THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24

WORKING SESSIONS, 1:20 pm – 2:50 pm

COLLABORATION & PARTNERSHIPS TRACK – Designing to Collaborate: Building Mission-Aligned Partnerships without Duplication

Facilitated by: Roshawnda Washington & Kara Wentworth, PhD, The Nonprofit Center | LuAnn Oatman, Berks Encore

Across Pennsylvania, nonprofits are navigating a crowded landscape of programs, partnerships, and funding opportunities. Too often, organizations feel pressure to expand—even when it risks duplicating existing work or drifting from their mission. Drawing on real-world experience from Berks Encore, this hands-on learning session invites participants to work together through a collaborative design thinking framework, exploring how intentional partnership design can lead to sustainable, community-driven change.

Facilitators will introduce a practical framework for building collaborations; from identifying shared challenges and mapping assets, to prototyping partnership models that participants can actually carry out of the room. Working in small groups, attendees will engage in guided design activities and emerge with a tangible collaboration prototype built around a challenge or opportunity they care about, whether that’s a sector-wide issue or something specific to the people in the room that day.

Participants will leave with the framework, tools, and a real prototype (plus relationships with potential collaborators) to move the work forward. This session is designed for nonprofit professionals at all levels and organizational contexts, because strong sector partnerships start with people who are willing to show up, think boldly, and build together.

EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY TRACK – Connecting Strategic Goals to Data Strategy – Using Human-Centered Design to Reframe Technology and Staff Workflows

Facilitated by: Michael Rossi, Nashville Analytics, LLC

Nonprofits across the country all face similar questions about how to make their staff workflows more efficient and their organizational data more accurate and useful. This session is designed to help non-profit leaders audit the human and institutional costs of automation, AI, and investment in their technology stack. During this session, participants will take time to draw concrete connections between their strategic plan goals, the humans who undertake this work, the tools available to them, and the pain points inhibiting success. By engaging in a human-centered design-thinking exercise, participants will walk away with structured goals to optimize their staff’s workflow, cut costs, and maximize their ability to communicate strategic plan goals. Throughout the session, ample time will be provided for small-group problem solving, question and answer through an emphasis on data-driven decision-making.

FUNDRAISING & FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY TRACK – The Generosity Roundtable: Rooting Growth in Trust and Long-Term Support

Facilitated by: Tim Sarrantonio, The Generosity Spectrum

Retention is a relationship challenge long before it shows up as a metrics problem, and most of us sense that even while our dashboards pull us toward short-term fixes. This working session brings participants into a facilitated, table-based role-playing game built around a shared retention and growth challenge that will feel familiar to nearly any Pennsylvania nonprofit. Instead of working from case studies or sector benchmarks, players take on character roles and make decisions from inside someone else’s motivation and context, which is usually where the honest insight surfaces. The format treats the people who sustain our work as full participants in the story rather than line items in a renewal report.
Rooting deeper, for this session, means slowing down enough to see how identity and trust actually drive long-term support. Rising together means leaving with shared language and a framework you can carry home and adapt across roles and regions. A post-session resource, assembled through AI analysis of the anonymized handwritten notes and game materials we generate in the room, will reflect the group’s patterns back so the learning keeps traveling after we’ve all gone home.

LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE TRACK – Where You End and the Role Begins: A Working Session for Nonprofit Leaders

Facilitated by: Christy Stuber, Christy Stuber Coaching

The nonprofit sector has a leadership development problem — and it is not the one most people are talking about.
We invest heavily in training Executive Directors to do the job better. Strategic planning. Board governance. Fundraising. Most of itis genuinely useful. What we almost never invest in is the person doing the job — the human being who arrives early, holds the anxiety of the room all day, navigates a board that means well and sometimes makes things harder, and drives home wondering if they are enough.
This working session goes where most leadership development doesn’t. Through structured small-group reflection and facilitated whole-group conversation, participants will name what is actually happening in their leadership — not as a personal failing, but as a predictable consequence of a sector that asks everything of its leaders and calls a competency framework support.
Participants will leave with a specific practice for noticing when they are stepping in out of habit rather than necessity, a written account of what they took on this week that was never actually theirs to solve, and one thing they have already decided to put down before they walk out the door.
Designed for Executive Directors and senior nonprofit leaders. No slides. No lecture. Come ready to think honestly.

