Workshop presenters and descriptions are listed below.

Tuesday, February 21

9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Framing Impact Strategies as Investment Products
Mike Wood

Product Development tools – the process overview guide and the detailed framework workbook – are based on the theory that success in a United Way is defined by both impact and growth. These tools are designed to address the issue of translating community work to investors in a way that’s meaningful and compelling to them. They provide a useful and adaptable process to gather the right people in your organization, ask the right questions and ultimately make good decisions that will assure your impact strategies are properly framed to attract the resources necessary to assure successful implementation. United Ways who are doing this and promoting community impact are seeing growth. Get an introduction to the framework and learn about the tools available to get you started.

9:00 AM—4:30 PM

Wednesday, February 22

8:45—11:15 AM

Governing for Nonprofit Excellence
June Miller

Join this lively, interactive session to discuss critical elements of board governance as a strategic resource for YOUR organization. A board that knows what is expected of it, and performs at the highest level, is a strategic resource for its organization and chief executive. And ultimately, this commitment by dedicated board members, translates into mission impact in our communities. Join in the discussion of:

• Board leadership: understanding the role of the board, finding and keeping leaders to fill that role, developing the board culture and working effectively with the CEO

• Strategic stewardship: developing and maintaining focus, planning models and performance measurement

• Oversight: protecting assets and providing financial oversight, ensuring legal and ethical integrity

Stronger Facilitation for Effective Partner & Community Conversations
Kimberly Donahue

Successful community collaboration meetings don’t just happen! Having a clear purpose, lots of preparation, savvy meeting leadership skills  and following up afterward are important to success. Make your meetings the ones that your community partners want to attend!
This practical session will provide tips and tools for:
•    Pre-meeting preparation to establish the purpose, the right people to attend and the agenda for the meeting
•    Management of the meeting(s), building consensus, staying on time and establishing next steps
•    Meeting follow  up with summaries, action items and next steps for real results  

Managing Generational Differences in the Workplace
Nancy Ahlrichs

With four generations of employees working together, communication can be strained, motives misunderstood, and smooth functioning teams difficult to assemble. Why does this happen and what can be done about it? Hear practical insights and strategies to address who’s who and why; what makes the different generations tick; what strategies increase communication and motivation and how do successful managers respond to four generations?  On the eve of having five generations working together, it is imperative to understand the management and communication tools that work! 

Put Some Power Behind Your Words: United Way Message Platform
Brian Cox & Jim Yu

This session, designed for all United Way staff and volunteers, focuses on the core elements of the United Way Message Platform and how to use this valuable tool to effectively communicate a consistent, compelling case for United Way's work.   We'll examine each of the message platform elements – Positioning, Strategic Focus Areas, United Way Role and the Invitation to Engage (LIVE UNITED) - and how to elevate, reinforce and seamlessly integrate them throughout written and oral communications.    Includes hands on role play and written exercises.

Resource Development Basics
Jessica Koescher & Margaret Sell

Congratulations, you're a fundraiser. Hold on to your seat…you’re in for an adventure.  Together we will explore both traditional United Way fundraising techniques along with many new and unique practices useful in both large and small United Ways. Recognizing that all “relationships” are different, hear about ways to add flair to donor cultivation, focus on relationship building (friendraising), and how to make sure your United Way isn’t your grandfather’s United Way. Intended for newer fundraising staff.

Cultivating Corporate Social Responsibility
Lucia Downton & Mark Ratekin

What's in it for them? That's what any business leader wants to know when they are considering a new partnership or service. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is good for the company's bottom line, good for customer sales, good for employee retention and can be a good way to connect with United Way's work in the community. Learn what CSR means to the success of a business, how to identify business interests that align with your work and how to leverage those opportunities to deepen a company's engagement with United Way through program funding and employee volunteerism.

Strategic Volunteer Engagement
Alan Witchey

Are volunteers more or less likely to donate than non-volunteers? Who is more loyal? Slay misconceptions and tap into the best news around. “Give, Advocate, Volunteer” gave United Ways a unique opportunity to benefit from deeper volunteer engagement and receive the passion-driven energy sweeping the country. Education, Income, and Health initiatives brought new hands-on roles, too. How can you make the best use of volunteers wanting to get more involved and still manage the effort within your existing capacity? For every city size, the payoff can be enormous. Move your volunteers from a transactional role to a relational through meaningful engagement that will support your strategic priorities.  Whether a women’s leadership initiative, literacy coalition, day of action, or the ordinary golf outing, which volunteers will be interested and how do you find out?

