The Advancement Lab. November 5 and 6, 2026.
Omni Tempe Hotel at Arizona State University.
Twenty institutions. Forty senior leaders attending in pairs. A working session that designs the bridge from the next twelve months to 2035.
AI has compressed the gap between what institutions promise and what they can prove. Declining traditional revenue, rising ROI expectations, workforce disruption and generational shifts compound the pressure.
Advancement is the office that brings in the dollars that pay for research, financial aid and the institutional ambition every president talks about. It has been working with infrastructure that does not match its mandate. The for-profit world built modern data infrastructure twenty years ago. Most advancement offices have not.
You cannot connect the dots if you have not collected them.
The advancement office of the next decade looks fundamentally different from the one that exists today. Not in its tools alone but in how it is organized, how it operates and how it leads inside the institution.
Advancement can no longer be optimized as a set of functional disciplines. It evolves as an enterprise capability that integrates engagement, intelligence, partnerships and capital in service of institutional strategy.
The advancement leaders who move first will shape the category. The rest will be reorganized by it.
The advancement office sits on three structural advantages most institutions are not operating as enterprise capability. The Lab is built around them.
The three advantages are connected. Industry defines what the institution produces. Philanthropic capital funds what industry credentials. The alumni network is the closed loop that compounds across both. Most institutions operate them as separate functions. The Lab tests how to operate them as one.
Most advancement leaders are still positioned as the people who raise the money. The strategic conversations about AI, data infrastructure, workforce design and institutional transformation are happening in the president's office, the provost's office and the CIO's office. Advancement is consulted late or not at all.
That is the wrong position. The advancement office sits closest to the community that speaks for the institution. It owns the data on alumni, donors, employers and the constituencies whose loyalty is the institution's structural moat. In a sector facing a relevance fight, that position is strategic, not operational.
The Lab gives you the language, the framing and the artifacts to take that argument back.
You go from the office that raises the money to the office that helps the president see around the corner.
Or
If you know a leader who belongs in the room, nominate them. We reach out directly. No introductions required.
Each institution sends two participants. The advancement CEO or SVP. An innovation partner from inside the organization who can translate strategy into operating reality. Attendance is by invitation. Selection is built for strategic peer density, not logo diversity.
A thirty-minute briefing call confirms fit before invitation.