Caring Comes First

Chris Davenport, Nonprofit Storytelling Conference
Steven Screen, Better Fundraising Company

The opening keynote begins with a simple idea: people give because they care.

Chris Davenport will explore why fundraising does not start with the ask, but with creating the conditions that make someone want to act. He’ll connect that idea to Story. Offer. Ask. and show why caring comes first.

Then Steven Screen will take the idea further and explore what it looks like to build and scale that caring across your fundraising.

Big Vision. Big Gifts. A Clear Campaign Plan.

Jim Shapiro, Better Fundraising Company

Capital and endowment campaigns don’t behave like your annual fundraising. The gifts are bigger, the stakes are higher, and you get only a handful of chances to tell the right story to the right donor at the right time. Get the sequence wrong and you can stall a campaign, or damage donor trust for years. Get it right, and a campaign can do more than fund a big vision. It can deepen donor relationships, create new major donors, and strengthen your annual fundraising for years to come.

Jim Shapiro shares the roadmap he’s used to raise over half a billion dollars, from $400,000 renovations to $50 million capital campaigns. You’ll leave knowing the three phases every campaign moves through, the number that predicts your goal, the story to tell donors at each stage, and how to use the campaign to build stronger donor relationships that continue long after the campaign is over.

You’ll leave with a clearer roadmap for raising the big gifts your campaign needs while building a stronger fundraising program for what comes next.

This session is for you if a capital or endowment campaign is anywhere in your future -- even a distant one.

Get Your Board to Help You Fundraise

Kiersten Hill, Firespring

Your board members said they’d help raise money. But that was six months ago and nothing’s happened.

This session covers realistic, practical ways to get board members actually fundraising -- not by turning them into rockstar fundraisers overnight, but by finding the specific roles they can each play (thank-you calls, donor introductions, simply showing up at your gratitude reception). You’ll also get practical tips on how to talk to your board about fundraising in the first place, so they’re as invested in your organization and its stories as much as your donors are.

You’ll leave with a realistic plan for engaging your board, and a better way to talk to them about it.

This session is for you if your board keeps saying yes to fundraising and nothing ever happens.

Planned Giving Doesn’t Have to Be Scary: How to Open the Legacy Giving Conversation

Nicole Walton, FreeWill

Bequests are one of the most powerful gifts your organization will ever receive -- and one of the most avoided conversations in fundraising.

This session shines a light on the obstacles and unknowns that keep development teams from bringing it up with donors in the first place. Nicole Walton will cover the planned giving basics every fundraiser should know, the verbal cues that signal a donor is ready to talk about legacy giving, and practical language to open the conversation with confidence.

This session is for you if the words “planned giving” make you want to change the subject.

Beyond the Ask: How to Actually Connect with the Next Generation of Supporters

Brittany Clifton, Feathr

Millennials and Gen Z aren’t ignoring your nonprofit. They’re just waiting to hear something they can trust -- and a fundraising email alone won’t get you there.

Reaching younger supporters takes more than chasing trends or asking for less. The organizations getting it right are doing three things well: telling honest, interesting stories; showing up where younger people actually spend their time; and inviting Gen Z and Millennials into the work itself.

You’ll learn how to reframe your message for an audience that’s values-driven (but skeptical), how to get your stories in front of younger people long before you ask them for anything, and how to bring them onto your team, your volunteer leadership, and your peer-to-peer fundraising.

This session is for you if you know you need younger donors but everything you’ve tried so far hasn’t stuck.

The Moments That Matter: How Empathy and Emotional Connection Inspire Extraordinary Giving

Tammy Zonker, Fundraising Transformed

Donors don’t give because of your data. They give because something made them feel something. Those moments are where emotional connections form. And where one-time gifts become lifelong partnerships.

In this session, you’ll learn how to build donor communications and experiences that land on a human level, how to tell stories that actually move people, and how to design a donor journey with those feeling-moments built in on purpose. It pulls from neuroscience and real fundraising results, but it all comes back to something simple: people give to what moves them.

This session is for you if your donor communications are accurate and organized but aren’t making anyone feel much of anything.