•    Hear about return-on-investment successes.
•    Consider a continuum of volunteer engagement options and see which ones work for you.
•    Explore event and non-event volunteering ideas and their potential.
•    Learn how to take branded signature and other efforts and take-it-up-a-notch with minimal work while increasing volunteer awareness and satisfaction enormously. Share ideas with each other.
•    Align your best volunteer engagement efforts with your top strategic priorities.
•    Work with volunteer centers effortlessly, and explore ideas if you don’t have one.
•    Practice new tools and checklists to: test your ideas, assess your readiness, management volunteers, and
•    Leave with a draft Volunteer Engagement Strategy that you can manage and a wish list for the future.

Resources & Partners for Early Childhood Learning Initiatives
Greg Braylock, Tony Campbell & Sarah Inman

Three United Ways with successful early learning initiatives describe why they got in to the area, what they decided to do, how they did it, who their partners were, how it was paid for,what's been the result, and what's left to do. If you're thinking about doing something or already are, here's your chance to bounce your ideas off successful colleagues who've walked this walk.

Lessons Learned from the Mobilization Groups
Nancy Vaughan & Mike Wood

Hear how being part of a Mobilization Group has paid off, lessons learned, promising practices and ideas for how your United Way can apply these lessons to mobilizing people and organizations around health, income and education in your community.

1:45—4:30 PM

From Isolated Impact to Collective Impact
Mike Wood & Charles Wright

The strength of partnership is due to diverse members working together to achieve a common goal.  Only collectively can we have the greatest impact on a shared vision.  

Explore how to bring together cross sector stakeholders to embrace and support a community vision based on a set of community goals. Participants will learn the differences between isolated impact and collective impact; the opportunities and challenges of implementing this model, the five conditions crucial to success and the framework for building a “cradle to career” infrastructure.

Volunteer Leadership for the New United Way
Karen Mathison & Scot Quintel

What is the new role of United Way volunteers in leading a transformed organization? Do we recruit volunteers with different skills than before our transformational experience? Is there a profile of the volunteer that is essential for organizational success in the future? What is the most successful process for recruiting individuals consistently into the organization to assume leadership for the future? What is the measure of personal reward for the volunteer in this paradigm shift toward the future? How do we guard against volunteer burnout, so there can be consistency in leadership development?

Advocating for Education, Income & Health with a Small Staff
Lucinda Nord

How do the small and super-stretched UWs advocate for Education, Income, Health and the Charitable Sector? This session will focus on making advocacy easy and accessible, even for the smallest and stretched-too-thin United Ways. A panel of staff and volunteers will provide examples from E-I-H advocacy strategies, working with the board, committees and partner agencies.

Advanced Campaign Planning & Analysis
Gregg Cott, Pat Horoho & Gina Mandros

This course is for experienced annual campaign, major gift and leadership giving fundraisers. Review the building blocks to effective campaign planning including campaign and account analysis, focusing on best practices to grow revenue with limited staff and volunteer resources. Participants will identify successful strategies and common pitfalls in campaign execution, share promising practices and partake in group problem-solving of common issues related to campaign planning and execution.

Planned Giving Basics
Monica Estabrooke

The largest inter-generational transfer of wealth is happening RIGHT NOW. Don't miss it. Now is the right time to focus on planned giving. What's a plan look like? How can you get started? How can you incorporate into your donor conversations? If you're not in place when the gift matures, there are no second chances.

Getting Started with Building a Long-Term Relationship Plan
Jim Yu

I get that we should be managing relationships but we have so many people and not enough capacity.  Where do I begin?  What should I do to get started?  Attend this interactive session that will use group-based interactive exercises and discussions to build an actual long-term relationship plan for a segment that you can take back to your United Way and use.  

·         Define the experience you want to provide to individuals
·         Discuss the right business objectives for your relationships and how to measure your success
·         Identify the components to include in your long-term relationship plan
·         Develop a 24 month plan for your selected segment
·         Understand the 5 Pillars of Relationship Management and the resources available from United Way Worldwide

Communicating for Stronger Relationships and Deeper Dialogue
Teresa Kmetz

Learn best practices in styles and types of communications that can bring our investors and institutions closer to United Way and our work.  It's all about becoming intentional and strategic in recognizing their work, commitment and engagement with UW as our partners.

