Across the three days, virtual attendees will participate through a live stream of our three keynotes and a selection of breakouts—plus, gain on-demand access to all of our streamed content through the app during and following the convening.
Opening Keynote | 9:00 AM—10:30 AM PT
Reimagining People-Centered Philanthropy
Many definitions of philanthropy center on how this field focuses on the love of humanity and the desire to support the wellbeing of others. But in practice, many nonprofits say their relationships with institutional funders feel transactional and are characterized by burdensome processes that create barriers to accessing philanthropic capital. Similarly, grants professionals who want to bring change to their communities often feel stymied by the hierarchical policies and procedures they must enforce. And with declining public trust in both nonprofits and philanthropy, funders need to radically rethink and redefine how they approach their work in order for the sector and the communities they support to have a healthy and sustainable future.
To challenge philanthropy’s status quo, we welcome to our mainstage Edgar Villanueva, author of Decolonizing Wealth, and Vu Le, who authors the blog NonprofitAF. Together, they will frankly explore pathways to evolving the sector, how money can be used as a tool of love and restoration, and what the world would look like if philanthropy reimagined how it manifests its love of humanity.
Breakouts | 11:00 AM—12:15 PM PT
From Data to Dialogue: Storytelling for organizational learning
Data can be a powerful catalyst for change both within your organization and among your grant partners. This workshop explores how storytelling practices can transform mundane data into compelling narratives, engaging both your team and your partners. Are you struggling to make sense of data buried in spreadsheets or dashboards? Is it hard to get your colleagues, board members and partners excited about the stories behind the numbers? Learn how storytelling with data can shift your organization’s culture from one of compliance to one of continuous learning. Discover strategies to turn data into engaging dialogues, equipping your organization and its partners with the skills to communicate impact effectively.
Speaker
Jennifer Marsack, Pivot Data Design
Understanding the Financial Health of Nonprofits Part One: The metrics that matter
As grantmakers look to support their grantees in the most effective ways possible, understanding a nonprofit’s financial health is key to ensuring grants and other assistance are structured to promote resilience now and into the future. This two-part series will begin March 18 with part one teaching participants how to identify key financial metrics that shed light on an organization’s liquidity, reserves, and ability to withstand challenges.
Join us for part two on March 19 where we will explore designing a less burdensome financial review process, how to use publicly available data to analyze trends, and reimagine what the financial due diligence process looks like within their organization.
If you do not already have a basic understanding of nonprofit financial health, it is highly recommended that you attend this session in order to fully participate in the second session.
Speakers
Jennifer Pedroni, BDO USA
Megan Morrison, BDO USA
Hilda Polanco, BDO USA
Connie Kendig, BDO USA
Breakouts | 2:00 PM—3:15 PM PT
Developing Strategic and Accessible Grant Amendment Processes
The needs of grantees and the people they serve often evolve during the life of the grant. Grantees may want to update deliverables, extend the grant term, or even revise grant purposes. Grantmakers dedicated to systemic change and equity-driven grantmaking should be ready to meet these changing needs by providing accessible and strategic amendment processes. Offering such processes is a crucial part of reducing the funder-grantee power imbalance. Amendments enable grantees to accomplish critical work and help build trust-based partnerships. Clear and strategic amendment processes also prepare grantmakers to address operational and legal challenges. In this spark talk, participants will be taken through amendment fundamentals, address common issues within amendment processes, describe routine and creative options for changing grant purposes, and recommend best practices for amendment systems.
Speakers
Liz Silberstein, The Build Up Companies
Camille Morris, The Build Up Companies
May The Force of Beyond-the-Grant Support Be With You
For the longest time, the metaphysical, cosmic power of the Force in the Star Wars universe seemed predestined for the select, special few. Similarly, philanthropy’s capacity to support, engage, and interact with grantees has long been the domain of its executive and program folk. But times change. In the same way that the canonical story has shifted so that the Force is less a birthright and more a democratized, flows-through-us-all ability, a growing number of foundations are stepping into their capacity to unleash the full power, promise, and potential of their teams in service of grantees. Come hear the stories of, interact with, and share your own experiences with colleagues who’ve made the leap of moving from transaction to transformation by using their talent and skill—their Force—to support grantees beyond the grant.
Speakers
Dr. Charles Cole, III, Energy Convertors
Cynthia Suter, Rogers Family Foundation
Dana Wellhausen, Fremont Group
Jane Lee, Agency by Design Oakland
Kate Ray, Heising Simons Foundation
Rhonnel Sotelo, Rogers Family Foundation
Midweek Keynote | 9:00 AM—10:15 AM PT
Reimagining Persistence
Between the current threatening and divisive environment and philanthropy’s tendency to avoid risk, the sector at large is retreating from its commitments to investing in diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, eroding some positive changes we have seen over the past few years. But some organizations are refusing to back down.
In this panel discussion, three sector leaders—Walter & Elise Haas Fund’s Jamie Allison, Philanthropy Northwest’s Jill Nishi, and Native Americans in Philanthropy’s Erik Stegman—will speak about both the strategies and tactics grants professionals can use to lead from where they sit to guide their organizations in recalibrating their approach to and doubling down on racial equity. Together, they’ll demonstrate how their persistence does more than just hold the line. It’s an approach that works to make their organizations, their grant partners, and the communities they serve to become stronger.
Breakouts | 10:45 AM—12:00 PM PT
Transforming the Way Social Sector Data Flows
Join us for a thought-provoking panel discussion with representatives of three data sources in our field: Candid, Charity Navigator, and Impact Genome. We will explore how technology is breaking down barriers to make this information available and move more seamlessly in and out of where you work. Our expert panelists will share their experiences and insights on best practices for making data accessible, reusable, and actionable for all stakeholders. They will also discuss the challenges of collecting and sharing data in an equitable way, and they will offer technology and thought leadership solutions to these challenges. Through this session, you will better understand the potential benefits and challenges of sharing and reusing data and the critical role that funders can play in promoting equitable practices.
