1. Financial Management of Social Enterprises
Speaker: Kim Crawford, Sutton Frost Cary.
This session will help nonprofit and social enterprise leaders strengthen their financial knowledge and decision-making. This session will explore real-world financial situations that organizations commonly face, including how to identify and manage unrelated business income, navigate tax implications, and implement sound financial management practices. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of different types of costs—direct, indirect, hidden, and overhead—and how to allocate them appropriately for greater transparency and sustainability. The training will also cover best practices in financial reporting to ensure compliance, accountability, and clarity for stakeholders.
2. Bottom-Up Board Leadership: 5 Elements of Leading Your Board Effectively While Working for and
With Them
Speaker: Eddrick Martin, Elevated Momentum
This workshop is designed specifically for nonprofit leaders who want to gain additional insights into enhancing the nuanced skills of leading the board from the executive staff role. Enhance your leadership skills of the board while focusing on the specialized art of managing up to your organization's ultimate decision makers. We will focus on five key concepts that will help to efficiently execute strategies that enhance and redefine how executives lead their boards as well as build relationships, foster accountability and growth. This workshop combines technical strategies, practical exercises, and real-life examples to help empower participants with the methods
and confidence needed to manage and lead their board from the executive staff position.
3. How Your Fundraising Gets Retention Wrong: What Netflix, Starbucks, and Spotify Would Do Instead
Speaker: Ellena Fortner Newsom, Nonprofit Bestie
This session dives into the proven loyalty strategies of billion-dollar brands and shows how nonprofits can apply them to donor engagement. From Netflix's hyper-personalization to Starbuck's VIP experience and Spotify's habit forming
engagement, attendees will walk away with actionable, easy-to-implement tactics to keep donors coming back without constantly chasing new ones. Attendees will rethink donor engagement through the lens of modern consumer psychology, learning how to build donor habits, create exclusivity, and personalize impact in a way that makes giving irresistible. Whether you're struggling with donor fatigue, retention plateaus, or simply looking for fresh ideas, this session will provide immediately usable strategies inspired by the world's most successful brands.
4. Communicating Change in Nonprofits: Using Effective Public Relations to Inspire Action and Manage
Perception
Speaker: Beth Lamb, Key School
Change is inevitable in the nonprofit world, whether it's a leadership transition, a shift in funding, a new strategic direction, or a crisis response. How an organization communicates that change can determine whether it strengthens stakeholder trust or creates uncertainty. Public relations professionals in the
nonprofit sector must navigate unique challenges, including donor concerns, board expectations, and community impact, all while maintaining transparency and credibility.
This session will explore public relations strategies for communicating change effectively, positioning
an organization for success, and ensuring continued engagement from key audiences such as donors,
volunteers, clients, and media.
5. Operations and Risk Management: Considerations for Nonprofit Organizations
Speaker: Heather Flabiano, Forvis Mazars
This session will cover common risk areas for organizations including operational, strategic, financial reporting, and funding risks. The speakers will delve into each of these risks to provide critical areas to assess in order to identify gaps, issues to consider, and best practices to adopt in order to minimize risks. The presentation will address the following areas: Operations – risk management, insurance coverage, IT, critical policies, business continuity Governance – board policies, board and committee responsibilities, conflicts of interest, succession planning Funding and Finance – contribution classification, donor restrictions, gift acceptance policies, gift processing, internal controls.