Program & Community Level Outcomes 101
Martha Lancaster & Jan Sherrell

Learn best practices in styles and types of communications that can bring our investors and institutions closer to United Way and our work.  It's all about becoming intentional and strategic in recognizing their work, commitment and engagement with UW as our partners.

Building in Measurement from the Beginning
Dawn Helmrich & Lynne Russell

Outcome measurement provides a barometer to success and invaluable information to improve programs and to see if the improvements make the intended difference. Whether you're brand new to outcomes or a wizened greybeard, this basic walk thru of logic models and outcomes will be reinforcement and give you the tools to train your volunteers, agencies, and your colleagues. Will include an explanation of the differences and variations of program and community outcomes.

CRM & Configuring Dashboards in Andar
Real Bedard

Implementing a successful CRM Strategy can be a daunting task. In this session, you will learn practical step-by-step procedures to get started quickly and easily. You will explore several methods to identify opportunities and manage the development of long-term relationships. The second part of the session will look at how Andar dashboards allow you to focus on what’s important. Learn how to create and organize dashboards to increase your productivity and explore several dashboard layout methods and the various gadgets available to you. Active dashboards will also be introduced.

The Bridge from Traditional Work to Aligned Community Investments
Leslie Wright

In this session we will explore the challenges in making the transition to impact – both for staff and stakeholders. We will review some of the practices that will help you achieve your vision for the future of your organization. With easy to use tools, you will begin mapping  your own local journey to impact. The goal for this session is that everyone will have the opportunity to gather the energy, inspiration and the tools they need to support their evolution to impact.

Thursday, February 23

8:45 - 11:30 AM

Making an Impact with Advocacy Communications
Lynn Engle, Ann Harman & Lucinda Nord

Advocacy has a clear and vital role in ensuring impact success. This session will feature strong impact messaging and strategies that support an initiative’s advocacy goals. The session will also address turning data into strong communications and advocacy messages about continuing support for E-I-H strategies and basic needs. The workshop will include sample reports using 211, Census and other community data, as well as simple tools, templates and tricks that small and large UWs can access.

Leading through Change
Susan Gould & Tracy Nielsen

How do you design and implement major organizational and community-wide transformation? Is there a roadmap to follow? Will the roadmap accelerate achieving your outcome? Reduce the cost of change? Yes! As United Ways move toward community impact initiatives it is essential that they engage in a conscious process design and conscious process facilitation.

Hear from United Ways about the processes by which they created the best conditions for real change to take place, including United Way of Racine County’s utilization of the transformational change model developed by Linda Ackerman Anderson in the development of several initiatives.

Aligning Staff & Initiative Commitments with Capacities
James Taylor

In many ways the fundamental mission of local United Way has changed. How has this changed the work of United Way staff. Staff now needs to share responsibilities across a United Way internal organization. How are United Way successfully coping with internal staffing changes? Are new job descriptions needed and how do we transform the staff evaluation process? A new organizational structure requires new skills and knowledge. How do we train staff to properly execute new implementation strategies?

The Next Level of Online Engagement
Brian Cox

This workshop is for individuals with prior knowledge of social media basics and who are involved in executing current online engagement strategies and will be “beyond the basics.” Focus on how to leverage your established online assets to deepen relationships, drive fundraising, support United Way's education, income and health goals and acquire email addresses. We will discuss strategies and tactics for constituent segmentation, relationship management, and building an onramping experience to deepen engagement and retain supporters. The session will also focus the total integration of social networking into all platforms, beyond the "like button."

(Maximizing Donor Retention and Enhancing the Workplace Campaign have now been combined to be:)

Individual Donors: How to Reach, Compel & Retain them by Enhancing & Energizing Workforce Campaigns
Louise Kenney & Neal Engelman

Our workforce campaigns are unique, powerful portals to both companies and the community residents who work there to engage them in our community work.  How do we more fully capitalize on their huge potential to reach and compel people to want to become part of the United Way movement to create real, sustainable change in our communities?  Come learn how United Ways are broadening their approaches to their workforce campaigns and creating new ways to involve, energize and recognize both the companies and the individuals who work there.

