Strengthen Your Core: Essential Practices for Small Nonprofits

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

8:30am - 4:30pm

Full-Day Workshop: $125 (Early Bird discounts do not apply)

Due to COVID-19 concerns, this workshop is being cancelled.

About this session: The majority of nonprofits are small, grassroots organizations with budgets under $1 million.The small size of an organization doesn’t mean that it can’t use effective management practices to have the biggest impact in serving constituents. Join four of the Axelson Center's top presenters for a full-day workshop designed specifically for small nonprofits (budget under $1M).

There are four sessions during the course of the day, including:

Financial Management with Gretchen Upholt, MPA Lead Consultant, Midwest of FMA

Organizations with few staff members often face challenges finding people with the financial skills they need to lead their teams and implement strong internal controls. In this session, explore best practices and tools for staffing and risk management that will inspire confidence in your funders and partners.

Board Development with Mary Morten, President, Morten Group LLC

A well-functioning, engaged governing board is critical to the success of even the smallest nonprofit organization. In this session, learn how to strategically select board members to ensure a mix of skills and backgrounds appropriate for your organization’s needs and stage of development. Discuss how board policies such as term limits and “give/get” help engage directors while securing resources for the organization and why collaborative work between the board and executive leadership is important to organizational success. Every board member needs a success story about the work of your organization--how do you share your stories of hope and change?

Design Tools for Small Organizations with Jennifer Madden, PhD, MNO, Director, Master of Business Design and Innovation program, Carthage College

Design is a solution-finding approach to solving problems using collective creativity to strengthen individuals, teams and organizations. In this highly-interactive session, participants will learn how to utilize human-centered design tools such as logic modeling, statement starters and problem tree analysis to understand and redefine challenges, and identify viable, strategic solutions for leadership, innovation and program planning.

Fundraising on a Shoestring: Common Tactics to Ensure your ROI with Sidney Freitag-Fey, MA, CFRE, Director of Development and Marketing, Delta Institute

Small nonprofits have distinct needs from larger development shops. Learn and discuss cost-effective fundraising approaches to maximize your time, decrease your expenses, and meaningfully engage new and current donors. We'll collaboratively explore fundraising approaches, volunteer usage, portfolio management, and low- or no-cost ways to manage your fundraising (and some of your marketing) efforts.

Please note, this workshop will be held at Self-Help Federal Credit Union, 3960 W. 26th Street, Chicago, IL 60623. Space is limited.

Who Should Participate:  Executive directors/senior staff of small nonprofit organizations with a budget less than $1M

About the Presenters:   Sidney C. Freitag-Fey, MA, CFRE, Director of Development and Marketing, Delta Institute; Jennifer R. Madden, PhD, MNO, Assistant Professor of Management and Marketing and Director of the Master (MSc) of Business Design and Innovation program at Carthage College; President, Leverage Point Development; Mary Morten, President, Morten Group LLC; Gretchen Upholt, MPA, Lead Consultant, Midwest, FMA

Sidney (Sid) has more than 15 years of resource development experience with expertise in individual giving (annual fund, major gifts, and planned giving); board relations and recruitment; grant writing and prospecting; corporate sponsorship; event planning fundraising strategy; and marketing. Currently he is the director of development and marketing for Delta Institute, a $4M 501c3 that works with communities throughout the Midwest to solve environmental and economic needs. Sid previously served as development director for a small regenerative farming and food safety nonprofit, a gifts officer for Heartland Alliance for Human Rights & Human Needs, and in steadily increasing development roles for multiple Chicago-based social service agencies since 2006. He is also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Mongolia; was adjunct faculty at Loyola University Chicago; and has been a presenter for the Axelson Center since 2014. He is a Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE), and a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Chicago Area Peace Corps Association.

Jennifer is a researcher, teacher, facilitator and design thinker. In her work with community-based nonprofit organizations, she assists with strategic planning, resource development, and capacity building. Jennifer holds a Ph.D. from the Weatherhead School of Management, a master’s in nonprofit management, and a bachelor’s in both economics and American studies, all from Case Western Reserve University. Jennifer is a Nonprofit Management Research Fellow, a Fowler Sustainability Fellow and a Management Design Fellow. Her current research is on designing effective public-private partnerships then leveraging those collaborations to build capacity for effective performance and social innovation.

Her new book, Inter-Organizational Collaboration by Design in the Routledge Critical Studies in Public Management Series, examines how collaborations can overcome barriers to innovate and rejuvenate communities outlining the factors and antecedents that influence successful collaboration. The book proposes a theoretical perspective for collaborators to adopt the language of designers, evidence-based tools, and strategies to enable success. The book outlines her journey from research to action resulting in a “Collaboration Blueprint” that assisted community-based nonprofit organizations to secure over $13.5 million in grant funding.

Mary Morten is the president of Morten Group (MG), a national consulting firm established in November 2001 to focus on clients in the nonprofit, for-profit, and foundation fields. The Morten Group team is comprised of a multi-racial, cross generational group of professionals—an intentional component of our business model. The firm focuses on diversity, racial equity and inclusion, executive placements, research, and organizational development.

Mary is a past director of the Office of Violence Prevention for the Chicago Department of Public Health. In this position, Mary was responsible for the citywide implementation of the violence prevention plan: Prevent Violence! Chicago. Prior to this position, Mary was an appointee for Mayor Richard M. Daley and served as a director in the Commission on Human Relations.

Previous positions include associate director, interim executive director, and board president of Chicago Foundation for Women, the region’s largest women’s fund; as well as interim executive director of Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers (CLAIM); and interim vice president of development at Howard Brown Health Center.

Recognitions include: a 2017 Women in Film FOCUS Award, a 2014 YWomen Leadership Award from the YWCA of Evanston-Northshore; in 2013, a Leppen Leadership Award from About Face Theatre; in 2012, a Black Excellence Award for Documentary Film from the African American Arts Alliance of Chicago. Mary is also a past appointee to the Illinois Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Mary holds a bachelor’s in communications with an emphasis in radio and television from Loyola University Chicago and is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Association of Consultants to Nonprofits.

An experienced staff and program manager, Gretchen has expertise in training, capacity building, research, and program and volunteer management. As Lead Consultant, Midwest at FMA, Gretchen splits her time between playing an active role as trainer, coach, and curriculum developer for FMA’s cohort training initiatives and as consultant to nonprofit clients across the country, helping nonprofit leaders improve their financial management skills and processes.

Before joining the FMA team, Gretchen served as the head of the Volunteer Department at the Thabyay Education Network in Thailand. In that role, Gretchen developed a strategic plan to improve monitoring and evaluation and program management in her department. She also served on the leadership team for the organization, where she reviewed and approved budgets for the organization’s 22 programs and worked on a plan to restructure the organization’s finance and operations staffing and systems.

Before her work in Thailand, Gretchen served as a Community Development Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, where she designed project frameworks, wrote grants, and led a committee tasked with making funding decisions for USAID funded grants. With a widely diverse background, Gretchen also has experience working on the corporate citizenship team at the TCC Group, designing and implementing a pilot research study on nonprofit talent costs for the Talent Philanthropy Project, as a project manager with the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, and as Chorus Manager for The Choral Arts Society of Washington.

Gretchen holds a Masters of Public Administration in Public and Nonprofit Management from NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, where she was a Head Teaching Colleague for the core finance and management classes. After graduation, Gretchen continued her relationship with Wagner as an Adjunct Professor and Teaching Colleague. She received her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Arts and Cultural Management from American University in Washington, DC. She maintains her love of music as a singer with Allegrezza Singers, a Chicago-based SATB choir.