PRESENTER

SESSION TITLE & DESCRIPTION

John Lepp
Agents of Good

Be Curious, Not Clever: A Mini-Masterclass in Annual/Individual Giving That Actually Works

Annual giving isn't guesswork, and it isn't about chasing the next shiny tactic. It's a practical, repeatable system built on human connection -- and over this intensive, you'll learn how that system actually works.

You'll dig into direct response fundraising at its core: clear asks, compelling stories, and a steady rhythm of thanking, reporting, and asking again. These principles have worked for a long, long time, even as the channels keep changing. Using real examples and a bit of decision science, you'll see how to line up your messaging, design, and strategy with how donors actually think, feel, and give -- so you can raise more without reinventing your approach every year.

Whether you work in mail, digital, or both, you'll leave able to simplify what you're doing, sharpen your asks and stories around how donors decide, and build a rhythm that keeps them engaged and giving over time.

This session is for you if you want annual giving that's steady and repeatable, not a scramble you rebuild from scratch every year.

Jim Shapiro
Better Fundraising Company

Start (or Strengthen!) Your Mid-Level Giving Program

Somewhere between your everyday donors and your major donors sits a group most nonprofits barely touch: the middle. These are the people who give more than the crowd but haven't been asked -- or stewarded -- like the major donors they could become. They're the most overlooked money in your database, and this intensive is about finally paying them the attention they deserve.

Over these 2.5 hours, you'll learn how to build a mid-level program from the ground up -- or sharpen one that isn't pulling its weight. You'll figure out who actually belongs in your mid-level tier, how to reach them in a way that feels personal without eating all your time, and how to move them steadily toward bigger, deeper giving. You'll leave with a clear plan for identifying these donors, communicating with them, and turning today's mid-level supporters into tomorrow's major donors.

This session is for you if you know there's untapped money in the middle of your donor base and you want a real system for growing it -- whether you're starting from zero or fixing what you've got.

Steven Screen
Better Fundraising Company

Description forthcoming

Chris Davenport + Joshua Alcorn
Nonprofit Storytelling Conference

Story, Offer, Ask

Description forthcoming

PRESENTER

SESSION TITLE & DESCRIPTION

Tammy Zonker
Fundraising Transformed

The Moments That Matter

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.

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

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.

John Lepp
Agents of Good

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

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.

Sarah Lundberg
Better Fundraising Company

Major Gifts When You're Also Doing Everything Else

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.

Writing Your First (or Best!) Fundraising Appeal

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.

Samantha Swaim
Swaim Strategies

Engineering Generosity at Your Event With a Paddle Raise

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.

Kristin Steele
Swaim Strategies

Invite Donors Into Your Mission and Make Your Event a Story

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.

Diane H. Leonard
DHL Consulting

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

"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.

Relying on Heroic Efforts is Not a Plan

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.

Jeff Schreifels
Veritus Group

The Seven Pillars of a Successful Major Gift Program

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.

Don't Give Up...YET!

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.

Danielle Wallace
Grow Better Fundraising

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

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.

Maria Bryan
When Bearing Witness

How to Tell Hard Stories Without Losing Yourself

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.

Ben Smithee
NextAfter

What's working in Recurring Giving? How to attract, acquire and retain more monthly donors

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.

Janelle Suzanne
The Louder Agency

The 11 Essential Elements of an Effective Nonprofit Homepage

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.

Kristin Sukraw
Storyfind

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

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.

Rachel Zant
Pen With A Purpose

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

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.

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

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.

Jeff Brooks
Jeff Brooks Fundraising

Your Other Amazing Mission: Donors

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.

Storytelling Mistakes You Can Avoid in 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.

Brittany Clifton
Feathr

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

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.

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

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.