Agenda

In early 2020, MyCovidResponse was formed to help get resources to those most vulnerable to the pandemic. Through a collaborative effort between community leaders, regional agencies, and grassroots organizers, they built a system that coordinated >50,000 food deliveries, thousands of masks, and hundreds of vaccines, and thousands of connections to essential services since COVID-19 began. Hear from these 2020 Technology Innovation Award recipients on their approach for going from zero to serving thousands of people in one month though a combination of partnerships and technology.

As co-founder of the Movember Foundations, Adam turned the world onto moustaches for a good cause. It was a magical moment where luck & opportunity meet an amazing cause that ignites a global movement.  As CEO of Starlight Children’s Foundation, Adam has led an organizational transformation that generated a banner fundraising year in the middle of a pandemic.  Hear his motivation around creating a culture of innovation at Starlight and his advice to other leaders on introducing more transformative and innovative uses of technology in the sector.

Okta’s VP of Social Impact breaks down 3 myths about working with tech companies and provides tactical tools for you to get the most out of your relationships with social impact teams.

As a former technology executive turned nonprofit COO, James Gadsby was on a journey to modernize his nonprofit’s footprint and his actions came just in time. Learn how Desire Street’s 3-year process led to leveraging workflow automation features that helped them thrive with increased efficiency, seamless work-from-anywhere capabilities and reduce operational timeframes.

In early 2020, Lynn Morrison lived an Executive Director’s nightmare when their operations were brought to a halt following a ransomware attack. Lynn talks about her experience and what she learned that other nonprofits can do to further protect themselves.

How often are you evaluating whether the services you provide are truly reachable to your target audience?  Are you reviewing the data you collect to make informed decisions, even if it is illustrating tough realizations?

Hear how Montgomery County Collaboration Council came to the difficult understanding that its target communities were not taking advantage of their services because of obstacles in their path and how the pandemic helped push them to re-evaluate how to use technology to increase their access to these emerging communities.

In late 2019, Debbie Amaral, CEO of the Mystic Valley YMCA, pitched a blue sky idea to us about using tech to improve dignity in the emergency food network. An innovation grant and a pandemic later, we have your-market.org — a collaborative, shared data system that benefits shoppers, agencies, and funders. We expect to reach 50 agencies and 15,000 shoppers by August. Debbie and I want to highlight the keys to success in planning more of these initiatives in the sector: engaging funders and major influencers; our structure as a nonprofit, public trust co-operative; and agency co-creation.

Artificial Intelligence still has a sense that is only for the elite, for corporate companies with unlimited budgets and the resources to support it. That’s not the case any longer, and hear you’ll learn one easy way you can set up and benefit from AI in your organization – ChatBots.

Cybercrime is now more lucrative than the drug trade and by April 2020 following the movement to remote working due to the COVID-19 crisis, the rate at which nonprofits have been attacked has skyrocketed. It is imperative to understand the landscape of cybercrime and what you can, and should, be doing to protect your data and employees.

Many organizations think that by using cloud systems and automated backups, they are all set to recover from a disaster should one happen, but it takes much more than that to be prepared. In this workshop, we will explain why having a written and updated Disaster Recovery plan is important to your technology environment and define the elements that go into creating a successful plan. Then, we’ll walk participants through questions and assessments to help complete a disaster recovery form. Once forms are completed, Tech Impact will use that information to produce and send a personalized written Disaster Recovery Plan in a Word.doc format.

Takeaways:

• An understanding of important Disaster Recovery Plan elements
• Assistance in completing the Disaster Planning form
• A review by a Backup and Recovery Engineer who will evaluate the information collected and generate a personalized Disaster Recovery Plan for your organization’s use

Building a dashboard is easy, but understanding what data to use and how to best present it is a challenge many organizations miss. Using the build of an Annual Report as an example, learn about best practices and how to get started visualizing data for your organization.

This workshop will focus on the steps organizations need to take before they begin the visualization build including drawing out your report, identifying key performance indicators (KPIs), and documenting where the data for each metric lives. Designed for leadership members, development staff, or any other team members looking for visualization tools, this workshop does not require technical expertise.

