Report from the AFP International Conference 2014

Just returned from the Association of Fundraising Professionals Conference in beautiful San Antonio, TX. It was great to experience the River Walk, see the Alamo and spend time with great people who are committed to advancing philanthropy.

The AFP membership is incredibly diverse, representing fundraising professionals from small, medium and large charities, in many sectors. It was great to meet new and old friends in higher education, healthcare, as well as social, city and neighborhood causes. A vibrant network of local chapters keeps the organization strong.

Tim Logan, ACFRE, RuffaloCODY’s Senior Vice President of Planned Giving and Healthcare conducted a presentation about what Development Officers need to know about Planned Giving. He also moderated a panel hosted several presentations and talked which focused on about emerging trends in healthcare philanthropy, navigating HIPAA, and success with grateful patient programs. and major/planned giving ID programs. Healthcare The Affordable Care Act is making healthcare fundraising a hot topic nationally and in philanthropy circles, as donors seek to make an impact on research, access and quality.

Attracting and retaining new donors, particularly of the rising Millennial, Generation X and Y generations was a big interest. Many charities are seeing dollar increases, but worried about keeping total donors up. We talked quite a bit about executing a “full channel” approach, which includes great direct mail, phone, e-solicitations and even crowdfunding. The fusion between these channels to tell your story is the key to success in building the next generation of donors.

I enjoyed hearing Derrick Feldmann (@derrickfeldmann) at the Millennial Impact Project talk about engaging young donors. As he said in his session: “What motivates Millennials is a desire to affect their cause through your organization with their friends.” This represents a very different way of looking at things than we have traditionally.

Social media was indeed a significant topic, with numerous sessions devoted to engaging donors and translating these connections to the gift pipeline. Attendees also had a great time interacting online and through the social network-enabled conference app, which made me feel part of the entire conference. Check out Twitter tags #AFPeeps, #AFPIcon and #AFPShift for pictures and posts.

We were excited to bring Michael Greenberg, Co-founder of ScaleFunder, a RuffaloCODY crowdfunding platform that lives on your web site and uses your gift processing along with powerful analytics. In the coming week, we’ll be releasing a whitepaper on crowdfunding best practices based on what we’ve learned over the past few years.

RuffaloCODY makes a contribution to help AFP with the Every Member campaign, and we’re very excited about the success. Thank you to everyone who said “yes” when you received a call to contribute this year to AFP. I’m a proud that my own contribution helps advance our profession and makes professional development scholarships possible.

If you raise money, you should join AFP. Find out more at afpnet.org, get to a meeting of your local chapter, and plan to see us at next year’s conference, March 29-31 in Baltimore.