Stewarding from the Inside Out
Session 9E

Session Description:

Is the volume of your annual stewardship reports ever-increasing? Are you dependent upon many people outside of your development team for the facts, figures, and stories that make up your report? How do you juggle all the moving parts and gracefully hurdle the obstacles, all while racing toward your deadline? It can be challenging to produce financial and impact reports for donor-established funds. Unspent funds and unresponsive students can make the task even more difficult.

In this interactive session, you will learn how the stewardship & donor relations team at Boston University built efficiencies through partnerships and technology to address these challenges and manage the in-house production of reports. Annual events, custom-built software, training sessions, and collaborative partnerships with the offices of financial aid, dean of students, general accounting, and general counsel have enhanced their work while allowing BU to significantly increase annual reporting to their donors.

Shop Sizes
Medium Shop (6–10 staff)
Large Shop (11+ staff)

Experience Level
Suitable across all levels

Sectors
Private College/University
Public College/University
Private Secondary School

Categories
Endowment
Major Donors
Relationship-Building
Reporting
Scholarships
Working with Frontline Fundraisers

About the Speakers

Rachel Donahue Loughran
Director, Stewardship and Donor Relations
Boston University

Rachel Loughran leads a team at Boston University to develop and implement engagement strategies for the University’s generous donors.  The team’s responsibilities include gift agreements, acknowledgements, donor recognition, fund management and reporting, and individual stewardship strategies. Finding creative ways to demonstrate to donors the direct impact of their philanthropy is what she finds most exciting about the field of donor relations. 

Loughran has more than 25 years of experience working in philanthropy with professional and volunteer roles including prospect management and solicitation, events director, and volunteer engagement. She has experience in both small and large shops having spent many years at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, the Alzheimer’s Association, and Harvard University. Loughran consults with small nonprofits on project management. When not working, Loughran can be found hiking the White Mountains of New Hampshire working toward summiting all 48 four-thousand footers.

Adrienne Lotoski
Association Director, Stewardship and Donor Relations
Boston University

Adrienne is an Associate Director for Stewardship & Donor Relations for Boston University’s Development and Alumni Relations department. In her role, she provides fund and impact reporting for major and principal donors through communications and events. Adrienne and her team work across the university to produce donor reports with an emphasis on major donors. Prior to her work at BU, Adrienne worked in the media world for WBUR-FM, WCVB-TV, The Arbitron Company, and BBDO. She holds two master’s degrees from Boston University in advertising and arts administration, a certificate in fundraising management, as well as a Bachelor's of Science in psychology from Trinity College.

Adrienne has more than 15 years of experience in the nonprofit world. She spent several years volunteering as a Girl Scout Leader, a museum docent, and a museum board member. She currently volunteers for NEADS, an organization that trains service dogs; she is now working with her sixth puppy. When not in a museum or working with the puppy, she plays tennis and knits.

Lauren Edlund
Assistant Director, Stewardship and Donor Relations
Boston University

Lauren Edlund is an Assistant Director of Stewardship & Donor Relations at Boston University, and works with her team on financial and impact reporting—specifically measuring and demonstrating the impact of donor-established funds—data analytics, student outreach, and special projects. She is a member of BU Development & Alumni Relations' Data Analytic Taskforce, to which she brings a lens of mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative) data analysis.

Lauren's background is in urban planning and community and economic development with a focus on social, economic, and health equity. She has worked in areas of strategy development, social impact evaluation, research, and data analysis for more than 10 years, and thoroughly enjoys conducting impact measurement at a socially-focused university. When she's not working, she enjoys doing yoga, and this past summer she established and ran 10 free yoga classes open to the public to across the Greater Boston area.