Why Should You Attend a Nonprofit Conference?

​What are the top reasons for attending a nonprofit conference?
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What should you expect to get out of it and what should you be ready to put in? How can a nonprofit conference aid in your professional development and equip you to lead better?

These are all questions nonprofit conference attendees and hosts should ask before the event. In the nonprofit world, these questions become even more crucial to consider because organizations are charged with stewarding their resources in a way that furthers their mission, and there are never enough resources to do everything worthwhile. So, sending attendees or hosting a conference often involves a tradeoff. And yet, organizations correctly recognize that conferences are a wonderful opportunity to educate and inspire staff to help them do their best work.

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​Attendees can use the answers to these types of questions to decide whether the benefits being offered truly justify the cost of attending, while hosts will use the answers to ensure that they’re planning the kind of event that nonprofit professionals will want to attend.

We’re weighing in on what a great nonprofit conference should accomplish to assist both attendees and hosts. The main benefits of attending a nonprofit conference this year are:

Learning
The main purpose of a nonprofit conference is to help leadership and staff to gain a deeper understanding of the nonprofit landscape so that they can leverage that insight to be more effective with a refreshed and renewed commitment to their work. When continuous learning is a component of professional development, nonprofit professionals can acquire new knowledge and skills to better respond to opportunities and challenges. A conference should dive deep into evolving best practices, key strategies, and new tools that can be used to do the work better, faster, and across a wider audience.

Advice for Attendees: Be prepared to learn! Plan out which sessions you’ll attend in advance and give each one your full attention (the responsibilities of your role can wait until you return!). Ask questions about anything you don’t understand or want to understand more deeply. But remember that learning doesn’t stop when the sessions do! Look for opportunities to keep learning informally during social events too so you can come away with a renewed sense of pride in the work you do.

Advice for Hosts: Build in plenty of time for formal learning as well as informal co-learning to offer a nice balance. Understand that attendees will learn differently, and some may need more time to process the information they’re receiving. Always encourage presenters to make themselves available after the session is done for follow-up discussion.

Discovering Current Trends
Nonprofit work is constantly changing and evolving. In this dynamic industry, staying abreast of current trends, challenges, and opportunities is essential. Conferences allow attendees to hear from some professionals at the forefront of the industry to share in the breadth and depth of their experiences. And unlike reading nonprofit publications, which only provide one-way information sharing, attending a conference gives nonprofit staff a chance to ask questions to create a two-way dialogue that can offer support for their organization’s unique position.

Advice for Attendees: Look for presenters and sponsoring organizations that are addressing today’s hot topics and trends and be ready to take notes and ask questions so you can share the insights you hear with your organization when the conference is over. Plan to take these insights back with suggestions about how to leverage them to launch new initiatives or adopt new technology, clearly conveying what the organization should expect to get out of such endeavors based on the new knowledge you have gleaned.

Advice for Hosts: Look for opportunities to highlight the topics that are going to be the most important to your audience and then cover them well across keynotes, sessions, and panels.

Gaining Perspective
Being around other like-minded individuals across a diverse range of stakeholders from staff to senior leadership to board members creates a richness of discussions that typically cannot be found elsewhere. As a result, attendees at all levels can experience a fresh perspective around the types of topics that are most valuable for them to think about more deeply, allowing them to come away with innovative ideas and renewed excitement around their missions.

Advice for Attendees: Listen more than you talk by asking good questions and being open to hearing new perspectives. Use what you have learned and the perspective you have gained to create an agenda for how you will do things differently. Then, after the conference is over, share it with your supervisor or colleagues to help sustain the “conference high” in your own work and maximize its impact throughout your organization.

Advice for Hosts: Invite a variety of speakers and presenters to attract a diverse audience of attendees.

Networking
While an exchange of information is certainly valuable, another valuable exchange occurs at conferences when professionals network. Making one-on-one connections with nonprofit professionals representing other organizations opens the door to informal idea sharing, formal collaboration, and even future partnership opportunities.

Advice for Attendees: Perfect your “elevator pitch” so you can explain what your organization does in just a few sentences and use it when meeting other nonprofit professionals. Meeting and interacting with other nonprofit professionals in aligned or adjacent work should create a sense of pride in sharing what you are doing to help facilitate exploring new ideas together.
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Advice for Hosts: Plan a social event to conclude each day, allowing time for an exchange of ideas regarding what attendees learned that day as well as professional networking opportunities.

When you need help running a meeting, holding a retreat, or offering training, please reach out to us! We offer nonprofit meeting facilitation services to organizations looking to do a better job of getting boards and staff together to achieve more. Let us help everyone who attends to walk away with greater insight and perspective regarding the work they do to achieve a greater impact in their sphere of influence.