Speak Now: Learning Labs
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Turning Plans Into Impact
Shannan Tschopp, Program Director
Nonprofits LEAD
This workshop will delve into the intricacies of organizing successful nonprofit events that captivate audiences and achieve organizational goals. Participants will gain valuable insights into strategic planning, budgeting essentials, effective promotion tactics, and leveraging partnerships to maximize impact. Through real-world examples and interactive discussion, attendees will learn practical tips for overcoming common challenges, ensuring seamless execution from inception to post-event evaluation.
Whether you’re a novice or seasoned planner, this session will equip you with the tools and knowledge needed to elevate your events and leave a lasting impression on your community.
Key Takeaways:
- Strategic event planning frameworks tailored for nonprofits
- Budgeting strategies to optimize resources and funding
- Innovative approaches to event promotion and audience engagement
- Best practices for nurturing partnerships
- Techniques for evaluating event success and measuring impact
Storytelling for Success: Crafting and Sharing Your Personal Brand Narratives
Morgan Robinson, Owner/Chief Marketing Officer
Focus Marketing Company
In today’s dynamic professional landscape, the power of storytelling cannot be overstated. Our presentation, led by a seasoned nonprofit leader with over two decades of experience and recognized nationally as a public speaker and presenter, aims to equip you with the tools and insights necessary to master the art of storytelling for personal and professional success.
Key Outcomes:
- Enhanced Understanding of Personal Branding Participants will gain a thorough understanding of why crafting a compelling personal brand narrative is crucial for career advancement and professional development.
- Why Branding Matters: A well-defined brand can set your organization apart from others. It is not just about what you do, but about who you are and the unique value you bring. By articulating your story, you make your professional identity clear and memorable.
- Core Components of Impactful Storytelling The presentation will delve into the core components of impactful storytelling, including authenticity, relatability, and emotional resonance.
- Authenticity: Authenticity is the cornerstone of a compelling story. Participants will learn how to express their true selves, creating narratives that reflect their genuine experiences and values.
- Relatability: Attendees will discover techniques to make their stories relatable, helping their audience see themselves in the narrative. This connection can build trust and empathy.
- Emotional Resonance: Stories that resonate emotionally are remembered longer and have a greater impact. Participants will learn how to infuse their narratives with emotion to leave a lasting impression.
- Step-by-Step Process to Articulate Your Narrative Participants will be guided through a step-by-step process to articulate their unique professional journey, values, and aspirations.
- Crafting the Narrative: Participants will be provided with tools and frameworks to piece together successes and challenges into a coherent and engaging narrative that highlights their strengths and values.
- Practical Tips and Techniques for Effective Communication The presentation will provide practical tips and techniques for effectively communicating your brand narrative across various platforms.
- Tailoring the Message: Attendees will learn how to tailor their narrative to different audiences and contexts, ensuring their message is clear, compelling, and consistent. This includes adapting the tone and emphasis depending on whether they are in an interview, a networking event, or engaging on social media.
- Platform-Specific Strategies: Practical advice on how to optimize their brand narrative for various platforms will be shared, helping participants effectively convey their story whether in person or online. Interactive, Discussion-Based Learning The session is highly interactive and discussion-based, ensuring participants actively engage with the material and each other.
- Sharing and Feedback: Share and receive feedback on their personal stories, allowing them to refine their narratives based on peer input.
- Collaboration: Collaborate with peers to refine and enhance their storytelling techniques, benefiting from diverse perspectives and experiences. Actionable Advice and Tools By the end of the presentation, participants will leave with a suite of actionable advice and tools that they can immediately implement within their organizations:
- Brand Statement Template: A customizable template to help attendees craft a concise and impactful Please provide a 500-word detailed description, including a list of specific outcomes and any actionable advice or tools and resources that learners will take back to their organizations to implement. (Interactive or discussion-based peer-to-peer learning will be prioritized for selection). *personal brand statement, ensuring they have a clear and compelling message ready to share.
- Communication Strategies: Practical strategies for sharing their narrative effectively across various platforms and in diverse professional settings, ensuring they can consistently present.