NIMBLE COMMUNICATIONS TRACK – Making People Care: Messaging That Connects Humans to Mission

Facilitated by: Marivi Bryant, HOME Agency

Audiences are overwhelmed. Mission statements are everywhere. And many nonprofits are communicating what they do but not why it matters to another human being.
In this working session, Marivi Bryant, founder of HOME Agency, introduces a simple but powerful reframe: mission is not the same as impact. When organizations lead with emotion, clarity, and human connection instead of institutional or grant-focused language, people don’t just understand the work they care about. And people support what they emotionally understand.
Drawing from her presentation Making People Care, developed for nonprofit audiences nationally, Marivi will guide participants through a practical three-part framework for rewriting how they talk about their work: What do you do (in plain language)? Who is it for (a real person, not a demographic)? And why does it matter to another human being?
Participants will write, rewrite, and workshop their own organizational messaging in real time, leaving with language that is clearer, more human, and more likely to move the people they need to reach.

STRATEGY, PLANNING, & ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE TRACK – Equity-Focused Strategic Planning: A Tool for Responsive, Accountable, and Flexible Planning at Any Scale

Facilitated by: Davey Shlasko + T.J. Jourian, Think Again Training & Consulting

It can be daunting to plan for the future during unpredictable times, but planning is an important way to take care of our organizations, our teams, and our communities. Equity-focused strategic planning builds relationships, engages all stakeholders, and aligns priorities with community needs to keep your work relevant and effective even through changing circumstances. This method creates an equitable plan by using an inclusive process. It anticipates the need for flexibility, and builds staff members’ skills for ongoing collaboration and adaptation. Session participants will practice using the model to design a planning process that makes sense for their scale and context – whether planning for a whole agency, a single program, or a network or collaborative project involving several organizations.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24

MINI-CLINICS, 3:10 pm – 3:30 pm

WORKPLACE CULTURE MINI-CLINIC – Beat Burnout and Turnover: How to Establish Role Clarity and Make it Stick

Facilitated by: Kristin McKenna, Compass Pro Bono

To root deeper in our missions and rise together as a sector, we must address non-profit turnover by establishing structural clarity. The true frontier of burnout prevention begins with clear role alignment across interviews, meetings, and retreats.

In this session, Kristin McKenna shares actionable lessons from Compass Pro Bono’s strategic restructuring. You will walk away with a framework to establish day-to-day role clarity, eliminate ambiguity, and protect team capacity.

WORKPLACE CULTURE MINI-CLINIC – Beyond Tolerance: Building Belonging

Facilitated by: Cat Cook + Ian Hill, Centre LGBT+

Moving beyond tolerance means creating spaces where every person feels genuinely welcomed, respected, and valued. This interactive 20-minute workshop introduces participants to the difference between simply accepting diversity and actively fostering belonging. Through real-life LGBT+ stories, small-group discussion, and practical allyship scenarios, participants will explore the everyday experiences that shape inclusion and identify meaningful actions they can take in their workplaces, schools, organizations, and communities. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of belonging and one personal commitment to help build more inclusive environments where everyone can thrive.

WORKPLACE CULTURE MINI-CLINIC – Cultivating Nonprofit Staff Capacity: From Survival to Flourishing

Facilitated by: Jessica Aviva, PhD, FRSA, The Fruition Coalition

Nonprofit work is sustained by the relationships, sense of purpose, and inner strength that carry us through challenging seasons. Too often, the sector’s culture pulls us away from these foundations, leading to burnout, disconnection, and diminished impact. This interactive session invites participants to root deeper into nonprofit sustainability by centering staff wellbeing as a core organizational strategy rather than an individual responsibility.
While many wellbeing sessions focus primarily on personal coping strategies, this session situates those practices within the broader systems that shape how nonprofit work is experienced. Participants will explore how cultures of overwork are created and reinforced, and examine how organizational culture, shared values, and community care can actively create the conditions for both wellbeing and impact.
The session combines brief framing, small group discussion, and simple restorative practices designed to reconnect participants to their purpose, their peers, and their own capacity for renewal while interrupting burnout culture. The session will conclude with an opportunity for collective reflection, questions, and shared insight.
Attendees will leave feeling more grounded, connected, and equipped with practical tools and a framework to cultivate sustainable, people-centered practices within their organizations to strengthen their teams and the communities they serve.