Takeaways:

• A template customized by you during the workshop that can be used to create an annual report
• An understanding of various use cases and their different needs including program impact, fundraising, board reports and annual reports
• A review of best practices and considerations when creating visualizations for your organization, both internally and externally
• A listing of tools that can be used to create and maintain these reports

Many organization are starting to evaluate ways to automate workflows to either replace a manual, paper process or reduce the burden on newly remote staff. This workshop will focus on the different tools available within Microsoft’s Power Platform and how they can be used independently, together, or with other applications. We will review ways to streamline repetitive tasks, gather key information from staff and report back on it, simplify existing processes like approval workflows, and more. Designed for leadership members, programs staff, and IT staff who are interested in learning how to leverage some of the technology currently available, this workshop will benefit those without technical expertise by providing an overview of the capabilities and possibilities of the platform applications as well as those looking for tangible takeaways to practice or implement within their own organization.

 Takeaways:

• Understanding the Microsoft Power Platform
• Common Use Cases by Application
• The power of the collective platform as well as third-party integrations
• How to start with and modify templates

Learn the fundamentals and best practices for using social media, email, and additional communication tools to conduct digital fundraising in this remote world. Walk through steps to consider when optimizing your website, targeting email audience and crafting a social media plan.

Takeaways:

• Learn key elements of optimizing your website and creating an online donation form.
• Align email and social media fundraising
• Understand how to analyze and utilize metrics from your campaigns.
• Discover software to support your fundraising efforts.

2020 Speakers and Additional Workshops Coming Soon

Resiliency today is not a choice and nonprofits need to build it within their staff members and apply it to today’s technology challenges. In this on-demand session, certified change management expert, Ralitza Zikatanova will draw from the large body of change management techniques. Attendees will walk away with the ability to create a personal action plan in moments that require resiliency and have a list of big picture competencies they can reference as they continue to face new challenges.

Putting customers/constituents at the heart of your organization ensures decisions reflect your community’s needs, desires, and feelings. We’ll share the Customer Experience framework — identifying your key personas, mapping out their journeys, listening to your constituents at key touchpoints, anticipating and predicting needs, and actioning to transform experiences. To see this framework come to life, I’ll share stories from nonprofits like Human IT who have served 4x more households by streamlining their beneficiary journey and utilizing SMS as their main feedback channel for a better CX.

Online learning has been gaining in popularity and usage in recent years. With the necessity of social distancing due to the pandemic, it is likely that online learning will continue to expand. While online learning provides the opportunity to share content at any time, to anyone around the world, it also can be challenging to create the community and connections with remote learners. In this talk, we discuss some strategies that are proving to bridge that divide and share ideas with one another about ways to make distance learning feel engaging and meaningful.

You have a donor management system, but how do you get the most out of it while maintaining it for optimal efficiency? How do you take advantage of all the hidden gems that are in there to make your data truly work for you?  Join us for a short primer that identifies key donor management software best practices, including keeping your data clean, enhancing your lists, and customizing and segmenting your data.  This will be a quick pass to provide ideas you may wish to explore in more detail.

Up to twice as many women drop out of the technical ladder in the corporate world as men. A look at the numbers published by Facebook (16%), Google (18%), Slack (18%) demonstrate the extent of the problem. In open source, the numbers are around 5.4%. CodeChix, a CA non-profit, is addressing this retention problem in the tech industry through open source tools and methodologies to help retain busy, professional women engineers/developers.

Many nonprofits think of innovation as a luxury they can’t afford. Staff time and budgets are limited, and improving the way they use technology seems out of reach. But technology can offer straightforward, inexpensive means of providing higher quality services, and create numerous opportunities to do more with less—even in our current economic climate. Which makes innovation something organizations can no longer afford not to embrace. Hear key strategies and best practices for everyday innovation, along with real-world examples, providing a framework for innovation appropriate for every nonprofit.

Have you figured out how to steward your P2P fundraisers? We’ll share practical examples of ways to draw your existing P2P fundraisers more deeply into your organization and help them raise more money. You’ll come away from this micro session with fresh ideas and inspiration!

• Learn how (and when) to communicate with your P2P fundraisers
• Explore ways to use your marketing automation and social media tools
• See examples from organizations that are doing this well