Stop Fearing the Robot: Practical AI for Prospect Development

This session will review and identify markers using ranking criteria for prospects already in a pool or identified for immediate assignment to a fundraiser portfolio. We will share a simple ranking system that can be deployed using information collected in your database without having to pay for a subscription or use a wealth screening product. A case study of a prospect pool ranking project will highlight the creation process, execution, and results of using an internal ranking system.

Janna Lee, National Parks Conservation Association, Senior Director of Development Operations

Janna Lee oversees Development Operations at the National Parks Conservation Association, where she has worked since 2024. Over the last 18 years, she worked in prospect management at The Trust for Public Land and Johns Hopkins before moving into advancement services at the Medical University of South Carolina and then into her current role. Janna has served on the boards of Apra Minnesota and Apra Maryland and has presented at Apra, AASP, CASE and other industry conferences for over a decade. She's a native Minnesotan who has a B.A. from St. Olaf College and currently lives in Eagan. When she's not in front of her computer, she can be found kayaking a nearby lakes or hiking around a local park.

Sarah Price, BWF, Managing Director, Research Services

Bio coming soon

Refreshing Portfolio & Prospect Management Practices in a Small Shop

This presentation will focus on the process the Advancement team at Avenues for Youth is using to establish new portfolio and prospect management practices. In this presentation you can expect to learn:

• Current best practice guidelines for portfolio sizing across various fundraising roles AND what organizations are actually doing
• The questions that guided our team's thinking about the purpose of portfolios and prospect management for our organization
• How our team collaboratively shaped a new portfolio and prospect management policy to provide guidance for our team's current needs and leave room for future growth and refinement

Avenues for Youth is a local human services nonprofit whose mission is to partner with youth experiencing homelessness to achieve their dreams. This presentation will be most relevant for smaller development teams that have only one or no dedicated prospect development staff members. 

Brita Thielen, Avenues for Youth, Individual Giving Manager

Brita is the Individual Giving Manager at Avenues for Youth, where she leads annual and mid-level fundraising efforts. Prior to this role, she was a development researcher at the University of Minnesota Foundation. Brita entered the field of prospect development after earning her PhD in English from Case Western Reserve University in 2022. She joined the Apra-MN board in 2024 as a Programming Co-Chair and currently serves as chapter Vice President. She loves being part of the Apra community and learning from all of this chapter's intelligent and generous members!

Nora Sullivan, Avenues for Youth, Database Specialist

Nora Sullivan is the Database Specialist at Avenues for Youth. She works behind the scenes to support fundraising efforts through clean data and systems. Before joining Avenues for Youth, she held development operations and CRM management roles with arts and nonprofit organizations, including Tacoma Arts Live, Texas Suicide Prevention Collaborative, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Nora is passionate about using data and technology to strengthen donor engagement.

Navigating the New CRM: Lessons, Landmines, and Leadership

Organizations rarely underestimate the promise of a new CRM, but they almost always underestimate the transition. This session explores the real-world journey of moving a complex enterprise from multiple legacy systems into a single, unified CRM. We’ll walk through the dos and don’ts of preparing for go‑live, the struggles you should expect (and normalize), and what it actually takes to stabilize a system while keeping stakeholders confident and engaged.

You’ll learn how to navigate the messy middle: managing data inconsistencies, aligning workflows, balancing technical and operational priorities, and maintaining trust across a diverse stakeholder landscape. We’ll break down what worked, what didn’t, and what we’d do differently, so your organization can avoid common pitfalls and accelerate adoption.

Alison Freeman, University of Virginia, Director of Prospect Development

Bio coming soon

Beam Me Up, Scottie: Virtual Engagement Officers in Higher Education

In 2025, Macalester College began using an AI-powered engagement officer through partnership with Version2 by Givezy. Director of Donor Research Adri Viswanatha will share about Macalester's experience using a Virtual Engagement Officer (VEO) and results of the Version2 partnership after one year with their VEO, "Scottie".

Adri Viswanatha, Macalester College, Director of Donor Research

Adri Viswanatha (she/her) has been working in prospect development for nearly 10 years. She currently oversees prospect research, portfolio management and strategy as the Director of Donor Research at Macalester College. Prior to joining the team at Macalester, Adri worked as a prospect researcher for Children's Cancer Research Fund, and as fundraising and operations staff on statewide and federal political campaigns in Wisconsin. Adri joined Apra-MN in 2017 and has served in multiple roles, including as Board President in 2024 and 2025.

Discovering Donor Potential: RFM Scoring with Simple Tools

Recency/Frequency/Monetary (RFM) scoring identifies giving trends that you can use to flag donors for qualification and outreach. With only a handful of data points, you can develop an RFM score that can give you immediate and actionable insights into your data. 

This presentation will: Show the importance of examining and understanding your data; give methods of transforming your data before scoring; provide a template, with formulas, that you can use to score your dataset; gelp you design a baseline project that can be modified for a variety of scenarios.

Kim Follett, Carleton College, Development Research Analyst

Bio coming soon

The Grass is Green Enough: Using Excel to Power your Data Analytics

Are you or your leaders on the data analytics fence, eyeing the likes of Tableau or Power BI? The fact is that the grass is NOT always greener when we spend more money or use specialized software. We as prospect development and data professionals can optimize our utilization of Excel, a tool most of us have access to and are familiar with, to contribute to our organization's success. Users can build on their existing skills to clean and transform data, automate analysis, and build interactive visualization tools, all without stretching your budget. In this session, we will highlight some of the things you can accomplish with Excel and Power Query, from someone who is primarily self-taught. We will also review use cases, touching on portfolio optimization and pipeline summary reporting. Impress your colleagues, save some "green" for your organization, and invest in skills that you can take to organizations of any size and any industry.

Ryan Gallagher, NPR, Senior Manager, Prospect Development

Bio coming soon