Build and Maintain Effective Affinity Groups
Toni Dunwoody & Todd Jasin

Whether a women’s leadership or emerging  leader initiative, literacy coalition, day of action, or large-scale fresh food initiative, which investors will be attracted to which of your products and how do you find out? Donors want to get engaged in their community, but don’t always know how. Creating affinity groups is an effective strategy for building deeper relationships with your donors and prospects – with the ultimate result of tangible increases in donor acquisition and retention.  Explore ways to differentiate and position your United Way not only as a strong community resource, but also as a resource for your donors. Learn how to define which affinity groups are right for you, how to build affinity groups and how to develop effective, tailored engagement strategies. 

Aspirational Community Conversations
Laura Bowman & Bill Kitson

Community conversations help you gain a stronger sense of people’s aspirations for the community and education. They can be  a window into how people talk about their concerns and lives and create a way to develop or deepen partnerships with non-traditional groups. With this knowledge United Way’s can be more effective, more relevant, better mobilize people around education and ultimately have greater impact in their communities.Two United Ways will share what they did,what they learned, and what advice they have for you.

Achieving Community Outcomes through Community Partnerships
Joyce Mayhill

Maximizing Your Tools to Manage Data 
Dan Duncan

This workshop will address the challenges you face in managing your data and help you to use your data to support your impact work. This facilitated roundtable discussion will cover a range of topics including: types of data management systems used, exploring the range of uses for data including newer uses that support community impact work, reporting practices for agencies, tracking various funding sources for accountability and ROI. Will include conversations about examples of working with various software products and how to work with vendors to improve the software, refine reports, and get better support. Do you have new reporting requirements or new evaluation criteria that demands more of your data? What tips or best practices can you share? Help identify the newer needs and ways to support the more complex work.

1:45—4:30 PM

Assessing & Refining Initiatives
Carol Braden-Clarke & Melissa Schmidt

Course correction, when you have already “sold” your stakeholders on a specific initiative, approach or model, can seem like an overwhelming step even though it may be a normal phase of a maturing. United Way of Southwestern Indiana will share the lessons they have learned through the process of making changes to major initiatives as they grow, and as their community changes.  
•             Making the decision for change vs. Staying the course
•             Why and how to engage stakeholders in making changes.
•             Determining if you’re measuring the right things when you’re drowning in data.
•             Reactions and results (positive and negative) as a result of course correction.

New System Strategies, Products & Tools
Mike Wood

Having a hard time keeping up with the various resources, reports, updates and initiatives at United Way Worldwide? Need help catching up and understanding features and benefits of various products and opportunities? This is your chance to hear what's new and give feedback to United Way Worldwide about how they can make it easier for you to access the resources they provide. This session will include an update on what's coming down the pike and other network news, big inititaives that might have implications for you, and tools and products United Way Worldwide is rolling out.

Diversifying Revenue Sources
Ken Toll

The new United Way business model looks at "funds under management." In simple terms,your growth is probably and for sure exclusively, not in the annual campaign. Learn from someone who's been successful and has the results to prove.

Are We Creating a "Managing to Outcomes" Culture?
Kate Robinson

The film documentary, Saving Philanthropy, profiles diverse social service organizations that have gained national attention for the measurable outcomes they achieve, and highlights the role that forward thinking funders play in the process. Participate in a screening of this film that will help you understand how to foster a managing to outcomes culture within your own organization, as well as in the agencies or projects you fund. This session will include facilitated group discussions after selected segments of the video.

1:45 - 2:55 PM - Express A Workshops

Managing, Motivating & Retaining Volunteers
James Taylor

Volunteers are a vital component of our community work.  We spend a lot of resources recruiting and training volunteers, and then sometimes spend more time replacing volunteers that we lose.  By using volunteers effectively and ensuring they have a positive experience, we can reduce the amount of time it takes finding and training new volunteers and spend more time working with them to achieve our organizational goals.

Become a Master of Effective Meetings

The effectiveness of meetings and using the participants’ time efficiently can be a big factor in determining the success of groups working together.  The right group, with the right purpose will still only have marginal success if the time they spend working together is not used efficiently and with purpose.  Become a community leader that values the time of others and have participants look forward to your meetings.

New Business Development & Prospecting
John Andrekopoulos & Susan Smieja

Find out what United Way of Greater Milwaukee is doing to engage new donors and businesses. You will learn about different events, affinity groups and unique strategies to target new and hard to reach companies and donors.  This course will also include research tools to uncover leads, perform strategic account research, prospecting techniques to deepen relationships with new and existing businesses, and how to involve volunteers in the prospecting process.

Using Banking Partnerships to Strengthen  Your Financial Stability Initiative
Emily Baxter

Explore a rewarding way to help people start first-time bank accounts that's easy to implement and builds win-win relationships with banks while engaging the community.

