The CASE Library has compiled these resources to help those in leadership roles manage remote teams.

What are advancement leaders doing to build better listening practices and improve their skills? How important is active, deeply engaged listening—not just when it comes to constituents, but when it comes to the internal workings of a team, department, or division? How critical are these habits to strengthening educational institutions?

The longtime higher education leader—and, as of July 1, CASE’s new Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer—talks strategy, collaboration, and innovation

In an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, leadership stands out as one of the most important dimensions of any successful endeavor to transform lives and society through education. Leaders in advancement today must navigate high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity. What leadership requires now more than ever can be summarized in three interrelated domains: transparency, learning, and culture.

Logic alone rarely persuades people to act. An audience—whether it’s a committee, donors, colleagues, or leaders—has to trust you. The essential ingredients of this are craft, caring, and cause. Together, these three elements enhance people’s trust in your problem-solving skills, their belief in whether you have their best interest at heart, and—most important—whether they think you live up to their shared values.

We have been nimble, adaptable, and unstinting during the past two years in what has been a predominantly virtual world for many of us. Human contact, though, is at the heart of what we do. We are born explorers, adventurers, and seekers of companionship and collective engagement in three dimensions to advance education.

In the summer of 2020, when many students faced semesters of virtual learning ahead, President Claudia Schrader of Kingsborough Community College, New York, U.S., wanted to find a way to welcome new students to the KCC family. Thus, the KCC Welcome Wagon was born. Schrader has been visiting incoming freshman and transfer students—about 60 to 70 in total, she estimates—at their homes or workplaces across the five boroughs of New York City, and sometimes Long Island.

How should development and alumni relations best work together? It’s an age-old question for advancement—more relevant now than ever, as institutions grapple with constant change. Ultimately, the fundraising cycle works best when it’s a shared responsibility: when both alumni relations and development teams work together to ensure the greatest potential for success.

Now, after more than two years of living in various stages of pandemic lockdown, it’s time for advancement professionals to reflect on what we’ve learned. Let’s explore how we might rethink our in-person events with four essential tactics: be adaptable, plan with intentionality, leverage partnerships, and create backup plans.

Colleges and universities have been working on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for decades, but higher education leaders say the last two years have sparked a shift. The 2020 racial reckoning and Black Lives Matter movement, campus protests, and pandemic pressures have changed the conversation, expectations for, and nature of diversity leaders’ work. Here’s what advancement professionals should know about diversity leaders’ roles in higher education today—and the future of DEIB work for development.