More than 100 total educational sessions* are waiting for you at AFP ICON 2022. Whether you want to master leadership, relationship building, securing the gift, trends and innovation, or all of the above, AFP has the latest and greatest information to unlock your fundraising potential.
Thank You To Our AFP ICON 2022 Education Track Sponsors!
Major Gifts are essential to fundraising and campaign success. In addition to securing new donors and annual gifts, a successful Annual Fund will upgrade donors and build donor loyalty--developing major and planned gift prospects. In this session we will discuss how the Annual Fund can help increase Major Gift results.
Education Track: Securing the Gift
Audience:
Applied
The session will begin with an Annual Fund quiz.
Donor Management will contain an exercise for take-home portfolio management.
Donor Messaging will include examples of direct response language: Savior Complex vs donor partnership. (Audience participaton)
Donor Segmentation will include model report examples.
Low donor retention is a costly and persistent challenge for fundraisers. Research shows that timely communication – specifically impact reporting – plays a critical role in keeping donors engaged. This session will help you and your team plan and produce impact reports to inspire and activate donors and build stronger community partnerships.
Education Track: Relationship Building
Audience:
Strategic
Begin with participants identifying challenges and goals in developing donor impact reports. The group list will inform and focus the discussion. Working with examples, participants in small groups will evaluate and share balanced critiques of data and financial storytelling, and report narratives. Session ends with time allotted for Q&A.
Did you ever want to have a truly honest conversation with your Board Members? This conversation, that you have dreamt or had nightmares about, is the focus of this session! How you feel about them. How they feel about you. More importantly it is about building strong relationships with them.
Education Track: Volunteer Involvement
Audience:
Introductory/Foundational
My presentation style is boring as heck! Just kidding ... I am an engaging speaker with a sense of humour to keep the audience interested. I ask the audience questions and ask for examples to illustrate the material I am sharing with them. I tell stories about my work too!
Learn how donors responded to Covid-19 and social justice issues in 2020 and 2021 with national fundraising performance data. Donor acquisition and retention trends will be revealed and can be compared with your nonprofit organization as benchmark and performance guidelines.
Education Track: Current and Prospective Donor Research
Audience:
Introductory/Foundational
This session will report on national donor retention statistics from the AFP Growth in Giving Initiative and Fundraising Effectiveness Project now in its 16th year of donor retention analysis. Results from more than 20,000 nonprofits can be used as national benchmarks and realist guidelines for improving performance.
Want to hear about our worst mistakes with major donors and we how survived them? Pull up a chair, we’re spilling the beans! These mistakes could save you millions.
Education Track: Securing the Gift
Audience:
Applied
This will be a panel presentation with Cherian Koshy, Rachel Muir and Tammy Zonker sharing their biggest mistakes soliciting gifts. Audience members will be invited to share their fundraising failures in this tell-all session.
Capital campaigns in the pandemic required a new focus on direct conversations with donors about gifts. You’ll discover how Angie Sledge, Chief Development Officer of Knoxville Habitat for Humanity, closed 6-figure gifts on Zoom, and how to apply these skills to close your own major gifts in the post-pandemic world.
Education Track: Securing the Gift
Audience:
Applied
We'll set up audience members in 1-on-1 conversations to practice direct donor conversations together. The participants will get applied, practical training in conducting an Ask Conversation. Then we will have a group debrief sharing learnings. Should be a lot of fun!
Learn how to engage with Latinx Community, understand the background of a Latino community and make giving fun and close to your heart.
Education Track: Current and Prospective Donor Research
Audience:
Applied
Anecdotes, videos and personal experiences will make the presentation more engaging. They'll learn how fun and generous latinos could be if they speak to us the way we engage to a cause we care about.
Understand businesses are looking for more benefits than their name on an event program/swag. They are looking more strategic in the ways they give to maximize their ROI. Join us as we review basics of engaging businesses and review how one organization created a unique business group.
Education Track: Relationship Building
Audience:
Applied
Brainstorm some recognition and benefits for business donors.
Discuss what value add organizations can provide to businesses.