Winning Hearts & Checks: The Power of Storytelling in Grant Proposals

Diane H. Leonard, DH Leonard Consulting

“We don’t have time to tell stories” is the reason a lot of powerful stories never get told. When storytelling feels like one more chore, it’s the first thing to fall off the list -- and grantmakers never hear the moments that would’ve moved them.

Let’s turn storytelling into something repeatable instead of overwhelming. You’ll learn to notice the story-worthy moments already happening in your daily work and capture them with a simple intake system, circulate them so they reach every department instead of dying in one inbox, and customize a single story for a grant application by adjusting its length, tone, and ask. Do this consistently and you build an “impact bank” your whole organization can draw from.

This session is for you if you know good stories are happening around you but they never make it into your proposals.

Invite Donors Into Your Mission and Make Your Event a Story

Kristin Steele, Swaim Strategies

Too many nonprofit events are a string of disconnected moments -- cocktail hour, program, ask, dessert -- with nothing tying them together.

What if the whole night told one story instead? This session shows you how to design your event as a single arc that pulls guests in from the moment they arrive and moves them naturally toward giving. You’ll learn how to shape the emotional flow of the evening, how to weave storytelling through the entire event (not just the five minutes of program), and how to turn people who came for a nice night out into people who feel like part of your mission.

This session is for you if your events have all the right pieces but don’t add up to anything that sticks.

The 11 Essential Elements of an Effective Nonprofit Homepage

Janelle Suzanne, The Louder Agency

Your homepage might be quietly working against you. It leads with internal language instead of the change you create. It gives visitors too many options and buries the one action you most want them to take. The problem usually isn’t traffic -- it’s that people land, feel confused, and leave.

Let’s walk through the 11 elements every effective nonprofit homepage shares, and how story, structure, messaging, and visuals have to work together to move someone from curious to committed. You’ll spot what’s currently turning your audience off, learn to surface the stories they actually want to hear (not just what you want to say), pull better testimonials from your volunteers and clients, and see real organizations getting it right. You’ll leave with a page structure you can put to work yourself.

This session is for you if your website looks fine but isn’t turning visitors into supporters.

The Donor Decision Lab -- The Science of Why Stories Work

Bernard Ross, =mc consulting

You know stories raise money. But do you know why -- or how to make yours work harder?

Decision science -- the blend of behavioral economics, neuroscience, and psychology behind modern marketing -- explains how donors decide: fast, emotional, and nothing like they’d describe in a survey. In this live lab, you’ll run experiments exposing your biases, see real results from four countries (including ones that should have worked and didn’t), then redesign your appeals on the spot.

You’ll leave able to use framing, anchoring, and loss aversion to strengthen any story and diagnose why an appeal underperformed.

This session is for you if you’ve ever sent two similar appeals and gotten two very different results.

A Plan for Every Dollar and Every Donor

T. Clay Buck, Next River Fundraising

What if you knew exactly where every dollar of your fundraising goal was coming from? Too often, budgets and goals are little more than educated guesses -- leaving nonprofits scrambling without real direction.

This isn’t a theory session. Clay Buck hands you a practical framework that turns an overwhelming annual goal into a roadmap you can start using Monday -- one that gives every dollar a job and every donor a place to belong, showing you where revenue exists, where opportunities are strongest, and which strategies close the gap.

Whether you’re raising $250,000 or $25 million, you’ll leave with a plan mapped to your own numbers.

This session is for you if your lofty fundraising goal needs a workable plan.

The Story Starts with You: How to Cultivate More Emotion in Your Storytelling

Rachel Zant, Pen With A Purpose

Ever catch yourself thinking “I’m not creative” or “I could never write like that”? Do your appeal letters and emails come out a little flat and overly-professional, no matter what you do?

It’s hard to put authentic feeling on the page when you’re not comfortable with how you really feel. So this session starts there. Rachel walks you through a series of heart-led exercises to get you more comfortable with your own emotions, so you can better connect with the feelings of the people whose stories you tell. You’ll leave with techniques to quiet your inner critic and reconnect with your creativity, questions that help you connect more deeply and honestly with yourself and your storytellers, and permission to become your truest, most authentic self -- in your work and in your life.

