Bridging the Impact Gap: Practical Tools for Scaling Your Nonprofit

Scaling/Growth

Nonprofit leaders are often deeply passionate about their missions, yet many struggle to scale their efforts and achieve sustainable, transformative impact (50% of NPOs close doors within 2-3 years and 30% don’t make it to their 10th birthday). Common challenges include limited resources, lack of strategic focus, and barriers to collaboration. This session, “Bridging the Impact Gap: Practical Tools for Scaling Your Nonprofit,” offers nonprofit professionals actionable strategies to overcome these challenges and unlock their organization’s full potential.

Make Them Feel It: Messaging That Moves Donors to Give

Fundraising

Messaging and value proposition are always topics of interest for organizations since it is so hard to know what to say and how to say it! This presentation is all about how to craft emotionally compelling messaging that moves donors from interest to action. We’ll explore how identity, tension, and involvement shape donor behavior—and how to use these elements to create fundraising messages that actually inspire generosity.

Challenges Build Champions

Leadership

What is one thing we can all agree on when it comes to leading a nonprofit? Challenges will occur. That’s one thing matt Scoletti knows as well. Drawing on his experience, this session will help every leader in the room create a process to overcome any obstacle. Be ready to leave inspired and ready to take on whatever is ahead!

Good isn’t Good Enough: Bridging the Digital Divide Through Accessibility

DEI/Inclusivity

This topic explores how accessibility can serve as a bridge to address the digital divide impacting BIPOC communities, ensuring nonprofits can better connect with and serve these audiences. Many nonprofits unintentionally exclude individuals from engaging with their programs, services, and fundraising efforts due to inaccessible digital tools, websites, or communications. By prioritizing accessibility, nonprofits can unlock new opportunities to engage diverse communities, deepen trust, and increase their overall impact.

Leading Through Change

These days it can feel like something is changing every day. There is no more status quo and keeping up with all the changes while leading a team and juggling life and family responsibilities at the same time can be tough. In this Inspire session, we’ll hear from Gabe Cooper about what he’s learned about leading well in these seasons.

Mastering Your Inner Story

Have you ever felt a strong connection to your nonprofit’s mission, but also faced days that just felt tough? Imagine having more days full of passion and drive, where your love for the mission pushes you forward and makes the tough days easier. What if the secret to this was in the stories you tell yourself? In this session you will reconnect with your personal story, link your story to your nonprofit’s mission and think about the stories you tell yourself to find truth and satisfaction in your work.

10 Steps to Board Development and Recruitment Program

This session will address the problem of having an ambiguous, unofficial, or non-existent board development program. Learn tactical practices and skilled approaches to support your board and leave with key takeaways to develop an action plan. his workshop will provide a tangible framework that can be implemented by organizations provided the appropriate levels of intentionality are given by their leaders, both staff and board members alike. This session is designed for both nonprofit leadership staff and board volunteers. Whether you’re seeking to expand your board or enhance its capabilities, this session will provide you with the tools to cultivate a dynamic and high-impact board and will also be very interactive.

Unlocking Excellence: How the Science of Employee Engagement Can Help You Enhance Performance, Reduce Turnover, and Create the Culture You Desire

Social sector organizations routinely face people and culture challenges that result in high rates of turnover, a decrease in outcomes, and additional stress for those involved. In this session, you’ll learn how you can use the science of employee engagement to radically transform your workplace. We’ll review engagement–the single largest driver of performance–and explore its 3 drivers before landing on concrete takeaways that you can immediately implement to boost productivity, improve morale, and reduce conflict. By the end of this session, participants will be able to define employee engagement and its 3 drivers; explain the importance of psychological safety, psychological meaningfulness, and psychological availability on employee performance; understand how engagement-focused methods positively impact program services and outcomes; name at least 3 action steps that they can immediately implement to increase employee engagement.

