Sample Session Ideas
October 27 – 29, 2025 | Atlanta
For guidance, here are examples of strong session ideas that we expect will be especially relevant to summit attendees. Organized under key topic areas, these examples provide context to help you align your proposal with the summit’s focus areas.
Thriving Workforce: Building a Sustainable and Future-Proof Workforce
- Future-Ready Workforce Development – How do organizations prepare the charitable sector workforce for future challenges and opportunities? Sessions examine career progression models, culture-building strategies, and programs that support long-term retention while maintaining organizational effectiveness.
- Breaking Barriers to Workforce Investment – How can organizations overcome systemic barriers to investing in their workforce? Sessions explore strategies for balancing program delivery with capacity building, making a compelling case for infrastructure investment, and breaking free from cycles that prioritize programs over organizational health.
Robust Organizations: Maintaining Financial Strength and Long-Term Sustainability
- The Future of Fundraising – What new skills and approaches are needed to fundraise successfully? Sessions explore emerging models, capacity-building strategies, and approaches to developing fundraising talent. How should organizations adapt to donor behavior shifts and leverage new tools to sustain and grow their fundraising efforts?
- Redefining Foundation-Nonprofit Partnership Models – How can organizations build transformative partnerships with funders that go beyond traditional grantmaker-grantee relationships? Sessions explore strategies for fostering authentic, trust-based partnerships that balance power dynamics and create sustainable funding models. Sessions will also explore how nonprofits can effectively advocate for community needs while helping foundations better understand and respond to them.
Trusted Voices: Strengthening Community Relationships to Drive Meaningful Change
- Ethical Engagement and Governance – How can organizations demonstrate integrity, develop clear ethical guidelines, create transparent decision-making processes, and implement robust accountability mechanisms? Sessions explore how ethical practices directly enhance community trust and effectiveness.
- Narrative Power and Storytelling – How can organizations create compelling narratives that humanize social impact while avoiding saviorism? Sessions explore how centering lived experiences, providing systemic context, and communicating hope can inspire deeper community engagement and trust.
Active Advocates: Harnessing Collective Impact to Advance Policies for a Healthy, Just Nation
- Narrative Strategy and Public Communication – How can organizations master the art of crafting compelling advocacy narratives that bridge divides, challenge systemic narratives, and inspire bipartisan collective action? Sessions explore communication approaches that move beyond partisan rhetoric, center lived experiences, and create meaningful public discourse about complex social issues.
- Technology and Advocacy Innovation – How can organizations leverage emerging digital tools and platforms to amplify advocacy efforts? Sessions explore ethical approaches to leveraging technology for policy impact, including data-driven storytelling, digital organizing, and innovative engagement strategies.
Strategic Volunteer Engagement: Unlocking the Power of Community
- Volunteer Engagement as Capacity Building – How can organizations harness the power of volunteers to strengthen programs, operations, fundraising, and community connections? Sessions explore strategies for moving beyond viewing volunteers as supplemental labor to recognizing them as essential assets that enhance nonprofit effectiveness. Sessions also explore how to measure and communicate volunteer impact beyond traditional metrics.
- Leadership and Staff Development – How can organizations successfully invest in paid staff capacity to strengthen volunteer engagement? Sessions address strategies for training staff, clarifying roles, and shifting organizational culture to foster strong volunteer-staff partnerships. Sessions address common challenges and practical solutions for building staff competency in volunteer engagement.
Artificial Intelligence: Navigating Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications in the Charitable Sector
- General AI Skills Development – How can organizations address foundational AI literacy? Sessions cover key concepts in predictive and generative AI, prompt engineering, and responsible chatbot deployment. The focus will be on equipping organizations with the knowledge needed for informed AI adoption.
- AI Governance and Leadership – How can organizations develop and implement effective governance structures for AI deployment? Sessions cover decision-making frameworks, policy development, oversight structures, and leadership responsibilities. Special emphasis is placed on board education, staff engagement, ethical guidelines, and stakeholder communication around AI initiatives.
Equitable Community Development: Building Inclusive and Sustainable Communities
- Economic Justice and Community Wealth Building – How can organizations move beyond traditional economic metrics to reimagine community economic development? Sessions examine approaches that view economic transformation as a holistic process of community empowerment, focusing on models that redistribute resources, challenge extractive economic systems, and foster regenerative economic practices rooted in community wisdom and collective well-being.
- Measurement and Transformative Impact – How can organizations capture the nuanced, multilayered nature of community transformation? Sessions help participants develop innovative methods for assessing change that center community perspectives, establish dynamic feedback mechanisms, and recognize the profound, often unseen ways that communities drive systemic transformation.
Education Policy: Shaping future-ready learning environments
- Leadership Development and Representation – How can organizations implement strategies to develop and support diverse leadership in education policy? Sessions will examine approaches to identifying, nurturing, and amplifying diverse voices in policy leadership, with a particular emphasis on creating sustainable pipelines for underrepresented leaders.
- Policy Design and Implementation – How can organizations develop culturally responsive education policies? Sessions will explore methodologies for inclusive policy development, community engagement strategies, and implementation approaches that maintain an equity focus.
- Cross-Sector Collaboration for Education Reform – How can organizations build effective partnerships across sectors to advance education policy goals? Sessions will explore innovative collaboration models between government agencies, the charitable sector, community organizations, and academic institutions to create comprehensive solutions to entrenched challenges.
Transformative Philanthropy: Aligning values, policy awareness, and inclusive practices to maximize funding impact and build stronger communities through intentional giving
- Policy Environment and Legislative Changes – How can philanthropic organizations adapt to evolving policy landscapes? Sessions will examine the impacts of recent executive orders on federal hiring and funding, new legislation affecting transparency, reporting requirements for nonprofits and philanthropies, and strategies for maintaining organizational resilience during significant policy shifts.
- Values-Based and Community-Led Philanthropy – How can organizations align philanthropic work with core values and community priorities? Topics include promoting liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility through giving, frameworks for authentic diversity in philanthropic initiatives, and models for transferring decision-making power to communities.
- Supporting Diverse Leadership – How can organizations address the “glass cliff” phenomenon and other challenges facing leaders of color in philanthropy? Sessions will examine strategies for creating supportive environments for diverse leadership, approaches to leadership development and retention, and case studies of successful leadership diversity initiatives.