Identify ways to engage with the business community.
A panel of representatives from the Grant Professional Association will be presenting the current GPA Code of Ethics and reviewing ethical dilemmas faced regularly by grant professionals. If you ever conduct your fundraising efforts in parallel or in conjunction with a grant professional, this is an important workshop to attend.
Education Track: Ethics, Accountability and Professionalism
Audience:
Introductory/Foundational
Representatives of GPA will review the GPA Code of Ethics and discuss many ethical dilemmas that are commonly experienced by grant professionals. Attendees will be engaged through their input, questions, and recommendations of solutions for ethical challenges faced in the field. No topic will be off-limits.
In the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic, nonprofits dealt with massive disruptions to their fundraising. Nonprofits continually adjust to a changed philanthropic environment. But your nonprofit is more resilient than you’d think. By identifying donor behaviors within your database, fundraisers can better foster major donors, recurring donations, and legacy gifts.
Education Track: Current and Prospective Donor Research
Audience:
Applied
During his presentation, Nejeed will first ask the attendees to reflect on what they look for when identifying prospects, major donors, recurring donors, and legacy donors. They will also be asked how these processes have changed during the pandemic.
Last, attendees will be encouraged to share their thoughts and reflect.
Data shows that only 49.6% of Americans make charitable gifts, and this number decreases annually. In a world driven by big data, NFP’s must innovate ways to work smarter, not harder. Learn how A.I. can help reverse the generosity crisis by identifying the true reasons why people give and when.
Education Track: Current and Prospective Donor Research
Audience:
Strategic
Discover forward-thinking insights necessary for nonprofit success in the 21st-Century. Understand the capabilities of AI and how to apply it to your fundraising. Learn what major donors are thinking about in the modern era and the regulatory issues (e.g., privacy) that will affect your nonprofit.
Education Track: Leadership and Management
Audience:
Strategic
I intend to engage the audience by asking them questions. It's always better to speak with your audience and highlight real-life extemporaneous examples of how people are doing things now to highlight and underscore the shifting landscape.
What we are hearing: “Emerging Leaders are jack-of-all-trades, masters of none.” With a projected 10-year growth in the fundraising profession of 14%, emerging leaders need to strategically maximize their growth potential. Hear how four young, diverse professionals catapulted their careers by maximizing their professional experience to become leaders.
Education Track: Leadership and Management
Audience:
Applied
The presenters will use a variety of audience engagement techniques including an interactive affirmation exercise, live polling, using stock questions to promote audience participation, and taking questions from the audience.
You strategize on how to get the corporate foundation/sponsorship gift but did you know that the person making that decision is and can be your next major donor? Follow these steps and learn how to get BOTH and leave the corporate decision maker incredibly happy AND actually thank YOU!
Education Track: Securing the Gift
Audience:
Applied
I present 12 minutes of content, then ask open ended questions for the audience to respond. When LIVE I am on the floor moving around the room for superior eye contact and I ALWAYS use humor. I mastered the balance of content and ?s from the audience for total engagement.
Hit the jackpot with eye-candy fundraising campaigns you’ll want to steal! See best-of examples from budgets large & small. Get inspired with real world examples, great content, unique thinking, risk-taking and delightful design across donor thank you’s, emails, websites, online advertising, donation pages, videos—and anything else that increases donations!
Education Track: Securing the Gift
Audience:
Applied
These two dynamic speakers lit up the virtual stage in 2020 with their drool-worthy session “Timesaving Tools to Rock Every Fundraiser’s World” . These two are known for collecting the best of fundraising ideas, campaigns and tools and sharing them to the delight of audience members.
Volunteer committees are valuable assets for any organization but it takes a good leader to maximize the group's potential. This session focuses on how to identify and recruit Rock Star committees, run efficient and effective committee meetings, and make your volunteers feel valued.
Education Track: Volunteer Involvement
Audience:
Applied
Audience participation is key to making this session lively and engaging. I will create "committees" within the session participants and include role playing to accentuate the interpersonal dynamics found within committees. This is in conjunction with my PowerPoint presentation.
