ROOM: CITYSIDE 26/27

When crisis strikes, what you say, and how you say it, can mean the difference between building trust or losing it. In this interactive workshop, participants will step into the role of decision-makers navigating high-stakes situations. Through live scenarios, small-group exercises, and guided reflection, you’ll learn how to craft clear, consistent messages that calm, clarify, and connect with your audience.

Together, we’ll unpack the core elements of strategic messaging: identifying your key audience, prioritizing what must be said (and what must not), and staying aligned under pressure. Then, we’ll shift into crisis mode, practicing real-time responses to situations that test not just communications skills, but leadership, empathy, and credibility.

This session is designed to be practical, engaging, and directly applicable. You’ll leave with a framework for effective communication under pressure, along with tested strategies to ensure your organization’s voice remains clear, confident, and trustworthy no matter the challenge.

ROOM: RIVERSIDE 17

Nonprofits face growing political and financial pressures to abandon their values, especially around DEI. This workshop introduces the True North Leadership Model™, grounded in Principle-Centered, Values-Based, and Character-Driven (PVC) leadership. Participants will explore how moral clarity and ethical resilience can guide tough decisions and protect mission integrity. Using tools from the Moral Leadership Lab, this interactive session helps leaders confront value-compromise, align their leadership with purpose, and embed ethical strength into culture, strategy, and sustainability.

ROOM: CITYSIDE 24

This session is for professionals tired of waiting for permission. For ambitious voices holding back to avoid rocking the boat. For the quiet leaders making things better—without the credit. True leadership isn’t granted. It’s claimed through Presence, Awareness, Courage, and Trust. In this energizing talk, Coach Jackie introduces the PACT Framework, a soulful, practical approach to leading from within and influencing up, even when the title or authority isn’t yet yours.

ROOM: RIVERSIDE 15

What happens when policymakers are also nonprofit leaders, board members, or active volunteers? This workshop brings together a panel of legislators who live at the intersection of government and community service. They will share how their nonprofit experience shapes their policy perspectives, how their roles in public office influence their work with local organizations, and what current policy issues mean for the nonprofit sector. Through discussion and audience Q&A, participants will explore how nonprofits can more effectively engage with policymakers who understand their realities from the inside.

ROOM: RIVERSIDE 14

Staff wellness is not a luxury, it is essential to organizational sustainability. This workshop reframes wellness as a systemic responsibility, not an individual burden, and equips leaders and staff with strategies to build healthier workplaces where both people and missions thrive. Participants will explore how leadership, culture, and operational systems can embed resilience into organizational life and shift the narrative from burnout to flourishing.

Drawing from trauma-informed frameworks, nonprofit leadership practices, and practical strategies for both work and home, this session will:

Challenge myths about wellness, including work-life balance and “empty cup” thinking.
Highlight how compassion, boundaries, and joyful practices sustain leaders and teams.
Provide actionable systems and strategies that make wellness measurable and sustainable.

Participants will leave with tools and next-step questions to strengthen resilience and well-being in their organizations and personal lives.

ROOM: RIVERSIDE 12/13

Unrestricted revenue is essential for nonprofit resilience, and event fundraising is a powerful way to grow it. What if your current event could inspire hundreds of participants to actively fundraise for your mission and raise hundreds of thousands in the process? In this practical session, Meghan Morin and Natalie Ulrich will share how Bikes Fight Cancer and The Hot Chocolate Run became community-driven fundraising movements. You’ll learn how to design inclusive events, build a culture of storytelling, grow mission-aligned supporters, and use data to drive results. Leave with strategies to turn participants into passionate fundraisers and take your event to the next level.

ROOM: CITYSIDE 24

To be successful on stage, improvisers practice and learn the skills of being positive, saying yes to all possibilities, collaborating to solve problems, listening deeply, being in the present moment and developing trust with their team. All these skills also apply to building community and creating a sense of belonging at work, something that is essential to high staff morale and retention rates.

This workshop will focus on “Applied Improv”, using simple, easily accessible theatre games and activities, played with partners right in the audience. Together, we’ll explore how the skills we practice transfer to daily work life. Learn to build trust and deepen connections with your colleagues all while laughing and having fun!

Creating safety and engagement is Howard’s specialty. This workshop is filled with joy and will be accessible to everyone. No experience is necessary and no one is expected to act in front of the group. Come have fun and build skills to take back to your organization.

ROOM: RIVERSIDE 17

Great leadership isn’t about being the loudest or even the smartest in the room it’s about being the clearest. Clarity isn’t just for those with a formal title, it’s a communication skill that strengthens trust, reduces conflict, and builds healthier workplaces at every level. Professionals are often conditioned to equate kindness with avoidance, soft skills with weakness, and accountability with confrontation.

This session redefines what effective communication looks like by combining two transformational truths: empathy and emotional intelligence are superpowers and accountability is an act of respect. Through real talk, practical tools, and bold mindset shifts, we’ll explore how to communicate with clarity, compassion, and consistency, whether you’re leading a team, collaborating with peers, or managing up. You’ll leave with a communication playbook you can use to set expectations, deliver feedback, and strengthen trust without sacrificing relationships, morale, or your own voice.

ROOM: RIVERSIDE 14

This workshop explores the essential of being able to tell your nonprofits financial story. It emphasizes how technology can enhance financial transparency, streamline reporting, and improve engagement with key stakeholders. Participants will learn to identify the most critical financial data and leverage digital tools for efficient financial communication. The session will highlight best practices for presenting financial information using dashboards, visualization tools, and automation, ensuring nonprofit leaders can make strategic decisions with confidence and clarity.

ROOM: RIVERSIDE 12/13

In a time of rising pressure and uncertainty, nonprofits are being called to lead with clarity, courage, and care. This panel brings together voices from the field to explore how to stay grounded in your mission, rebuild trust within teams, and find new ways to move forward. Panelists will share practical tools and lived experiences for leading with heart, protecting team well-being, and responding to change with vision and resilience.

This interactive and highly-engaging panel is designed for everyone, from frontline staff to executive leaders, and will offer insights and tools that meet participants where they are and support them in navigating the “”rough waters”” with confidence and purpose.

ROOM: RIVERSIDE 15

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are all about change. Organizations in the United States spend $8 billion on diversity and inclusion training each year. Yet DEI initiatives are failing or being abandoned. The results simply aren’t there: 45% of US workers report experiencing discrimination in the past year and 75% of employees in underrepresented groups do not feel they have personally benefited from their company’s DEI programs. There are many reasons for this. While inclusion initiatives such as forming Employee Resource Groups and unconscious bias training are very important first steps to improve inclusion across the organization studies finds these activities alone are far from sufficient. This workshop will explore strategies you can deploy to develop and execute a DEI effort that not just a social justice initiative but an organizational performance imperative.

ROOM: CITYSIDE 27

Community members, whether they are receiving services, leading change, overcoming systemic barriers, or drawing from lived expertise, offer invaluable insight into what works, what doesn’t, and what’s needed. Yet too often, their voices are missing from the spaces where decisions are made. This interactive panel brings together nonprofits, food access coordinators, community leaders, and other stakeholders working to shift power and center community voices.

Together, we’ll explore the value of lived expertise, the barriers that often prevent community members from being heard, and strategies to move from tokenism to true co-creation. You’ll hear stories of what’s working in other nonprofits, gain practical tools for supporting community leadership, and leave inspired to build more inclusive and responsive programs.