This session is for you if your writing feels flat and professional when you want it to feel real.

Philanthropic Psychology, Love and Supporter Relationships: Are You Using the Latest Science?

Adrian Sargeant, Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy

What can the science of how human beings form relationships teach us about our supporters? This session draws on Philanthropic Psychology to explore identity and wellbeing -- and how understanding them can double income.

At the heart of it is love, and the role it can play in fundraising. It’s a perspective that’s long overdue, since the sector defaults to the language of money -- or “gifts” of money -- in how it communicates with donors.

You’ll look at the kinds of love that are meaningful to supporters, and the experiences that build and celebrate it.

This session is for you if you’ve wondered what your donor communications would sound like if money wasn’t the only language.

Be Loved

Jen Shang, Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy

After a full first day at the conference, you’re invited to ask a quieter question: what does it mean to feel truly loved in philanthropy?

For those who give so much, love flows outward easily -- but receiving it can feel unfamiliar, even uncomfortable. Without being loved, we cannot sustain the love we offer. That’s the premise of philanthropic psychology: how we are loved shapes how we love.

Jen Shang offers a rare pause here. Through her research and gentle reflection, you’ll explore when fundraisers feel most recognised and valued -- not necessarily when they achieve the most. Come experience appreciation without striving, and notice what changes when you allow yourself to receive.

This session is for you if you’re running on empty and didn’t realize it.

The Seven Pillars of a Successful Major Gift Program

Jeff Schreifels, Veritus Group

Some major gift programs raise a lot more than others. The difference usually comes down to a handful of things the successful ones do consistently -- and most of them are learnable.

Here are seven of them: the pillars behind major gift programs that actually grow. You’ll learn how to identify the right donors to focus your time on, how to build strategic plans around each donor’s real interests and passions, and how that focus turns donor relationships into genuine partnerships. It’s a data-backed system that growing organizations use around the world, broken down so you can put it to work.

This session is for you if you want to raise more major gifts by getting deliberate about which donors you invest in and how.

Storytelling Mistakes You Can Avoid in Fundraising

Jeff Brooks, Jeff Brooks Fundraising

Storytelling is almost a requirement for good fundraising (you’re at the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference, after all!). But a story with the wrong ingredients doesn’t just fall flat -- it becomes dead weight that fails to move anyone to give.

Let’s walk through the most common storytelling mistakes and how to fix them: stories that leave the donor out instead of inviting them in, stories that dwell on past success, stories buried under too many words, and photos that quietly undercut the very story they’re supposed to support. You’ll leave able to spot these problems in your own fundraising and fix them fast -- so your stories start doing the job they’re meant to do.

This session is for you if you’re telling stories in your fundraising but they’re not moving donors the way you hoped.

Ask Us Anything!

Chris Davenport + Joshua Alcorn, Nonprofit Storytelling Conference

Day One can sometimes leave you with more questions than answers. You’ve spent the day hearing takes on fundraising that may not match what you walked in believing.

Before you head to dinner, come get some of those questions answered. Chris and Josh open the floor -- no slides, no agenda, just a chance to ask the questions still rattling around from everything you just heard.

Bring whatever’s unresolved.

Relying on Heroic Efforts is Not a Plan

Diane H. Leonard, DH Leonard Consulting

Ever had 12 days between a grant announcement and its deadline? Pulled an all-nighter to get a case statement to the printer, or lived at the office the week before a big event? In a lot of nonprofits, that scramble isn’t the exception -- it’s just how the work gets done. And it doesn’t have to be.

Let’s build the systems that keep work flowing steadily, so the crunch stops being inevitable. You’ll learn capacity-planning techniques that help you see workloads coming and plan around them instead of powering through at the last minute. And you’ll learn how to spread high-pressure work across a team that shares it, rather than piling it on one person and hoping they pull it off.

This session is for you if you’re stuck in a constant scramble and want a steadier, more predictable way to get the big things done.

