across Europe and Asia. These events and engagements were guided by UVA's pan-university global strategy. We discovered more about UVA's international presence from special guest Ambassador Steve Mull, Vice Provost for Global Affairs at UVA. 

Thursday, May 18, 2023

Inaugual meeting

Make the Most of Your Portfolio

Led by Corley Raileanu and Robin Mitchell, 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.

Previous Meetings

Monday, January 23, 2023 

Leti McNeil Light, Executive Director of Principal Gifts & Strategic Initiatives at UC Berkley, and Matt Hutter, Assistant VP of Development for Duke Science & Technology, brought their expertise in securing transformational support for large-scale institutional priorities, interdisciplinary research initiatives, institutes and centers to UVA. Leti and Matt focused on creating the conditions where transformational gifts can happen.

Improving the Donor Experience

This community, led by Sasha Monty and Sarah Mullen, 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.

Upcoming Meetings 

TBD

Past Meetings

November 9, 2022

• Access presentation and other resources