Donor cultivation is an ongoing and deeply critical, component of development work. In this session, we will explore the challenges, constraints, and opportunities for building and maintaining these important relationships. After a rapid-fire series of short presentations in which development professionals from a variety of institutions share their own successful strategies for engaging donors, attendees will ask questions, engage in broader conversation, and think deeply about their own work.

Data acts as a "crystal ball" by leveraging predictive analytics, AI, and integrated data sets–such as visitor behavior, market trends, and historical performance–to forecast future outcomes. Learn how museums can collect valuable data and use it to transform raw information into predictive models, actionable insights, and data-driven decisions. From guest sentiment to retail sales, explore different data streams, how they can identify trends, and inform decisions across a wide range of museum operations.

This session will begin with several graduate students sharing their thoughts, fears, and concerns as they enter the museum field in the midst of a myriad of challenges. It will then broaden into a fishbowl session with others joining in the conversation. Leadership from WMA and other organizations will be in attendance to learn how to support, attend to, and address these issues into the future.

How does a museum move from a "cool experiment" with AI to a sustainable workflow? This session explores Utah's intentional steps to integrate Google Gemini across its workforce, providing a macro-to-micro blueprint. From state-level policy and departmental change management to practical collections applications like transcription, learn and ASPIRE to innovate with a unified strategy. This session includes a live prompting lab to translate policy into effective daily practice.