WORKPLACE CULTURE MINI-CLINIC – Four Simple, Effective, & Sometimes Difficult Things Managers Can Do to Build – and Retain – Thriving Teams

Facilitated by: Janet McNally, D.Ed., SPHR, Team Development Services

Managing a nonprofit can be quite challenging, especially in today’s fast-paced, constantly changing, and increasingly competitive environment. On top of all that, training for many a nonprofit manager often comes on the job rather than in professional development settings. This mini-clinic will offer the following four simple, effective, and, yes, sometimes difficult, ways managers can build and keep strong, thriving teams, including:

• Restarting a search process to find the right candidate
• Asking for feedback…and then acting on it
• Encouraging employees to talk to their managers before going higher up
• Structuring your organization to promote from within

WORKPLACE CULTURE MINI-CLINIC – Coming Soon!

Facilitated by: Kiersten Hill, Firespring

Description coming soon!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24

LEARNING SESSIONS, 3:40 pm – 4:55 pm

COLLABORATION & PARTNERSHIPS TRACK – Rooted Here, Rising Together: How Telling Your Story Builds the Partnerships Your Community Needs

Facilitated by: Kelly Kostanesky, KMMK Communications

Most nonprofits are so focused on doing the work that they’ve never fully claimed their place in the community, not just as a service provider, but as a neighbor, an anchor, and a partner. This session starts with a simple but powerful shift: moving from “we serve people here” to “we are rooted here” and exploring what that change in identity means for how you communicate, who you attract, and what becomes possible when you do.
From that foundation, we’ll build the practical communications skills that make partnerships real. Attendees will develop a clear, flexible message that can speak to multiple audiences (community members, funders, elected officials, and fellow nonprofits) without losing what makes them “them.” The organizations that become indispensable partners aren’t necessarily the biggest or the best-funded; they’re the ones who can articulate their value, name what they need, and show up honestly asking: what do we owe each other, and what can we build together?
This session is about more than brand awareness. It’s about becoming the kind of organization that other organizations want to find and building the kind of ecosystem where everyone in the community gets more than any one organization could deliver alone.

EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY TRACK – Prospecting to Proposals: Constructing an Ethical, Mission-Aligned AI Workflow to Supercharge Grant Research and Writing

Facilitated by: Emily Clare, Clare Collective | Ivy Buchan, Invoke Nonprofit Consulting | Adam Marsh, Ledge, Inc.

Artificial Intelligence offers unprecedented efficiency, yet a machine cannot capture the heart of your mission or guarantee organizational grant readiness. True funding success requires deep roots.

In this session, leaders will learn how to prioritize methodology over the machine, establishing a structured, ethical AI workflow that accelerates the grant-writing process without compromising organizational integrity or storytelling authenticity. Moving past basic prompts, we will explore a practical framework for integrating AI into your existing grant-readiness strategy – emphasizing how to save time while rising together with a unified voice, accuracy, or relationship-building. Discover how to ethically utilize tech tools for data synthesis, program logic model drafting, and prospecting high-match foundation tiers—while keeping human-centered ethics at the forefront.

Whether you are a grassroots founder or an experienced advancement professional, you will walk away with:

• a repeatable, mission-aligned toolkit to scale your capacity, optimize your workflows, and secure more funding.
• ready-to-use prompts, checklists, and workflows they can apply immediately in their own organizations.
• critical guardrails to put in place, including data privacy, plagiarism risks, and ensuring your unique community voice isn’t diluted by algorithms.

Together, we will demystify the technology, ensuring your organization roots deeper into its core values while rising to meet modern funding opportunities.

FUNDRAISING & FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY TRACK – Conducting Your Own Nonprofit Market Funding Analysis for Your Organization to Unlock New Sustainable Revenue Streams

Facilitated by: R Perry Monastero, RPM Consulting

Many nonprofits build fundraising strategies around who has funded them in the past without considering the people, institutions, and funding mechanisms that may be just as likely – or  even more likely – to invest in their mission in the future. This interactive session will introduce a practical framework for conducting your own market funding analysis to identify untapped philanthropic opportunities, strengthen strategic decision-making, diversify revenue, and demonstrate market intelligence as a strategic planning and organizational resilience tool.

Participants will learn a practical framework to evaluate their organization’s competitive funding landscape, align mission with funder priorities, and use publicly available data to uncover opportunities across foundations, corporations, government, individual giving, and earned revenue. Through guided exercises and peer discussion, attendees will share insights, compare approaches, and leave with actionable tools they can adapt to organizations of every size.