If you don't have a seat at the table, you will be a part of meal, or as they say down South - You will be discussed! Others will satisfy their appetites of superiority or ill-informed biases to dish out what they think about those not at the table.
Education Track: Leadership and Management
Audience:
Strategic
Attendees will be asked a set of questions to test the cultural competency of their organizations.
I will show video clips of examples of inclusion and exclusion and slides that demonstrate biases.
We will have a brief 5-minute exercise role-playing cultural engagement
Have you ever gotten "the look" when you meet someone for the first time? For People of Color, this is our life. You'll hear about situations and outcomes from the panel. Be ready to listen and share! It might not be the chair that's uncomfortable!
Education Track: Ethics, Accountability and Professionalism
Audience:
Introductory/Foundational
It will be a panel discussion. We will share out stories, but want will be asking audience members to share experiences or how they might handle different situations.
Nonprofits can no longer stay silent on the public policies that affect our missions and the communities/people we serve. This session will address the myths and fears that hold us back from engaging in advocacy. Advocacy can turn donors into powerful advocates for change while increasing giving and donor retention.
Education Track: Relationship Building
Audience:
Applied
A mixture of technical presentation (What you can/cannot do around advocacy) and panel discussion on how each presenter engaged their organizations and donors (individual, corporate & foundations) in advocacy.
Millennials: Once a catch-all for the youngest generation, this key demographic is on pace to become the wealthiest generation. In this joint session presented by Fundraise Up and UNICEF USA, we’ll discuss how UNICEF dramatically scaled its recurring donor program among Millennials by emphasizing the donor experience.
Education Track: Current and Prospective Donor Research
Audience:
Strategic
Virtual events can be extremely effective and great sources of donations, but many nonprofits don't know how to do them effectively. In this webinar, you'll learn how to build community with connection-based activities that let your supporters get to know each other by donating to your cause. You'll come away with actionable ideas to improve your organization's fundraising results by adding radical interactivity to virtual events.
Learn everything you wanted to know about becoming a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE), including: - Benefits of becoming a CFRE - Eligibility requirements - Starting and submitting your application - Cost & discount for AFP members - CFRE exam overview - Studying for the exam - Recertification
Education Track: Ethics, Accountability and Professionalism
Audience:
Introductory/Foundational
Mobile has transformed society, allowing users to converse, work, and conduct business anywhere. With users spending more time than ever on the move and on their phones, traditional donor engagement becomes increasingly difficult. We explore these trends and discuss how donor engagement and fundraising strategies must adapt to a mobile-only world.
Education Track: Securing the Gift
Audience:
Introductory/Foundational
There’s a lot of buzz around cryptocurrency and its potential as a legitimate way to donate. Yet, there is no shortage of questions accompanying cryptocurrency’s meteoric rise in notoriety. We’ll untangle this thorny topic into actionable steps nonprofits can take to position their nonprofit for the future.
Education Track: Current and Prospective Donor Research
Audience:
Strategic
Making the Ask offers you 20 radical and flexible tools to solicit your next major gift in person, on the phone and even by email. Leave old school moves management techniques behind and learn to use the latest thinking in neuroscience in your fundraising.
Education Track: Securing the Gift
Audience:
Introductory/Foundational
The session is almost entirely interactive exploring the use of the 20 key tools organised under five broad headings- passion, proposal, preparation, persuasion, and persistence. there is significant pairs and small group work, underpinned by backgroud informations and science-based insights,
Curious about working with influencers? Want to know where to start? Hear what Best Friends Animal Society learned when they launched their influencer program in 2021! Learn how influencers can benefit your organization, steps to create a program, and real life examples of fun collabs before brainstorming your own!
Education Track: Relationship Building
Audience:
Introductory/Foundational
During this presentation participants will use what they learned and work in groups or pairs to brainstorm creative ways influencer partnerships could benefit their organization.