Health Care Reform & United Way
Patrick McIntyre

Is your United Way working to advance your community’s health?  Many communities are engaged in furious dialogues concerning the federal health care reforms…are you at the table?  This session will discuss UWW’s goals and see how some communities have capitalized on ‘low-hanging fruit’, identify some ways to kick-start a struggling or stalled community conversation around health, explore the value of new partnerships, and learn how the federal reforms will impact our work, and how we can best leverage those.

Organized Labor in the 21st Century
Bob Cramer & Nancy McCormick

OK, we can all agree that our economy is changing and organized labor's role in it. So, it's natural that our role is changing with this long-standing and well-established partnership. Let's rethink how we can achieve win-win strategies and re-energize sustaining partnerships in these new times.

3:20 - 4:30 PM - Express B Workshops

Staff  Performance Metrics
Bea Northcott

Didn't we say earlier that "what gets measured, gets done"? Well it's just as true for staff as for initiatives. Identify staff and volunteer performance metrics which have the biggest payoff. This session will focus on the fundamentals of performance management,establishing performance metrics and the value it brings to the entire organization. We'll also offer real-world examples of measurements being used by United Ways.

You Can Fight City Hall
Scott Dzurka & Nancy Lindman

United Ways of all sizes have an opportunity to further their agendas through interaction with local and state governments. Learn how to use your existing relationships within your community to carry out policy advocacy activities.

Women’s Philanthropy: Shaping the Future
Andrea Pactor

Learn how to create and/or grow a women’s philanthropy initiative in your community. This fast-paced session will focus on practical application, exploring opportunities and challenges; structures; programs; and leadership. Participants will share their experiences and review immediate and long-term action plans they can adapt for use.

Working Closely with Fellow Funders & Major Community Investors
Debbie Jackson, Neel Hajra and Mary Jo Callan

Working together effectively with other funders, such as private and corporate foundations, and local government can ease the burden on social service agencies and increase their effectiveness and the impact of your funding.  Learn how one community now shares resources, research and investment strategies to increase efficiency and attract co-funding/co-granting opportunities through shared visions.
• Sharefunding priorities and models with other local funders
• Conceptualize benefits of partnering with other funders, both for UW and for our partner agencies, and community
• Gain ideas from funder collaborations already in place and learn from their successes and mistakes!

Balancing the Safety Net with Root Problem Solving
Patrick McIntyre

Is a food program that feeds a person for a day a “band-aid” or a long-term solution to the issue of hunger?  Focusing on long-term solutions can lead to high-impact, results-oriented programs that truly change people’s lives.  But what about those basic services that so many individuals and families rely upon?  What is the value of these basic services in the long-term? Join us for a conversation about how United Ways are working to support a range of services that flow from meeting basic needs to longer term outcomes in issue or priority areas. Attend this session if your United Way is struggling with how it invests in basic human programs versus those that can demonstrate long-term results.

Measuring the Success of Your Social Media Efforts
Brian Cox

Have you ever wondered what ROI to expect from social media investment? Find out what the numbers mean and engage in a discussion on best practices and increasing individual engagement. What does it mean if your bounce rate is high? Where is your traffic coming from? This workshop will walk you through measuring your online presence and will introduce highly effective tools for monitoring and increasing user participation that are available at little or no cost.

Friday, February 24

8:30—10:30 AM

Spiral Impact: The Power to Get It Done with Grace
Karen Valencic

Innovation requires change. Performance peaks when we are challenged. As United Ways embrace the future, change, challenge and conflict are a given.  Strong collaboration and facilitation skills will give us the ability to navigate this future with grace.

In this interactive session, Karen Valencic will introduce her simple 5-step method, Spiral Impact, which blends martial arts and science, and can be applied to any challenge. Karen will teach you to apply this dynamic model to your greatest challenges, which may include:

1. Agency/partner relationship changes
2. Collaborations involving new United Way roles
3. Board/committee leadership communication and buy-in
4. Campaign relationships and incorporating new messaging

Through visual demonstrations, interactive exercises, and dialogue, participants will learn a method to:

•   Innovate with conflict and change
•   Influence others
•   Diffuse potential destructive conflicts
•   Stay calm and maintain perspective amidst chaos
•   Solve problems with grace and ease

 Attendees will leave with a fresh perspective about change and conflict with skills to practice everyday.