Making the Ask -- Live Storytelling in the Solicitation Moment

Bernard Ross, =mc consulting

You’ve done the research, built the relationship, secured the meeting. Now you’re across from your prospect -- and the story you tell in the next ten minutes decides whether they give $500 or $50,000.

This session brings live storytelling into the ask itself -- not a rehearsed pitch, but a story shaped in real time around what your donor cares about, built through a five-stage roadmap: Passion, Proposition, Preparation, Persuasion, Persistence.

You’ll leave able to identify the different types of no a prospect uses, adapt your story to their decision style, and build rapid rapport with any donor.

This session is for you if you’ve ever walked out of an ask wondering what you should’ve said instead.

Be Meaningful

Jen Shang, Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy

Jen Shang translates insights from her Meaningful Philanthropy research into steps you can actually use. You’ll explore why meaning isn’t the same as impact -- and why impact alone can’t sustain major gift philanthropy.

Amid the pressure to demonstrate results and tell compelling stories, are we missing the most profound moments of human connection? This session offers a gentle invitation: to pause, even briefly, and listen more deeply -- to yourself, to your donor, to what truly matters.

When you seek connection first, both you and your donor can feel it. Whether you call it love or meaning, the question is the same: could that shared moment be enough to create a transformational giving experience?

This session is for you if you want your donor relationships to feel like more than a transaction.

Plan a Year of Stories in 20 Minutes

Natalie Monroe, MemoryFox

That blank content calendar isn’t a sign you’re out of stories -- your organization is already full of them. You just need a plan for when to look.

Natalie Monroe walks you through a simple monthly framework built around the natural rhythms of nonprofit work, from volunteer happenings to gratitude moments. Walk away with your own 12-month story calendar, ready to fill with the people and moments you want to showcase.

Simple Event Logistics That Improve Your Storytelling

Samantha Swaim, Swaim Strategies

Your story is powerful -- but logistics are what make sure it actually lands. Samantha Swaim flips how you think about event logistics: not paperwork, but the infrastructure that lets your storytellers show up fully present, confident, and connected to the room.

From video timing to rehearsal to cue sheets, you’ll leave with templates, checklists, and one clear principle -- logistics exist to serve your storyteller, not the other way around.

Never Worry About Donor Fatigue Again

Steven Screen, Better Fundraising Company

The fear of ‘Donor Fatigue’ keeps organizations smaller than they should be, and reduces their impact.

But your donors are both incredibly generous and care very much about the work you do. So why is that fear stopping you from asking for their help fulfilling your mission?

In this session, Steven Screen will take on the myth of ‘Donor Fatigue’ and show you how to create fundraising materials that engage your donors, how to avoid donor fatigue, and how to talk about it when it comes up at your organization.

This session is for you if the fear of asking too much has ever talked you out of asking at all.

Sell Out Your Next Event: A Nonprofit Marketer’s Toolkit

Brittany Clifton, Feathr

You sent the emails. You posted on social. So why is your event only half sold out with two weeks to go?

The problem usually isn’t your event -- it’s that people need to see something six, eight, sometimes ten times before they commit. And if email is the only tool in your kit, a lot of the people who’d love your event never even find out it’s happening.

This session will show you the rest of the tools at your disposal: how to reach people who’ve never heard of your event and build trust before you ask them to buy a ticket, how retargeting keeps you in front of the ones who visited your page but didn’t register, and how geofencing puts your event in front of the right people (based on the places they’ve been). You’ll see how it all comes together in a multi-touch campaign that works without being annoying -- using the exact ads that helped get you and your peers to the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference.

This session is for you if you want to reach donors and event attendees beyond their inbox.

Story Discovery: Uncover Your Hidden Gems

Kristin Sukraw + Mike Sukraw, Storyfind

Your best storytellers are already out there -- you just haven’t found them yet, and you might not even know what you’re looking for.

This session helps you build a real storytelling culture, so finding great stories isn’t riding on one person’s shoulders. You’ll learn what actually makes someone a compelling storyteller, how to build a list of potential storytellers even when your frontline staff feel tapped out, and how to run a Discovery Interview that draws the real story out of someone.

You’ll leave with a messaging strategy to guide it all, and a repeatable way to keep finding great storytellers long after this session ends.