The Hidden Gold in Leader Retention & Development

Nonprofit leaders pour their energy into fundraising, community impact, and program growth—yet too often, they overlook one of their most valuable assets: their people. Staff turnover is costly, both financially and culturally, yet many organizations struggle to create sustainable pathways for retention and development. This workshop equips nonprofit professionals with actionable strategies to invest in their teams without requiring excessive financial resources.

It Starts With Us: Stewarding Ourselves to Sustain the Mission

In the nonprofit space, we often pour from empty cups—believing the mission must always come before our well-being. But burnout isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a warning sign. And if we’re serious about bridging the gap to lasting change, we must first learn to steward the one resource most often neglected: ourselves.

This session is a heartfelt call to nonprofit leaders, founders, and change agents to lead from a place of wholeness, not depletion. Rashaunda shares how self-stewardship, rest rhythms, and reflection are not luxuries or soft skills—they are essential leadership practices that directly impact your team culture, retention, organizational sustainability, and the longevity of your
mission.

Grounded in her Faith, personal journey, military service, and strategic leadership through the SSEM Framework, Rashaunda will offer insight on how leaders can honor their calling without compromising their capacity. You’ll leave feeling seen, supported, and equipped with practical steps to care for the leader behind the vision.

Because when we lead ourselves well, we model what’s possible. And when we build from rest, we build organizations that last.

Stewardship Is Strategy: How Structure Bridges the Gap Between Mission and Impact

Many nonprofit leaders are fueled by deep purpose—but behind the passion, too many are quietly overwhelmed, stretched thin, and operating in survival mode. The work matters, but the way we work? That’s where the shift begins.

In this powerful session, Rashaunda Williams shares her journey from military service to nonprofit leadership to strategic consulting—and how the turning point wasn’t more hustle, but better stewardship. She’ll guide attendees through what it means to intentionally steward your time, your people, your projects, and yourself as an act of leadership, not luxury.

You’ll explore the cultural norms that quietly celebrate burnout, and learn how to replace them with structure, sustainability, and systems that support—not stifle—your mission. Through her SSEM Framework (Strategize, Schedule, Execute, Monitor), Rashaunda will offer practical, faith-rooted tools that help leaders build healthy organizations without burning out in the
process.

You’ll walk away with a renewed belief that the greater good doesn’t require self-sacrifice—it requires wise stewardship and care for the leader behind the mission.

Beyond the Story: Creating a Trauma-Informed Storytelling Practice for Social Good

Nonprofit storytelling has the profound capacity to move your mission. Yet, traditional narratives can inadvertently reinforce the very systems of harm we seek to dismantle. In this training, we’ll explore trauma-informed storytelling, which promotes safety and wellness while resisting harm. Attendees will be equipped with actionable insights and tools to tell trauma-informed and ethical stories that have a huge impact.

Maximizing Engagement: How Instagram Reels Are Redefining Leadership Communication and Securing Fundraising Success

In 2023, we embraced the power of Instagram Reels as a key tool for amplifying our leadership communication. This strategic shift has been a game-changer, helping us reach over 5,000 views and grow our follower count from 0 to 1,000 in just three months. The short-form video content has not only boosted our visibility but also allowed us to engage with a wider audience, fostering deeper connections and drawing attention from potential funders. This success underscores the growing importance of digital platforms in enhancing leadership impact and securing necessary investments.

Fundraising Across the Generations

Boomers will carry philanthropy until 2035. Then what?! We’ve got less than a decade to replace these donors, who tend to give bigger gifts and donate on a more frequent basis. We need to start building our donor pipeline now, which means cultivating new relationships with donors from Gen X, Millennials/Gen Y, and Gen Z. Yet many of us feel uncertain about how to do so effectively. This workshop will identify the characteristics of each generation and provide actionable strategies for effective engagement.

The Importance of Coaching Leaders

Cultivating Donors By Adding Value

Advocacy 101: From Concerned Citizen to Change-Maker

Not everyone has experience with advocacy, but everyone cares about the work that they do. As federal cuts impact local communities, its critical that communities have the tools they need to make their voices heard.