In this interactive session, you will learn how to implement (or strengthen) your ability to systematically manage your relationships with your top donors and raise major gifts for your organization
Education Track: Leadership and Management
Audience:
Strategic
Audience Members will break up into small groups, talk about how to apply the principles in the presentation, and begin to make a written plan to implement what they learn back at the office.
To take on the biggest problems, all need to lead in an inclusive, diverse and equitable manner. This session will focus on the leadership skills you need for personal and professional success. These diverse leaders on the panel live their lives with IDEA everyday. Learn how you can as well!
Education Track: Leadership and Management
Audience:
Applied
This panel discussion by 5 leaders in our sector will be an engaging conversation with each other and the audience. Audience participation will be driven by the panelists probing questions to and from the audience.
Let’s face it, the past year reshaped our reality in many ways, including the drastic shift in constituents’ giving behavior. Most organizations saw an impressive influx of new donors engaging through digital channels, as more mature audiences increased their time online, and younger audiences started giving larger gifts.
Education Track: Current and Prospective Donor Research
Audience:
Strategic
We will engage the audience using real time polling, inviting open Q&A, and gathering words and input to create word clouds.
Eligible for 1.25 ACFRE credits in Leadership. Leadership development isn’t always part of the budget. Nonprofits can develop leaders organically, without investing in formal leadership development programs. Based on original research with women CEOs who developed leadership identity by taking challenging stretch roles throughout their career, attendees will get practical ideas to develop leadership in their staff.
Education Track: Leadership and Management
Audience:
Strategic
Polls, opportunity for attendees to talk about personal experiences with a partner in the audience, share stories from personal research
Are you using digital advertising for fundraising? If not, it’s time to get started! Learn how nonprofits of all shapes and sizes run ads to increase donations. Ariana will share her advertising playbook, results from other organizations, and practical ways to incorporate digital ads into your own fundraising efforts.
Education Track: Current and Prospective Donor Research
Audience:
Introductory/Foundational
If your organization has monthly donors, you will hear and see examples and best practices to make your monthly donor program even more powerful than ever before! If you’re looking to grow your monthly donor program through online and offline cultivation, engagement and retention, this session is for you.
Education Track: Securing the Gift
Audience:
Applied
Engaging attendees’ inputs, there is strong involvement within the workshop format. Participants are encouraged to bring forth their own examples, questions and ideas. There will be exercises, question time, presentations and quizzes along with the participants’ experiences, all ready to test and implement in their organization immediately.
Come learn how to prepare for, survive and THRIVE, after a small shop merges in to a huge healthcare enterprise. You'll hear real-life examples of keeping your mission relevant, maintaining donors confidence, "sharing" donors with others, that one size doesn't fit all when it comes to metrics, and more!
Education Track: Leadership and Management
Audience:
Introductory/Foundational
I believe we all learn from each other, so it's important that my sessions include audience participation, role plays, thought/idea sharing, best practices of attendees, and high energy. I also like to include real life scenarios and share examples that many will be able to relate to.
View your annual fund, major gift, and corporate sponsorship strategy as well as your organizations' stewardship and communication techniques through a community-centric lens. Attendees will identify ways to improve communication, stewardship, and fundraising strategies to further involve diverse community members and increase diverse supporters for your organization.
Education Track: Relationship Building
Audience:
Applied
Participants will break into groups to discuss various scenarios and suggest solutions, they will be asked questions and their responses will determine content in some instances
Members will have a chance to develop SMARTIE (Strategic, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound, Inclusive, Equitable) goals pertaining to their fundraising strategies.
Learn from international fundraisers the importance of reshaping the culture of philanthropy and human engagement. The culture of philanthropy has muted. Its key elements (inclusion, empowerment, transparency, collaboration, celebration) will be reviewed; how can we update them? The five sides of the “PENTAGON” of Human Engagement will be presented.
Education Track: Relationship Building
Audience:
Applied
Participants will know the results of a revealing survey applied to NGO´s stakeholders about the new human engagement.
International presenters with more than 50 years of experience will offer an enriched with examples conference.
The Key Elements of a Culture of Philanthropy (inclusion, empowerment, transparency, collaboration, celebration) will be reviewed.