This session is for you if you know great stories exist inside your organization and you just can’t find them.

Your Charitable OS: Building a Donor Experience System (DXS) That Grows Giving

John Lepp, Agents of Good

You’ve got a CRM, an email platform, a donation page, maybe a texting tool and event software on top of that.

What you probably don’t have is an actual system for how your donor experiences you. So donors slip through the cracks, get thanked late or not at all, and quietly drift away.

Introducing ... the Donor Experience System -- a deliberate way of designing everything a donor feels from their very first gift, built from their point of view instead of yours. You’ll learn to map the donor journey, find the gaps where you’re losing people, and set up simple, repeatable systems that make donors feel seen, thanked, and valued -- without adding hours to your week.

This session is for you if you’ve got all the tools but donors still fall through the cracks.

Turning Stories into Peer-to-Peer Success

Adam Clevenger, Loring Sternberg & Associates

It started as a Facebook birthday post. A decade later, it’s a beloved yearly tradition for donors to Coburn Place. Like any fundraising journey, the early days were humble, bringing in only a small amount compared to today. The turning point? A compelling story.

Adam Clevenger will walk you through the story-based strategy that took his fundraiser from a modest experiment to a six-figure tradition, plus practical tips you can apply to your own peer-to-peer campaigns (birthday or otherwise).

This session is for you if you’ve ever wondered what it would take to turn a small fundraiser into something people look forward to every year.

Beyond the “Thank You”: The Latest Research on Planned Gift Stewardship

Nicole Walton, FreeWill

When a donor names your organization in their will, does your team send a thank-you letter, update the database, and move on? For some planned giving programs, that’s exactly where the relationship stops growing.

This session draws on recent sector research into what happens to donors after they’ve made a legacy commitment -- and why so many stewardship programs stall right when engagement should be deepening. Nicole Walton will share what separates organizations that keep building the relationship from those that let it go quiet, plus frameworks other nonprofits are using to steward growing donor pools without growing their teams.

This session is for you if your planned giving stewardship stops at the thank-you letter.

Your Other Amazing Mission: Donors

Jeff Brooks, Jeff Brooks Fundraising

You know your mission -- the one on your website. Feed people, protect the land, find the cure. There’s a second mission most fundraisers never name: giving donors the chance to change the world, and be changed in return. Giving to something you believe in transforms you -- it makes you more generous, connected, and fulfilled.

Take that second mission seriously and your fundraising gets noticeably better. Instead of prying gifts out of people, you offer them something they actually want: a way to live out their values. Your stories sharpen, your asks get more compelling, and deciding what to do next stops feeling like a guessing game. You’ll leave with practical how-tos and free checklists to put it to work right away.

This session is for you if fundraising feels like a fight for every gift and you want donors who give because they want to.

Community-Centered Lessons for Donor-Centered Fundraising

Mario Galeano, Union Station Homeless Services

Fundraising is evolving, as it always has. And the best of community-centered fundraising is finding its way into fundraising fundamentals that have proven themselves over time.

Mario Galeano shows you what that looks like in practice: keeping what works in donor-centered fundraising while building in what CCF gets right -- caring for donors without centering them, personalizing without pandering, stewarding without overpromising, and telling stories without exploiting the people in them.

You’ll leave with a clearer, more grounded way to practice fundraising that respects donors and dollars while honoring community dignity, mission, and equity.

This session is for you if you want practical, real-world ways to put both donors and community at the center of your fundraising.

This, Not That: How AI Can Help and Hurt in Nonprofit Work

Kimberly Bottom, Velora

AI is showing up all over the nonprofit world, but use doesn’t always equal impact. Many teams are experimenting with AI for drafts, summaries, research, and admin tasks -- while facing real concerns around ethics, privacy, accuracy, and staff readiness.

In this session, Kimberly Bottom will help you separate the helpful use cases from the risky ones. Use AI to reduce repetitive work, organize information, surface donor insights, and create first drafts. Keep humans in charge of strategy, trust-building, sensitive communication, final decisions, and mission judgment.

You’ll leave with a practical framework for using AI with care.

