8-9:00 a.m. – Continental Breakfast
9-10:00 a.m. – Breakout Sessions
Beyond the Dashboard: Turning Annual Giving Data into Decisions with (and without) AI
Julie Knight Ph.D., University of Central Florida
Ballroom A
Annual giving has always generated a lot of data. The challenge is turning all those numbers into decisions, and now, figuring out how artificial intelligence can help us do it faster and smarter. Whether you’re working primarily in Excel, building dashboards, or beginning to experiment with AI, this session will explore practical ways to use data to better understand your annual giving program and drive fundraising strategy. We’ll cover the essential metrics every annual giving professional should know, how to move beyond simply reporting results to identifying trends and opportunities, and where AI can make analysis more accessible and actionable. No statistics degree, data science team, or AI expertise required. Bring your spreadsheets, your questions, and your curiosity. You’ll leave with practical approaches you can apply to your own annual giving data and a better understanding of how AI is changing what’s possible with the numbers you already have.
A Healthcare Fundraising Forum (Part 1)
Christina Wisz Stevens, MPA, Tampa General Hospital, Stephanie Odierno, AdventHealth Orlando, and Austin Hersh, Stanford University
Ballroom B
Healthcare institutions offer their own challenges (HIPAA) and opportunities (grateful patients, healthcare professionals, companies and the community) for annual giving fundraising. Join us for a special annual giving forum all about healthcare. Join us for a two-part forum that will share group information and discuss topics including:
✔ What does the prospect journey look like: from acquisition to renewal to major giving prospect?
✔ Using digital options to the fullest: emails, unique web landing page, ongoing impact updates;
✔ Tribute and 3rd-party giving-making the process easy and meaningful;
✔ What’s new in stewardship;
✔ Valuable vendors – Who are you using? Email vendors? Print? Business Associate Agreements?
✔ Giving initiatives: Doctor’s Day, Giving Day, Nurses Week? Do these help?
A Year in Review of Communications from The Fund for Davidson
Morgan Kee, Davidson College
Ballroom C
What happens when you look back at 365 days of annual giving appeals? You find out what
actually worked. Join us for a candid, data-driven deep dive into a full year of communications (mail, email, text, student outreach, phone, AI officer, etc.) from The Fund for Davidson. We’ll look at actual examples to dissect the strategies that drove donor engagement, the messaging that fell flat and ways we segment our communications.
10-10:15 a.m. – Break
10:15-11:15 a.m. – Breakout Sessions
Favorites From the 27th Annual Giving Appeal and Idea Exchange
Bob Burdenski
Ballroom A
For 27 years, Bob Burdenski has hosted an annual exchange where hundreds of institutions share thousands of annual giving innovations, ideas and success stories. Awesome appeals, terrific technologies, dynamic discoveries and marvelous messages. It was a great year of pushing the envelope in direct mail, digital and beyond. Come and see 3-time CASE Innovations in Annual Giving author Bob Burdenski dump out his bag of BOB (Best of the Bunch) favorites for some of the clever fundraising ideas of the year.
A Healthcare Fundraising Forum (Part 2)
Christina Wisz Stevens, MPA, Tampa General Hospital, Stephanie Odierno, AdventHealth Orlando, and Austin Hersh, Stanford University
Ballroom B
Healthcare institutions offer their own challenges (HIPAA) and opportunities (grateful patients, healthcare professionals, companies and the community) for annual giving fundraising. Join us for a special annual giving forum all about healthcare. Join us for a two-part forum that will share group information and discuss topics including:
✔ What does the prospect journey look like: from acquisition to renewal to major giving prospect?
✔ Using digital options to the fullest: emails, unique web landing page, ongoing impact updates;
✔ Tribute and 3rd-party giving-making the process easy and meaningful;
✔ What’s new in stewardship;
✔ Valuable vendors – Who are you using? Email vendors? Print? Business Associate Agreements?
✔ Giving initiatives: Doctor’s Day, Giving Day, Nurses Week? Do these help?
The Spaghetti Method: Creative Brainstorming to See What Sticks
Diana Forbus, University of Maryland
Ballroom C
In this active session, participants will work in small groups on creative brainstorming exercises, ultimately applying these skills to answer a “”How Might We…”” question around an Annual Giving topic. The idea of this session is not to necessarily walk away with the perfect one-size-fits-all answer, but to explore the possibilities that emerge when you foster an environment of creative thinking. Often when we’re thinking about fundraising we get bogged down by what is feasible, dismissing ideas that just won’t work and end up with familiar results. In this session, participants will generate answers to the question and evaluate these ideas (good and bad, creative and wacky, unknown and familiar) for potential, and develop them for feasibility. It’s really easy for people to pre-judge their own ideas as weird and therefore wrong, when we should be comfortable throwing out ideas, no matter what. Oftentimes, some of the most creative ideas come from saying yes and then seeing if you can make something work instead of just automatically saying no.
11:15-11:30 a.m. – Break
11:30-12:30 p.m. – Breakout Sessions
An Annual Giving Directors’ Final Forum
Harold Williams PhD, ODU, Julie Knight Phd, UCF, Diana Forbus, U of Maryland & Other Fab Faculty
Ballroom A
Join a group of fhe SEAGC faculty for a last-call Q&A and discussion of topics, trends, issues and futures for annual giving.
Leveraging AI for Annual Giving
John Cornell
Ballroom B
AI can write better emails and edit your copy. Yes, it does that well. But it can do so much more for you as a fundraising professional. This session shows you how to use AI to save time, stay organized, and manage your workload. You will see practical ways AI can help you build annual and event plans, research prospects, and generate ideas outside the box.
From Single Gifts to Double Impact: Modernizing Corporate Matching Strategies for Annual Giving
Carson Oakes, Double the Donation
Ballroom C
Annual giving programs thrive on creating meaningful, high-impact opportunities for supporters. Employee matching gifts present an inspiring way for alumni, parents, and friends to double their philanthropic footprint without increasing their personal out-of-pocket commitment. Because many donors simply need clear, timely guidance to navigate their employer’s programs, modernizing your institutional strategy can immediately elevate annual fund outcomes and deepen donor engagement. This session offers a proactive roadmap for advancement leaders seeking to expand corporate matching success across annual giving campaigns. We will explore collaborative methods to enrich employer donor insights, integrate inspiring matching gift messaging across multi-channel appeals, and establish donor-centric touchpoints that educate constituents while protecting your team’s valuable time. Attendees will gain actionable frameworks to weave employee matching into annual appeals, giving days, and reunion campaigns, empowering donors to maximize their giving potential and driving sustainable annual fund growth.
12:30-1:00 p.m. – Closing Session
Closing Session
Ballroom A
Be there for our fast finale to the 2026 Southeast Annual Giving Conference, where we’ll draw the winner of our sponsor bingo contest, hear some favorite words of wisdom from all the previous sessions at the conference, and say thanks to the speakers, sponsors and all the other attendees that made the conference such a success.