Written By Meghan Goff

Ah, to “To Be a Kid Again.”

Last week, we helped the Association of Donor Relations Professionals mark 20 years at the ADRP International Conference in Indianapolis, ringing in this milestone with sessions that reminded us how tapping into the lessons of our youth can inspire even greater impact in our work.

And, because we know that “sharing is caring,” we couldn’t wait to bring our greatest insights home. Here are just a few of the highlights:

Gather Round

Nothing brings people together like a great story – and boy were there plenty to choose from this year! It’s no surprise that this year’s theme paid homage to one of our favorite childhood pastimes – story time – a key tenant of building and strengthening relationships with your donors and constituents. We leaned into the sessions that highlighted opportunities for impact with brevity, learning how to say less with more, and using new tools like metrics, digital platforms, and media to aid in our never ending pursuit of inspiring and engaging with our audiences when time – and attention spans – are limited.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

While the audience was donor relations and stewardship professionals, nearly every session focused on the need for collaborative work, institution- or organization-wide. Whether you’re comms or development, annual giving or stewardship, or frontline fundraising or institutional leadership, conveying real, meaningful gratitude in a way that resonates with your audiences is only possible when we’re all on the same page, telling the same story (one more time for the people in the back). Innovation isn’t born in a silo – and neither is impact!

One and Done, No More

Out with the old? Says who! This year, more than one session (including our own) focused on the power of repackaging, repurposing, and resharing your content in ways that continue to inform, inspire, and intentionally speak to your audiences. Remember those short attention spans? Probably not! Our greatest takeaways came from speakers and attendees who shared the new ways they’re getting more out of donor-focused profiles, stewardship reports, impact stories… and so much more!

Genuine Connection

In donor relations, we often talk about personalization. Customize the sections of the report based on the donor’s interests, add a personal touch with a student thank you, etc. But this week was a powerful reminder that the heart of donor relations is personal connection. We were inspired by a session with Megan Rehberg sharing how she connected via email with museum donors, asking them to send their own photos of their time at the museum and responding with genuine curiosity when they did. Connecting is often more about listening than it is about speaking, and this session and many other anecdotes throughout the conference reminded me of this important lesson. It may not always be possible to connect 1:1 with our entire donor base. But when we can, doing so in a way that is genuine is invaluable!

Test, test, test (not just our microphone!)

From email subject lines to impact brochure segments, there are so many opportunities to test and learn in donor relations. Thriving among fellow data nerds, we learned so much from the robust discussion on best practices, data integration and more. In our session on content atomization, we talked about demonstrating value to leadership. We heard things like “my boss says our alumni have all seen it before and they won’t want to see it again.” PROVE IT. Tag it! Measure it. Pilot it. When we are met with resistance toward an innovative new idea, testing is our friend.

Collaborate Through Play!

We both really enjoyed the keynote on play with Jeff Harry. Our table had a wonderful discussion on how we could incorporate our play style into ways of working. The session was a great reminder that sometimes if we are struggling to collaborate with a new team member or client, we may need to switch up the format! Walking meeting, visual brainstorm, role playing scenarios, etc! We can’t wait to incorporate our play styles into our work in the coming weeks.

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Couldn’t make it to Indy?

Catch our presentation, “Getting to the Heart of the Matter: How to Find, Tell, and Leverage Stories of Impact”

LIVE on Thursday, October 24 at 12:00 PM EDT.