This session is for you if you’re not sure where the line is between AI helped and AI shouldn’t have touched this.

How to Tell Hard Stories Without Losing Yourself

Maria Bryan, When Bearing Witness

The work of a storyteller can wear you down. You collect them, shape them into something that moves people to give, and then you do it again next week -- and the week after that, at a pace that rarely lets up.

This is about sustaining yourself while you do meaningful, mission-driven storytelling work. Grounded in trauma-informed practice, you’ll learn to recognize the signs of vicarious trauma, set healthier boundaries, and build a more sustainable pace for gathering and sharing the stories your work depends on.

This session is for you if the emotional weight of storytelling work is catching up with you, and you want a healthier way to keep doing it.

Writing Your First (or Best!) Fundraising Appeal

Sarah Lundberg, Better Fundraising Company

Maybe you inherited this fundraising job. Or you’ve been doing it for a while, but nobody ever actually taught you how to write an appeal. You’re not alone. Most fundraisers were never shown what goes into a good appeal letter and why it works.

This session starts at the beginning. You’ll learn what an appeal actually is, what makes donors respond to one appeal over another, and how to write a bang-up letter from the opening line to the closing P.S. No jargon, no guessing, no problem!

You’ll leave ready to sit down and write your next appeal -- from scratch, without second-guessing every sentence.

This session is for you if nobody ever taught you how to write an appeal and you’re tired of guessing.

Don’t Waste the Welcome: Building a Better Email Series

Kyle Hill, NextAfter

Someone just subscribed to your email list or made their first gift. They’ve taken the first step in their journey with you, but the relationship is only beginning. What you send next can determine whether they get invested in your mission or quietly disappear.

This session explores a data-driven approach to building two email welcome series: one for new subscribers and one for new donors. You’ll learn how to welcome subscribers into your organization’s story, help first-time donors see the role they play in it, and create a journey that builds trust and inspires continued involvement.

This session is for you if you want to turn the first moments of connection into lasting relationships with your donors.

GET UNCOMFORTABLE: Greatness, Truth, and Impact Live on the Other Side of Comfort

Tammy Zonker, Fundraising Transformed

Growth doesn’t happen in your comfort zone. The big ask, the hard conversation, the goal that scares you a little -- that’s where the breakthroughs live.

This talk is a push to stop playing small. You’ll look at the places where fear is quietly holding you and your work back, and learn how to reframe it so it stops running the show. Through real stories and hard-won strategy, you’ll walk away readier to make the big ask, have the conversation you’ve been avoiding, and set the kind of goals your mission actually deserves.

This session is for you if you know you’ve been playing it safe and you’re ready to stop.

It’s the Little Moments: Fundraising in the Age of Cookie-Cutter AI

Danielle Wallace, Grow Better Fundraising

AI can write your fundraising copy. It just can’t make anyone care -- or give.

So what actually does? When Danielle Wallace built a GoFundMe campaign for her sister Noelle, it raised $100K in six days -- and not because of a clever prompt. It was the small, specific, human moments that stopped people mid-scroll and moved them to give. You’ll pull apart exactly what made that campaign land, then take the thinking back to your own appeals, emails, and donor cultivation, with a clearer sense of what your words are really there to do.

This session is for you if you’re tired of copy that sounds fine and does nothing, and you want to write the kind people actually respond to.

Stewardship That Actually Happens

Erica Soto, The Cause Catalyst Co.

You pull off the event. The story moves people, the gifts come in, and for a moment it feels like momentum. Then Monday hits -- the inbox fills up, and stewardship becomes the thing you mean to get to once things calm down.

Erica Soto walks through how to break that cycle with the Stewardship Ladder, a repeatable way to move donors from a first gift to long-term partnership. You’ll build a stewardship rhythm sized to your team’s bandwidth, with clear ownership so it actually keeps running.

You’ll leave with a plan that turns thank-yous into a relationship donors stay in -- not a transaction they wait to be asked for again.

This session is for you if stewardship is the thing you always mean to get to and never do.