Speakers
C. Davis Fischer, PEAK Grantmaking
Alison Jannette, Candid
Jamie Carroll, Roots & Wings Foundation
Sandi Boga, Impact Genome Registry
Kyle Renninger, PEAK Grantmaking
Understanding the Financial Health of Nonprofits Pt 2: Reimagining the financial review process
As grantmakers look to support their grantees in the most effective ways possible, understanding a nonprofit’s financial health is key to ensuring grants and other assistance are structured to promote resilience now and into the future. This two-part series will begin March 18 with part one teaching participants how to identify key financial metrics that shed light on an organization’s liquidity, reserves, and ability to withstand challenges.
Join us for part two on March 19 where we will explore designing a less burdensome financial review process, how to use publicly available data to analyze trends, and reimagine what the financial due diligence process looks like within their organization.
If you do not already have a basic understanding of nonprofit financial health, it is highly recommended that you attend the first session in order to fully participate in the second session.
Speakers
Jennifer Pedroni, BDO USA
Megan Morrison, BDO USA
Hilda Polanco, BDO USA
Connie Kendig, BDO USA
Breakouts | 2:00 PM—3:15 PM PT
Taking Donors on a Change Management and Trust-Based Philanthropy Journey
Funders and grantees know from experience that unrestricted funding support can quicken the arc of change and create healthier, more innovative, and more robust organizations. While some funders have begun the journey of trust-based philanthropy, for many others, figuring out how to get started has been difficult.
Join the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona to hear more about how they’ve incorporated trust-based donor collaboration into their largest unrestricted grants program contributing to more engaged, educated, and trust-based donor giving. This workshop will include an overview of the evolution of the foundation’s unrestricted grants program, the monumental role of both grantee and community feedback, and recommendations for incorporating donors as collaborators in unrestricted giving.
Speakers
David Gardner, Community Foundation for Southern Arizona
Enedina Miller, Community Foundation for Southern Arizona
Jeaiza Quinones Ivory, Community Foundation for Southern Arizona
Natalia Gabrielsen, Community Foundation for Southern Arizona
Grantee Wellness Through Relationship-Centered Grantmaking
Margulf Foundation strives to create authentic relationships with grantees, ensuring they feel seen, heard, and valued. Staff leverages these relationships to create spaces where they as funders can truly listen to, understand, reflect on, and respond to grantee needs.
During this session, Margulf will share how the strength of relationships allowed grantees to authentically communicate their needs and struggles during the COVID-19 pandemic and how that led the foundation to launch a new grantmaking area that explicitly supports the health, wellness, and sustainability of grantee leaders and their teams. In addition to learning how Margulf centers relationships and iteration across its grantmaking practices, attendees will also hear directly from a grantee on their experience receiving wellness grants and how focusing on relationships strengthens funder-grantee partnerships and leads to more authentic learning and deeper impact.
Speakers
Kat Ling, Moonshot edVentures
Logan Boon, Margulf Foundation
Lina Osmundson, Margulf Foundation
Breakouts | 9:00 AM—10:15 AM PT
A Paradigm Shift for Funding Community Power Building Through a Public-Private Partnership
In 2014, the Seattle Foundation and King County government were each laying the groundwork to address economic and racial inequities through place-based work and systemic change. Community leaders, King County, and the Seattle Foundation came together to incubate a new public-private approach called Communities of Opportunity (COO).
This session will consist of an interactive panel between COO’s current funding partners, directors, and grantees who will share their experience developing and implementing this innovative partnership that funds community power building. Participants will understand the process and challenges of funding communities to have the resources, capacity, and power to be self-determined and thriving. They will also learn from this innovative partnership strategy and gain insight into the tools used to fund COO from the perspectives of private funders, county staff, and community-based organizations.
Speakers
Elsa Batres-Boni, Communities of Opportunity
Jackie Vaughn, Surge Reproductive Justice
Michael Brown, Seattle Foundation
Helping Nonprofits to Embrace AI as an Equity Tool
The implications of how artificial intelligence (AI) will impact the way we work and live can’t be overstated. When Microsoft Philanthropies in Atlanta and United Way of Greater Atlanta began working on technology capacity building, they knew they needed to create accessible inroads for nonprofits to learn about and use generative AI (GAI) in their operations and programs. This thought-provoking conversation will explore how philanthropy can leverage GAI as an equity tool; the tiered approach to technology capacity building that provided accessibility to nonprofits with low technology skill sets in Atlanta; and real case studies on how Atlanta-area nonprofits are utilizing GAI.
Speakers
Erika Smith, Microsoft
Gail Conyers Cleckley, United Way of Greater Atlanta
Jahari Soward, NPursuit Career Partners
Closing Keynote | 12:00 PM—2:00 PM PT
Reimagining Leadership
To be a change agent for equitable grantmaking and transform philanthropy, grantmaking professionals need to reimagine what it means to lead and how to achieve their goals and evolve beyond being role good. In addition, to truly be leaders in the field, organizations must work on themselves and align every aspect of their operations with equity-centered values.
In this conversation between CEOs and grants management directors of grantmaking organizations, PEAK’s Satonya Fair, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Allison Gister, Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Roland Kennedy, Jr., and Skillman Foundation’s Angelique Power to explore how their organizations have focused on internal transformation to allow them to show up for their communities differently. These leaders will also share how they have been working on themselves as individuals and taken control of their professional development and careers in order to lead their organizations’ transformations.