Designed specifically for Pennsylvania nonprofits, the session encourages participants to learn from one another, build cross-sector relationships, and explore how collaboration can expand funding opportunities across communities. By the end, attendees will have the beginnings of a customized funding analysis and a repeatable process they can use to support long-term sustainability, resilience, and statewide movement building.

LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE TRACK – Accidental Project Managers: Practical Tools for Leading Complex Work

Facilitated by: Jessica Pulliam Petrunak, Inglis

Nonprofit professionals are often asked to lead complex projects without formal project management training. Whether implementing new technology, launching programs, coordinating cross-functional initiatives, or responding to shifting priorities, staff at all levels are managing projects while balancing already-full workloads.
This interactive working session is designed for the “accidental project manager”, the person who somehow became responsiblefor keeping important work moving forward. Rather than focusing on rigid project management methodologies, this session willprovide practical, adaptable tools nonprofit professionals can use immediately.
Participants will work through real-world nonprofit scenarios and apply simple frameworks for defining scope, identifying stakeholders, communicating across teams, capturing lessons learned, and reducing project overwhelm. Attendees will also have the opportunity to reflect on a current project from their own organization and leave with a practical action plan for next steps.

NIMBLE COMMUNICATIONS TRACK – The Role of Nonprofits as Civic Spaces – and Civic Actors

Facilitated by: Melissa Sines + Anna Keilly, Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations (PANO)

Join PANO and members of PANO’s Policy & Advocacy Action Network (PAAN) in this interactive session to help us build on the role of the nonprofit sector as a both a civic space and a civic actor in the current moment. This session will help you understand how to ensure that you’re sharing key information with your community in ways that are transparent, accessible, and encourage honest feedback. We’ll also review the differences and connections between organizing, movement-building, education, advocacy, and lobbying, and what activities across this spectrum are available to nonprofits. You’ll leave this session inspired to get involved!

STRATEGY, PLANNING, & ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE TRACK – From Survival to Strategic Growth: 10 Key Lessons Learned Transforming a Nonprofit 

Facilitated by: Jessica Chappell, Safe Harbor of Chester County

Nonprofits are often asked to do more with less while navigating increasingly complex community needs. Drawing from the transformation of Safe Harbor of Chester County’s emergency shelter program, this session explores ten key lessons learned while moving from crisis management to strategic, systems-based service delivery.
Participants will examine how deeper partnerships, integrated care models, trauma-informed practices, courageous leadership, and organizational adaptability can strengthen outcomes for both clients and staff. Through real-world examples, attendees will learn how to break down silos, design services that reflect the complexity of human experience, support workforce resilience, and build systems that sustain long-term impact.
Grounded in evidence-based practices from homelessness and human services research, this session challenges traditional definitions of success and explores how nonprofits can create meaningful change even in environments marked by uncertainty, limited resources, and non-linear progress.
Aligned with this year’s conference theme, Rooting Deeper, Rising Together, this presentation demonstrates how organizations can deepen community connections, strengthen internal systems, and collaborate more effectively to achieve lasting transformation.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

LEARNING SESSIONS, 9:30-10:45 am

COLLABORATION & PARTNERSHIPS TRACK – Rooted in History, Rising Through Partnership: Adaptive Reuse as Community Development

Facilitated by: Cortney Marengo, Jaybird Foundation

Across Pennsylvania, municipalities are grappling with underutilized historic properties that drain public resources while sitting full of potential. At the same time, nonprofits, universities, and community organizations are searching for meaningful, place-based opportunities to create lasting impact. Too often, these stakeholders work in silos, missing opportunities for transformational collaboration.
This session explores how communities can root deeper in local history while rising together through cross-sector partnership. Using the Jaybird Foundation’s collaboration with Lower Providence Township and Thomas Jefferson University’s College of Architecture and the Built Environment as a real-world case study, participants will learn how the historic Casselberry Property in Montgomery County is being reimagined as a preservation-driven community asset through public-private partnership, academic engagement, and phased revitalization planning.
Facilitators will share practical lessons learned around relationship-building, municipal collaboration, adaptive reuse planning, workforce development, funding alignment, and sustaining momentum across long-term projects. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies for building responsive partnerships that connect preservation, economic development, education, and community revitalization in ways that strengthen both people and place.

EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY TRACK – Fundraising & Social Media Risks in Today’s Legal Landscape: Real-World Stories, Key Lessons

Moderated by: Morgen Cheshire & Beth Dougherty, Cheshire Law Group

In today’s fast-paced digital environment, nonprofits face constant pressure to post, respond, and fundraise in real time. But speed and visibility (and heightened regulatory and public scrutiny) can create risk — a single misstep can quickly escalate into legal, reputational, and donor-relations challenges amplified by headlines and social media.

Grounded in this year’s conference theme, Rooting Deeper, Rising Together, this workshop tackles one of the hottest and hardest topics challenging nonprofits today – how to show up, speak out, and stay compliant in today’s digital world — and creates space for honest conversation about the real-world pressures nonprofits face to speak out while managing the legal risks of doing so. Through interactive discussion and shared scenarios, participants will unpack common pitfalls in social media and online fundraising and learn from one another’s experiences in a way that builds connection and practical insight.

We’ll also examine high-profile controversies and other everyday compliance challenges through a legal lens, focusing on how nonprofits across Pennsylvania can strengthen internal practices and engage responsibly online.

Participants will leave with new insights and approaches, feeling more informed, confident, and connected.

FUNDRAISING & FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY TRACK – Stop Forecasting on Hope: Building the Fundraising Systems & Relationships that Let Nonprofits Rise (in a Complex Fundraising Environment)

Facilitated by: Sharon Alexander, CAP, CFRE, Carbon County Community Foundation | Corinna Krauskopf, Fearless Philanthropi

Fundraising today is more complex than ever. Donors give in different ways, community foundations play a bigger role in local philanthropy, and donor-advised funds (DAFs) often sit between nonprofits and the people who care about them. Then there’s the tension between the metric your board is likely watching most closely –  dollars raised – and the leading indicators where real development work lives – relationships, conversations, cultivation stages. Because even in a world buzzing about AI, development is still, at its core, a human discipline.

The organizations that rise are the ones that build real infrastructure. The fundraising systems that make revenue predictable and sustainable aren’t reserved for Ivy League advancement offices and Fortune 500 companies — they’re accessible to any nonprofit willing to go deeper than tactics and build something that actually works.

Through live polling and real conversation, we’ll dig into:

• Where your systems are breaking down and how technology can make them smarter;
• Where the human element must stay front and center;
• What it means to build strong relationships when you don’t always have direct access to the donor and when giving often flows through intermediaries (e.g., community foundations and DAFs).

You’ll leave with frameworks your whole organization can grow from, including:

• Simple, realistic tools to strengthen stewardship;
• An approach to mapping donor relationships;
• Strategies for identifying gaps in trust; and
• Ways to build more consistent, meaningful touchpoints that fit your capacity.

LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE TRACK – Great Minds Don’t Think Alike: The Future of Operational Design for High-Performing Nonprofit Teams

Facilitated by: Melissa Sherry, WorksWell Consulting

To solve today’s toughest social problems, nonprofits need teams that think differently. Yet, traditional management habits forceeveryone into the same rigid box, wasting talent and slowing progress. True inclusivity is not a statement on a website. It requires a modern approach to operational excellence: treating neuro-inclusion as a core organizational design system.
A nonprofit needs a clear internal framework to unlock human potential. This session moves past standard HR checklists. We will look at how to re-engineer daily operational touchpoints, like onboarding tracks, feedback loops, and project workflows, specifically for diverse brains.
By treating neuro-inclusive design as a business discipline, executive directors can eliminate hidden friction and turn management into a competitive advantage. You will learn how to build clear, predictable, and flexible communication structures that support every type of thinker while driving collective accountability.
You will leave with an actionable blueprint to map your workflows, remove operational bottlenecks, and use accessible technology to streamline daily tasks. Join this session to build a high-performing, systems-driven organization where your people thrive and your mission impact scales.

