I attended the ACUO conference in Wash DC this past October.
It was definitely NOT worth either the tuition or the trip.  Content
was extremely general, lots of no-shows (prelilminary program had LOTS of
key foundations--IBM, Intel, Coca-Cola, HP who did not appear on final
program, plus some pulled out at the last minute).   Some of the corporate
people's presentations were blatant propaganda/ads for their company's
product.  Some of the foundation reps seemed not to understand who was in
the audience.  I attended a Grantsmanship Center two-day conference in S.F.
on private foundations and corporate foundations many years ago (they
apparently no longer offer this).  It was pretty good.  The representatives
from foundations, etc. gave high quality presentations full of useable
content.  That program, however, focused more on proposal writing to these
funders.  I would certainly welcome a good conference featuring private
funders with solid content, including good sessions on proposal submission,
review, processes, etc.  If anyone knows of such a thing, I'd also be very
interested.

-------------------------------
Paula K. Burkhart
Asst. Vice Provost for Research
 and Faculty Development
1219 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1219
541/346-3188; FAX 541/346-2220