Schedule and Sessions

Transform your internships into an industry onramp for underrepresented talent and diversify the pipeline of future leaders in your field. Internships build equity, social capital, expand networks, and make the mechanics of non-profit boards visible. Learn how The Genesee Valley Conservancy focused on contacting former interns and hearing about the impact of the internship on their career, and using their feedback and labor market data to build a business case. This session will help you explore the full financial, social, and professional impact that internships can offer your interns, your donors, and future colleagues in your field.

Leading Without the Mask is a powerful, reflective workshop created especially for BIPOC leaders navigating systems that often require assimilation, code-switching, or emotional labor. This session centers authenticity as both a leadership strength and an act of resistance. Through storytelling, guided reflection, and practical tools, participants will explore the visible and invisible masks they are expected to wear—and the personal and professional costs of doing so. The workshop offers strategies for leading with clarity, integrity, and self-trust while building credibility and influence without erasing identity.

At the heart of every thriving organization is a cohesive, high-performing leadership team, yet only 20% of senior executives believe their team operates at this level.The impact is undeniable: high-performing leadership teams are three times more likely to achieve financial goals, while ineffective teams drain morale, stifle innovation, and slow strategic progress. Great leadership teams aren’t born – they’re built through connection, accountability, and the operating rhythms that sustain performance over time. This interactive workshop is a call to action for CEOs, COOs, and executive teams to embrace their role as the core drivers of organizational health and performance.

Collaborative partnerships are often essential to nonprofit success, but they can also introduce challenges. How do leaders determine when collaboration strengthens their work and when it creates strain?
This session brings together fundraising leaders to examine how partnerships influence mission growth, funding opportunities, and organizational sustainability. As funders increasingly prioritize collective impact, leaders must understand how collaboration affects donor confidence, grant competitiveness, and long-term strategy.
Through candid insights and examples, panelists will discuss aligning expectations, defining roles, navigating power dynamics, and avoiding common pitfalls. Attendees will gain practical guidance for building partnerships that strengthen both mission impact and fundraising success.

This is not performance improv. Leaders experience how to make every employee and manager interaction a collaboration—and why that matters. Through purposeful exercises and focused debrief, participants examine what shifted, what worked, and how it applies directly to their leadership conversations. Think of it as a leadership gym—an exhilarating workout that builds agility and creativity through practice. Nothing phony. Just real experience, real laughter, and meaningful communications and collaborations. Leaders leave with what they experienced immediately at the conference, excited to bring it back to their teams and even their homes.

What if your biggest fundraising challenge isn’t getting donors to give — it’s what happens after they
decide to? Join Crystal Berry, Head of Partnerships & Strategic Accounts at BetterWorld, for an eyeopening
session that uncovers the hidden revenue leaks costing nonprofits thousands in missed
donations. Drawing on real-world fundraising data, Crystal will break down the four critical points where giving revenue is won or lost and share a practical framework to evaluate your own donor experience. Walk away with actionable insights to help more donor dollars reach your mission.

Nonprofits are navigating economic instability, shifting funding streams, policy changes, and rising costs. The organizations that remain resilient are those that prepare for multiple possibilities and build a culture of re-forecasting. In this session, you will learn a practical, IDEA-centered approach to financial scenario planning. We will explore how to identify key uncertainties, develop funding and cost scenarios, and align financial decisions with mission impact. Leave with tools to build scenario-based budgets, identify financial levers, and lead with clarity through uncertain times.

Introducing Mattership: the practice of helping people feel seen, valued, and significant. This presentation explores why Mattership is one of the most powerful forces in nonprofit leadership, fundraising, and human connection. Grounded in neuroscience, psychology, and real-world nonprofit data, this presentation reveals how the simple message of “you matter” builds trust, strengthens relationships, increases donor loyalty, and fuels sustainable impact. Through storytelling, reflection, and practical leadership insights, participants will leave with a renewed lens and actionable strategies to transform donor engagement, team culture, and mission-driven results.

What if the most powerful ethics lesson was not taught from a stage, but discovered through conversation? Join us for a live Fishbowl experience where participants will explore a real ethical dilemma through dialogue, reflection, and diverse perspectives. Watch as assumptions are challenged, viewpoints evolve, and new insights emerge. Then step into the conversation yourself. This is not a panel. It is not a lecture.
It is a new way to learn ethics.

Fundraising success depends on more than a strong donor strategy; it requires strong leadership continuity. This session will help development professionals move beyond reactive hiring and emergency replacement planning toward intentional leadership pipeline development. Participants will explore how to identify critical fundraising roles, assess bench strength, align professional development with organizational priorities, and engage CEOs, boards, and development leaders in shared responsibility for succession planning. The session will offer practical tools for building resilient teams, protecting donor relationships, and preparing organizations for future growth, transition, and opportunity.

Building a high-performing fundraising team isn’t about finding perfect people — it’s about leading the team you already have with intention. In this dynamic session, discover practical strategies to boost engagement, address toxic behaviors early, balance metrics with morale, and sustain resilience in anxious times. Grounded in current workforce research and nearly 30 years of fundraising leadership experience, this interactive session will equip you with actionable tools to clarify expectations, strengthen culture, and unlock extraordinary results through empowered, motivated teams.

Your board doesn’t look like it did 10 years ago — and your strategy shouldn’t either. As legacy CEOs give way to entrepreneurs and next-generation leaders, nonprofits must rethink how they engage, inspire, and win with today’s board members. Featuring insights from Ronald McDonald House Charities of San Diego and national data from the Giving USA Special Report on Generations and Giving, this session offers practical tools to thrive amid shifting board dynamics.

Burnout in fundraising is no longer a personal issue—it is a leadership and sustainability challenge. This interactive session invites nonprofit executives and senior leaders to rethink the “culture of sacrifice” that often defines fundraising work. Grounded in research, sector data, and lived leadership experience, the session explores why burnout occurs, who it affects most, and how leadership practices can either mitigate or intensify risk. Participants will engage in honest dialogue, reflect on real-world scenarios, and leave with practical strategies to foster healthier, more ethical, and more sustainable fundraising cultures.

You're crushing it as a fundraiser. So when the management opportunity comes, you should take it — right? Not so fast. In this session, a fundraising consultant and a successful fundraiser, coached through a real management transition, pull back the curtain on what nobody tells you about leading a team. You'll discover why the skills that made you successful as a fundraiser can actually work against you as a manager, complete a live assessment of your readiness to make the leap, and walk away with a framework for managing up, down, across, and — most importantly — yourself.

LinkedIn mentions of fractional leadership skyrocketed from 2,000 to 110,000 in just two years. Meanwhile, nonprofits are struggling to fill critical roles, battling burnout, and watching institutional knowledge walk out the door. This isn't a coincidence — it's a sector-wide talent crisis demanding new solutions. In this session, you'll cut through the hype to understand what's actually driving this shift, when fractional leadership is the right fit (and when it isn't), and how to make smarter talent decisions for your organization. Leave with a practical framework for navigating the biggest workforce transformation the nonprofit sector has seen in decades.