The Shaping System: How to Keep the Heart in Your Nonprofit Stories

Darrin Cook, My Mogul Media

Most nonprofits don’t struggle because they lack stories. They struggle because their best stories get stuck between the field and the fundraising team. Darrin Cook shows you an easy-to-implement shaping system that preserves the humanity in those stories while turning them into ones that are ready to raise money.

Story Scouts: Build Your Storytelling Squad

Natalie Monroe, MemoryFox

Your best stories aren’t sitting in the communications department -- they’re happening every day with your program staff, case managers, and volunteers. Natalie Monroe shows you how to turn them into story collectors, without asking anyone to become a writer or photographer: a simple system for spotting stories and getting them to the people who can use them. Walk away with a Storytelling Squad framework your team can start using right away.

The Seven Functions of a Fundraising Department -- and How Small Shops Cover Them

Steven Screen, Better Fundraising Company
Jim Shapiro, Better Fundraising Company

Most small shops don’t have the complete fundraising department they wish they had -- they have a small number of people, wearing many hats, getting to as many things as they can.

Jim Shapiro and Steven Screen break down the seven functions every fundraising department needs for sustainable growth, and the three ways to cover each function: a person, a tool, or a partner. This session is CRM- and tech-agnostic -- the focus is on roles, not products.

You’ll leave with a map of your own department: what’s covered, what’s getting done in the margins, and what to add next.

This session is for you if you want to stop being the fundraising department and start running the fundraising department!

What’s Working in Recurring Giving? How to Attract, Acquire, and Retain More Monthly Donors

Ben Smithee, NextAfter

Most nonprofits know recurring donors are gold. Far fewer know what actually makes someone start giving monthly -- and keep going.

NextAfter’s Recurring Giving Benchmark Study tested the real donor journey across nearly 140 organizations and 600 gifts, from the first recurring gift through cultivation and upgrades. You’ll get clear benchmarks for what’s working and what isn’t, a few genuinely surprising patterns, and specific moves you can make to your donation pages, email sequences, and donor communications to bring in more recurring gifts.

This session is for you if you want more monthly donors, more predictable revenue, and hard data on what actually gets you there.

Invested Impact: How to Create a Donor Newsletter That Reports Back -- and Raises Money Too!

Rachel Zant, Pen With A Purpose

If your donor newsletter is packed with staff announcements, event recaps, and organizational updates, you’re wasting a valuable opportunity. Because your donors care about your mission -- not your organization.

Let’s turn your newsletter from a bulletin into a tool that stewards donors and raises money at the same time. You’ll learn to shift the focus off your organization and onto your donor, report back on their impact in a way that makes them the hero of the story, and work in an ask that actually brings gifts in. The result is a newsletter people want to open -- one that retains donors and gives them a reason to give again.

This session is for you if your newsletter feels like a chore nobody reads and you want it pulling its weight.

Ethical Persuasion Without the Ick

Maria Bryan, Donorbox

Persuasion is part of fundraising -- but it should never leave donors feeling pressured, confused, or manipulated. Maria Bryan shares an ethical persuasion framework rooted in clarity, choice, consent, and compassion, built on trauma-informed practice. Through real fundraising examples, you’ll see how small choices in message clarity, ease of giving, and donor choice either build trust or create hesitation -- and how to invite action while still honoring your donors’ agency.

The Emails People Still Open: 5 Principles for Fundraising Emails in an AI World

Danielle Wallace, Grow Better Fundraising

AI can write a polished fundraising email in seconds. The challenge now is writing one people still want to open. Danielle Wallace shares five principles for creating fundraising emails that get more opens, touch more hearts, and move more donors to respond.

Do Right by Your Storytellers -- and Raise More Doing It

Kristin Sukraw, Storyfind

You believe in doing right by the people whose stories you tell. You also have numbers to hit. And sometimes those two things feel like they’re pulling in opposite directions.

Here’s the good news: ethical storytelling doesn’t cost you results -- it drives them. You’ll see how one organization saw a 74% revenue increase after switching to an ethical approach, and walk through a real case study with Homes For Our Troops. Then you’ll get the practices that make it doable without overhauling how you work: informed consent, retraction protocols, thoughtful interviews, and simple aftercare you can handle with the tools you already have.