NIMBLE COMMUNICATIONS TRACK – What Are We Missing? Using Data to Reveal Hidden Community Needs and Drive Better Decisions

Facilitated by: Vinny Cannizzaro & Steve Jacob, Pennsylvania Economy League

Nonprofits, funders, local governments, and civic partners are often asked to make high-stakes decisions with incomplete information. Traditional indicators—such as poverty, unemployment, housing cost burden, and population change—can show where problems exist, but they do not always explain what is missing, why conditions persist, or what interventions are most likely to improve outcomes.
This interactive session will introduce a practical framework developed by the Pennsylvania Economy League to help organizations move from describing symptoms to diagnosing systems. Using publicly available data, participants will explore hidden drivers of community well-being, including care access, financial vulnerability, social connection, service accessibility, and community infrastructure.
After a brief framing presentation, participants will work in small groups to apply the “What Are We Missing?” framework to a real challenge facing theircommunity, organization, or service population. Through guided exercises, they will identify the traditional explanation for a problem, surface hiddendrivers, and reframe the issue in a way that points toward more effective action.
Participants will leave with a draft problem reframe and a practical data-informed action statement to support planning, advocacy, grantmaking, partnership development, or program design.

STRATEGY, PLANNING, & ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE TRACK – Engaging Consultants: A Workshop for Nonprofits

Facilitated by: Larry Green, LG Fundfinder LLC | Michele Walls, MW Strategies LLC | R Perry Monastero, RPM Consulting

For too long, nonprofits have been expected to “do more with less”. When there’s finally room in the budget to “do more with more”, many find themselves not knowing where to start. Do we staff up? Start with a consultant? Go the route of fractional support? Maybe you know you’re ready to work with a consultant but don’t know what to expect or how to prepare for a consulting engagement. If any of this sounds familiar, this session is for you!

Co-facilitated by members of PANO’s Consultant Collaborative and nonprofit leaders who have  worked with consultants, this interactive session will help you get clear on things like:

• Scoping work and setting realistic expectations
• Finding the right match without running an arduous proposal process
• Time horizons for results – especially in fundraising and planning
• Fee structures (hourly, monthly, project-based)

We’ll also spend part of our time together “workshopping” your current challenges with consultants, moving from table to table based on what capacity-building need(s) is(are) top of mind for you.

Come with questions, leave knowing whether you need a consultant, which type, and the next step you can take immediately after the conference. 

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

WORKING SESSIONS, 11:05 am-12:35 pm

COLLABORATION & PARTNERSHIPS TRACK – When the Mission Must Survive the Merger: Using the F.A.B.R.I.C.™ Framework to Navigate Nonprofit Mergers & Acquisitions

Facilitated by: Jennifer Sconyers, Abundance Leadership Consulting

Pennsylvania nonprofits are navigating unprecedented challenges: funding uncertainty, leadership transitions, workforce strain,and increasing pressure to sustain mission impact in a rapidly changing environment. As a result, more organizations areexploring mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, and formal partnerships than ever before.
Yet most merger guidance available to nonprofit leaders is designed for the corporate sector: focused primarily on finances, legal structures, and transactions. What it often overlooks are the cultural, relational, and equity considerations that ultimately determine long-term success. The consequences are significant. Nonprofit mergers frequently struggle after implementation because staff, community partners, funders, and constituents are not meaningfully engaged in the process. Organizations serving historically marginalized communities face additional risks when consolidation decisions fail to account for equity, trust, and community impact.
This interactive session provides a practical alternative. Participants will learn a practitioner-tested, justice-centered framework designed specifically for the nonprofit sector, along with tools and strategies to assess opportunities, engage stakeholders, and navigate organizational partnerships in ways that strengthen mission, protect relationships, and support long-term sustainability.

EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY TRACK – Refuse the Options: Co-Designing the AI Infrastructure Our Sector Needs

Presented by: Remy Reya, Compass Pro Bono | Kara Wentworth, PhD, The Nonprofit Center

The nonprofit sector keeps getting handed the same two options when it comes to AI: adopt it and absorb all the harms — to workers, to communities, to the environment — or avoid it and fall behind. We’re told these are the only choices.

What if we refused both?

The nonprofit sector has moral authority, community trust, and political relationships that the tech sector lacks. But without true AI infrastructure – trusted, sector-specific guidance on how to move forward together – we haven’t had a seat at the table in steering this transformative technology toward positive ends.

This working session, led by The Nonprofit Center and Compass Pro Bono, invites nonprofit leaders to step into a third position: one where we show up not as reluctant adopters or fearful resisters, but as active shapers of AI technology, AI policy, and the AI conversation itself.

Compass Pro Bono is in the early stages of launching the Nonprofit Intelligence Collective (NIC), a sector-building initiative designed as a shared on-ramp for AI strategy: a deduplicated curriculum of vetted resources, a community of practice, and a unified advocacy voice for the social sector.

