Nonprofit Day Post-Conference Roundup and Resources

It was wonderful to see so many friends from San Francisco and around the country among the 500 participants at Nonprofit Day last Friday. The staff of CompassPoint and the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN) were thrilled to spend the day with you. As a long-time CompassPoint staff member and co-founder of YNPN, it was especially gratifying to experience the convergence of generations and movements at this year’s Nonprofit Day; to hear the stories of emerging and veteran leaders and activists; and to witness the energy and creativity that can come from connecting leaders to fresh and proven approaches across sectors and disciplines. At the end of the day, we really felt the power of YNPN and CompassPoint’s partnership – how throwing open the traditional way in which we planned this conference resulted in the greatest diversity yet in participants, programming, speakers, and funding support.

We saw it in the opening talk by former CompassPoint CEO and new CEO of CalNonprofits Jan Masaoka, who challenged participants to go deeper professionally by going wider in perspective—simply by trying something new at the conference. We heard that many answered that call—fundraisers sat in on a financial management session and financial managers sat in on an immigrant rights plenary—and they were pleased with the choices they made. And it’s a great lesson for everyday life.

We saw it in the plenary session 1+1=10 The Power of the Common Good where cross-sector and cross-generational panelists – Story of Stuff’s Annie Leonard, Nonprofits Talking Taxes’ Kim Klein, YNPN’s Trish Tchume, and San Francisco City & County Assessor Phil Ting – challenged us to reframe the debate on the common good and taxes and to “reclaim government” by activating our too long dormant “citizen muscle.” For starters, why don’t we Yelp about decaying streets and schools in addition to where we went for dinner Friday night?

We saw it in keynote speaker Chip Heath’s presentation on how reliance on traditional analysis and intuition can lead to poor, stale decisions and how four simple shifts in approach can transform your decision making. We promised Chip we wouldn’t share much more until his book comes out in 2013, but based on the reception to the content it‘s likely to be a best-seller like Switch and Made to Stick.

And that was only part of it. It was a game-changing day for many – but don’t just take our word for it. Here’s a roundup of tools and news from Nonprofit Day that even those who couldn’t attend may find edifying and entertaining:

• Conference Resources: Access session PowerPoint presentations plus many additional resources on the Nonprofit Day website. Video of the cross-generational panel Lessons from the Immigrant Rights Movement and the podcast of the 1+1=10 The Power of the Common Good plenary will be coming next week.
• Blog posts and Tweets: – Read bloggers Gene Takagi and Michelle Martini's big takeaways from Nonprofit Day as well as the Twitter tweet-outs and "a-ha" moments (see PDF summary) of many of our attendees.
• Lloyd Dangle’s Comics from the Day: For you visual learners, and anyone who appreciates talented graphic artists, view artist Lloyd Dangle’s comics capturing the spirit, humor, and energy of Nonprofit Day here.

Take advantage of these resources and connections and be sure to share what you learned at Nonprofit Day with at least one other person!

By Cristina Chan, Grants & Communications Director