Where the Work Gets Done: Building Better Nonprofit Finance Systems
Danie Greenwell, CFO Consultant & Training Facilitator
100 Degrees Consulting
Candice Holcomb, Chief Financial Officer
Generation West Virginia
Nonprofit leaders are faced with new challenges around finances and it is not getting easier! Your auditor may have introduced new compliance factors, funders may be asking for more intricate reporting, or staff are just not complying with the systems you have in place.
This session is aimed at addressing some of the ways in which we can address systems change with the goal of reducing hours spent on overhead while increasing compliance. You will have a chance to spend some time thinking about your own organization and whether there are small changes you can make to increase your efficiency and devote more time to your mission-based work.
Success Strategies: Defining Your Organizations Vision, Mission, and Priorities
Mike Bell, Executive Director
Davis Health System Foundation
Success Strategies: Defining Your Organization’s Vision, Mission, and Priorities will present the critical elements of strategic planning and strategic management for nonprofit organizations. In a mixed lecture/participatory session, the presenter will explain the distinction between mission, vision, goals, and objectives. Participants will participate in an interactive “Picture of Success” exercise to help form a vision of success for their organization. The exercise consists of designing a magazine cover 10 years in the future highlighting their organization’s accomplishments. The SWOT and SOAR strategic planning models will be presented, and participants will have the opportunity for guided practice in analyzing their organization’s current state, noting any gaps between their picture of success and the internal or external realities. Participants will then practice developing SMART goals and strategic work plans to assist in managing and evaluating progress toward their strategic priorities.
Participants will be able to:
- Describe the benefits of strategic planning
- Define the key elements of strategic planning and strategic management
- Apply the SWOT and SOAR models of environmental analysis
- Develop SMART goals for identified strategic priorities
The 10 Steps to Creating a Board Development & Recruitment Program
Eddrick Martin, Managing Partner/CEO
Elevated Momentum
A well-structured and engaged board plays a critical role in shaping the success of a nonprofit. This session will provide leaders with an opportunity to learn how to implement or improve a board development program that can be easily executed in just a few months. 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. We will outline ten steps and tactics to implementing an intentional and consistent board development and recruitment program.
In addition, utilizing a rubric, participants will also be able to identify and learn their organization’s score of board development effectiveness. This 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.
Learning Objectives:
- Learn a Board Development Improvement & Implementation Framework & Create a Next Steps Implementation Plan: Participants will learn how to implement or improve a board development program that can easily be executed in a robust way with fidelity within just a few months. This will include a process for key staff leadership as well as board leadership. Participants will leave the session with tangible applicable information that will help them with the defining and navigating of the process in creating a board development program. Utilizing the content from the workshop participants will be able to create a “Next Steps” implementation plan for them to take with them to begin executing with their organizations.
- Learn Tactical Approaches of Recruitment: Participants in this session will also learn tactical practices and soft skilled approaches that can be utilized when creating an intentional board member recruitment program with existing board members that may be slow to change or resistant to change.
- Learn & Identify Your Organization’s Board Development Score: Participants will be able utilize a scoring rubric that will help them identify how they rank in board development.
The 6 Take-Aways:
- 10 Major steps/parts of a board development & recruitment program
- “Know Your Score” Organization’s current specific score/rating of board development & recruitment program.
- Organization specific plan next steps of action to implement a board development program.
- How to clearly and effectively communicate what the organization is asking of current and potential board members with their service.
- How to foster ownership of board development by the board:
- Methods to get board members to lead the process of recruitment instead of staff.
Making Working Groups…Work
Sara Blevins O’Toole, Director of Development
Branches Domestic Violence Shelter
This session begins with an interactive activity called “A Shared Goal” in which each participant must work with the others to achieve the shared goal of drawing a 3 page comic strip. Each participant is given a card at the beginning of the challenge that restates the. shared goal but also assigns them a secret goal that only they must achieve. For example, one person might be given a secret goal to change the topic of the comic book, another might have a secret goal of convincing each person to sing a song during the activity. By the end of the allotted time for the challenge, it becomes very clear that many of the challenges and setbacks we experience with workgroups and committees are related to the fact that we arrive with secret personal goals that interfere with the shared goal of the group. From there, the session moves into how changing our understanding of collaboration vs. partnerships can dramatically change the efficacy of our work.
The session then seeks to provide tangible skills through the FACTA method which teaches us how to maximize our work potential within these groups. From these broader spectrum concepts, the session then moves to a series of tangible and practical best practices when working collaboratively based on years of experience in achieving collective impact.