We’ll use live research, design-thinking sprints, and collective mapping to:

• Name the AI challenges your organizations are actually facing
• Stress-test and shape NIC’s proposed structure against real needs
• Identify the highest-leverage first steps (and who among us will take them)
• Build a draft “nonprofit AI agenda” — one that calls out the harms we’re watching, recognizes our levers of power, and charts a path toward real influence.

Leave with: a shared analysis, a draft agenda, concrete direction for your own organizational approach to AI, early access to what Compass Pro Bono launches, and…co-conspirators ready to keep pushing.

FUNDRAISING & FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY TRACK – Going Beyond the Budget – Building Organizational Readiness for Uncertain Times

Facilitated by: Dayna Shaw Sear, Smart Grant Solutions & Sear Growth Solutions

Traditional budgeting assumes a level of certainty that many nonprofits no longer have. Economic volatility, shifting funding priorities, workforce challenges, technology disruption, and evolving community needs require leaders to think beyond annual budgets and build organizations that are ready to adapt.
This interactive workshop introduces a practical framework for organizational readiness that combines financial agility, scenario planning, leadership decision making, and change adoption. Participants will explore how to identify vulnerabilities, define their minimum sustainable operating model, evaluate strategic opportunities, and improve their organization’s ability to successfully implement change.
Through real-world nonprofit examples, guided exercises, and a hands-on simulation that demonstrates the hidden cost of delayed adoption, attendees will learn why strong strategies often fail to deliver expected results and how organizational readiness can improve mission impact, financial sustainability, and long-term resilience.
Participants will leave with practical tools to strengthen readiness across finance, operations, technology, and leadership.

LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE TRACK – Rethinking Board Development

Facilitated by: Kerry Roeder, Historic Fair Hill

What actions can we take to cultivate ongoing belonging, engagement, and purpose among our boards? How can we redefine board leadership? Who is making decisions for our communities? Go beyond checking off a box and explore how you can authentically and intentionally create a board that best reflects and serves your community. In addition to hearing about specific examples, you’ll participate in peer consulting exercises and group discussions. Leave inspired with practical strategies for your organization that you can bring back and try right away, as well as a long term action plan.

NIBMLE COMMUNICATIONS TRACK – Listening the Rural Way: Turning Small-Town Voices into Big Ideas

Facilitated by: Andrea Lowe, Social Impact Studio Consulting

Listening to your community is essential for understanding local needs, shaping effective programs, and sustaining meaningful impact. Yet many common listening strategies—often designed for urban or technology dependent environments—don’t translate well in rural settings, where resources, access, and relationships can look very different. Rural practitioners must therefore craft creative, tailored approaches that truly reflect the realities of their communities.
In this hands-on learning lab, participants will explore Community Listening strategies that work especially well in rural contexts. Together, we’ll uncover practical, people-centered approaches for gathering authentic input, strengthening trust, and elevating local voices. By the end of the lab, participants will develop at least one ready-to-use strategy they can implement immediately upon returning home.

STRATEGY, PLANNING, & ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE TRACK – Rooted and Ready: Strengthening Nonprofit Resilience Before Disaster Strikes

Facilitated by: Signe Bell, University of Delaware Center for Community Research & Service | Marica Deppen, Office of the Governor for the State of Maryland

When disaster strikes—whether a cyberattack, severe weather event, public health emergency, facility crisis, or community-wide disruption—nonprofits are often called upon to serve while simultaneously struggling to maintain their own operations. This interactive working session will help nonprofit leaders strengthen both organizational resilience and community preparedness before an emergency occurs.
Participants will explore practical strategies for protecting their organizations, including emergency communication plans, data security and accessibility, continuity of operations, facility preparedness, and approaches for maintaining services to clients during disruptions. The session will then shift outward, helping leaders identify how their organizations can contribute to community response and recovery efforts through partnerships with government agencies, businesses, funders, and fellow nonprofits.
Facilitators will provide a planning template, guided discussion questions, and a resilience framework that participants can begin completing during the session. Through small-group discussions and structured planning exercises, attendees will identify organizational vulnerabilities, map community assets and partnerships, and develop initial action steps they can take back to their organizations. Participants will leave with practical tools, peer insights, and a stronger foundation for preparing their organizations and communities to face future challenges together.