This session is for you if you want to raise more money without compromising the values that brought you to this work.

Engineering Generosity at Your Event With a Paddle Raise

Samantha Swaim, Swaim Strategies

The paddle raise (or fund-a-need) is usually the single biggest revenue moment of your entire event. So why do so many of them get left to a wing and a prayer?

Let’s break down what actually makes the moment work -- and it’s not luck. You’ll learn how to build real emotional impact into the ask, how to warm up the room long before the first paddle goes up, and how to put your emcee and auctioneer to work creating the kind of momentum that turns “maybe” into hands in the air all over the room. Whether it’s your first fund-a-need or your seventh, you’ll leave knowing how to design the moment instead of crossing your fingers and hoping it lands.

This session is for you if the biggest fundraising moment of your event is currently running on hope.

The Right Story for the Right Donor

T. Clay Buck, Next River Fundraising

A great story only works if it reaches the right person. But as fewer households give to nonprofits, simply finding more names or chasing bigger gifts isn’t enough. We need to understand the people already choosing to give.

In this session, Clay Buck will show you how the information you already have can reveal something far more important than giving capacity: who your donors are, what they value, and how generosity fits into their lives. You’ll learn to look beyond transactions and use everyday donor data to make more personal, thoughtful fundraising decisions -- without becoming a data expert.

This session is for you if you want your fundraising to reach people, not records.

Ask Us Anything!

Chris Davenport + Joshua Alcorn, Nonprofit Storytelling Conference

You’ve spent the conference hearing takes on fundraising that may not match what you walked in believing, and you probably have more questions than answers.

Come get some of those questions answered. Chris and Josh open the floor -- no slides, no agenda, just a chance to ask the questions still rattling around from everything you’ve heard.

Bring whatever’s unresolved.

Don’t Give Up...YET!

Jeff Schreifels, Veritus Group

Relationship-based fundraising is some of the most rewarding work there is. It’s also some of the hardest -- especially when you’re doing it without the management, support, and encouragement you should be able to count on. A lot of fundraisers hit a wall and start eyeing the exit, not because they’ve stopped loving the work, but because no one around them is making it sustainable.

Let’s change that -- from your side. You’ll get clear on what good support actually looks like, how to advocate for yourself with the leaders above you, and how to ask for the conditions you need to do this job well and keep doing it. Because wanting to stay shouldn’t mean white-knuckling it alone.

This session is for you if you love this work but you’re not getting the backup you need -- and you’re ready to ask for it.

Major Gifts When You’re Also Doing Everything Else

Sarah Lundberg, Better Fundraising Company

You’re the development director. And the grant writer. And the event planner. And the person who remembers the thank-you notes. Dedicating 40 hours a week to major gifts sounds lovely -- but it’s not your reality.

So let’s work with the reality. You’ll figure out how to carve out the few hours that actually move major gifts, which donor activities are worth your time when you barely have any, and how to keep relationships warm and asks moving forward -- even if all you’ve got is a couple of mornings a week.

This session is for you if you’re doing five jobs at once and need major gifts to happen in the margins.

Get Found by AI: Hands-On GEO Workshop for Nonprofit Storytellers

Mabel Lujan, Cornershop Creative

AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are becoming the first stop for people searching for causes to support -- and if your site isn’t built for AI, you might not show up, or show up wrong.

Mabel Lujan introduces Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): what AI tools look for when pulling answers about your mission and impact, and how it differs from SEO. You’ll evaluate real nonprofit websites live, spotting the gaps between how you sound and how AI reads you.

Leave with a checklist of content changes you can start making this week -- not someday.

This session is for you if you want AI to get your organization right, not wrong.

Podcast Recording

Details coming soon.

The River Is Moving

Chris Davenport, Nonprofit Storytelling Conference

Before you head home, come back to the ballroom for 30 minutes.

After three days of ideas, conversations, and probably more notes than you know what to do with, Chris Davenport will close the conference with a story, a challenge, and one idea he hopes stays with you long after Tucson.

If you leave with only one thing from the conference, make it this.