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will understand the distinction between collaboration and partnerships.
- Participants will develop and practice skills for achieving results while working within groups and committees.
- Participants will learn how to implement the FACTA method to frame collaborative work.
Grants 101 Workshop
Tabitha Surface, Technical/Grant Writer
Emily Brammer, Technical/Grant Writer
Priscilla Santos, Director
West Virginia Grant Resource Centers
During this Grants 101 session, participants will get a brief comprehensive training on grant writing from the West Virginia Grant Resource Centers. Topics of the session will include a how-to on finding grant opportunities, including how to utilize search engines and a list of free and inexpensive resources for finding funding opportunities; parts of a grant narrative and how to interweave their responses to construct a strong proposal followed by a deep dive into budgets, budget narratives, and match funding, often identified as one of the top barriers to writing grants. The session will close with tips on thinking like a reviewer, an often overlooked angle to shaping a winning proposal. After the session ends, participants will have a solid basis to begin searching for and writing proposals; they will leave with concrete resources like a Grants 101 vocabulary list, examples of budget spreadsheets, and logic models. During the session, they will have time to ask the experts both general grant-writing questions and those specific to their organization.
Participants will leave with a better understanding of:
- Grant vocabulary
- Grant Writing Best Practices
- How to develop compelling proposals that resonate with funders
Participants will know:
- At least three free or low-cost grant search engines
- What Match funding is and general guidelines for identifying it
- What the grant reviewer experience is and strategies to make their review easier and their grants more impactful based on reviewer constraints like time
Designing Jobs for Success in Nonprofit Organizations
Dr. Susan Aloi, Associate Professor of Business
Davis & Elkins College
Dr. Tracie Dodson, Professor of Business
West Virginia Wesleyan College
This session invites participants to explore strategies for fostering positive work environments within nonprofit organizations through a combination of theoretical insights and practical applications. We will begin by examining current practices and common challenges encountered in creating conducive work environments in nonprofits. Through this exploration, attendees will gain insights into the complexities that impact employee and volunteer satisfaction and productivity.
The session will draw upon established theories such as Job Characteristics Theory, Job Crafting, and the Theory of Happiness to provide a practical framework for understanding and improving work environments. Participants will delve into how these proven practices can be translated into actionable strategies within their own organizations. Central to the session is an interactive component where attendees will engage in discussions and interactive surveys. These activities are designed to facilitate knowledge sharing and peer-to-peer learning, allowing participants to exchange experiences, best practices, and innovative approaches to enhancing employee and volunteer happiness. Participants will also evaluate and redesign a job position within their organization. This practical exercise aims to empower attendees with the skills and tools necessary to implement effective changes that promote positive and productive work environment. A worksheet will be provided to assist with the evaluation of all positions and to encourage discussions with boards and organizational leadership.
Throughout the session, the facilitators will guide discussions and provide expertise to ensure meaningful exploration and learning. Attendees will leave with a deeper understanding of how organizational practices, leadership styles, and ethical considerations influence workplace dynamics. They will also acquire practical resources and strategies to initiate positive changes within their organizational contexts.
Participants will be able to:
- Gain familiarity with researched theories (e.g., Job Characteristics Theory, Job Crafting Theory, Theory of Happiness) and their application in improving work environments.
- Learn actionable strategies derived from practical frameworks to enhance employee and volunteer satisfaction and productivity in nonprofit organizations.
- Participate in discussions and interactive surveys to share insights and experiences related to fostering positive work environments.
- Engage in a hands-on workshop to evaluate and redesign a job position using the frameworks discussed.
- Develop skills to apply job happiness concepts in the context of your own organization.
Building an Active network of Advocates
Elise Woodworth, President
Woodworth Enterprises
Having people engaged in a nonprofits mission brings with it many benefits. However, people won’t care about what they don’t know about. Answering the call for more engaged volunteers, more enthusiastic donors, and more committed staff is within the reach of any inspired nonprofit. Getting there is a journey. We’ll start with inspiration, the fuel behind a mission, and follow it all the way to Mission Success! In this session, we will dive deeper into how to build an active network of advocates, transform inspiration into mission success, and develop a plan to retain interest and involvement.
