Schedule and Sessions

Gen Z is reshaping the fundraising workforce. Leaders who understand these shifts will retain talent and build stronger teams. This session offers candid insight from long-term mentors and AFP Fellows leaders on hiring, supervising, and retaining early-career fundraisers. Grounded in experience and workforce research, it provides practical recommendations for feedback, accountability, and career development. Participants will leave with clear steps to reduce turnover and strengthen their leadership bench.

It’s only human to avoid giving difficult feedback. Yet, it is crucial to deliver that feedback to help your staff grow, deliver, and be the best contributors they can be. In this session, we will consider recent research on best practices in giving feedback, and each develop our own style for giving feedback that feels authentic – and do-able.

Feeling like the peanut butter in life’s sandwich holding everything together but stretched way too thin? This lively, scenario-driven session with Jennifer Li Dotson dives into the caregiving realities of fundraisers balancing donors, boards, aging parents, and kids who always seem to need a ride. Through humor, shared wisdom, and collective problem-solving, we’ll explore how to redistribute the spread, protect your time, and create more supportive organizational cultures. Come for the laughs, stay for the strategies that will keep your sandwich stacked, but not squished.

Rural communities are often praised as resilient yet remain chronically undercapitalized. Why? This session explores how philanthropic leadership models built around density, scale, and visibility can unintentionally exclude dispersed rural hardship. Drawing from research, sector data, and lived experience, Brittany Hotaling examines how governance decisions, funding benchmarks, and participation metrics shape geographic capital flow. Participants will gain a practical framework for identifying rural blind spots in their own organizations and aligning equity commitments with leadership design and resource allocation decisions.

How leaders handle difficult conversations can shape trust, culture, and outcomes across an entire organization. In this engaging session, Judge Ieshia Gray shares a practical framework for leading conversations that lower conflict instead of escalating it. Drawing from restorative practice, judicial leadership, and conflict-resolution training, she offers tools leaders can use with staff, boards, donors, and partners. Attendees will leave with clear strategies to reduce defensiveness, increase clarity, and lead with greater confidence, accountability, and credibility in high-stakes moments.

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 often ask fundraising teams to build generous, authentic relationships with donors, but the organization's internal culture doesn’t always reflect those same values. In this session, nonprofit leaders will explore how practices of appreciation, recognition, and intentional generosity shape the way teams engage donors and supporters. When leaders create environments where employees feel valued, supported, and connected to purpose, that culture naturally extends outward to donors, volunteers, and partners. Through practical strategies and leadership reflection, participants will learn how to cultivate belonging, mattering, and deliberate practices within their teams to strengthen staff and donor retention.

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.

Today’s nonprofit leaders are navigating constant change: shifting donor expectations, rising staff burnout, accelerating technology demands, and increasing pressure to deliver measurable results faster than ever before. Traditional planning models and reactive workflows are no longer enough.
Lauren Sheehan, President of DonorPerfect, explores what it truly means to lead with agility in modern nonprofit organizations. Moving beyond team productivity tactics, Lauren will share how executive leaders can create adaptive operating models that strengthen collaboration, improve visibility, reduce organizational friction, and support sustainable performance across fundraising teams.

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.

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.

What if failure wasn’t something to fear but something to practice? In this high-energy workshop,
fundraising leaders will experience firsthand how normalizing failure breaks down perfectionism and
unlocks creativity, better goal-setting, and team trust. Through liberating structures and hands-on
exercises adapted from real board retreats and team trainings, participants will literally fail
together, laugh about it, and learn. They’ll walk away with a ready-to-use toolkit to bring the same exercises back to their teams. Because “I fail and so can you!”

Have you ever been asked to “just make the goal happen” in ways that don’t sit right with your values—or your community’s? This session is for fundraisers navigating real-world power dynamics with CEOs, boards, and donors. Together, we’ll explore how to manage up without burning out, using an ethics and IDEA/belonging lens to address common tensions in fundraising leadership. You’ll leave with a practical framework for reading power, scripts for pushing back on misaligned requests, and a personal leadership boundary plan that helps you stay grounded, effective, and in integrity in the work.

Stepping into leadership for the first time can feel like being thrown into the deep end. Many fundraising professionals are promoted into management roles without training in managing teams, navigating organizational politics, or communicating effectively with senior leadership. This session explores the real challenges emerging leaders face, including managing up, navigating generational workplace dynamics, addressing onboarding gaps, and managing burnout, and provides practical strategies for building credibility, strengthening communication, and leading sustainably in mission-driven organizations.