sponsored by
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Tim Kachuriak
Chief Innovation & Optimization Officer at NextAfter

Tim founded NextAfter almost  seven years ago with a clear vision of how nonprofits could reach never-before-seen levels of generosity. In this motivational kick-off to the event, Tim will show you how far we’ve come, what obstacles still exist, and a roadmap for the future.

David JP Phillips
CEO at Presentationsteknik.com

Based on his hugely popular TEDx talk ”The Magical Science of Storytelling”, David will take you on a journey, or actually several journeys, making you feel the power and the progression of strategic storytelling. This seminar will give you insights into the power of storytelling, practical and simple techniques on how to enhance your stories and most amazing of all, how specific stories change our biochemistry.

Our brain is created, or rather completely optimized, for storytelling. With new studies literally pouring down around the topic, we are now able to pinpoint, at a neurological, psychological and biological level, exactly why storytelling is so powerful and how to use it effectively to persuade, either with the purpose of selling, convincing or teaching someone something.

In this lecture, you will experience the effects of good storytelling, but most importantly, you will gain a deeper understanding of why and how storytelling works. David will introduce several practical techniques and tools, in order for you to be able to deliver stories that sell, are convincing and create memories within the listener’s brain. This lecture will be practical, useful and entertaining.

sponsored by
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Ray Gary, CEO at iDonate
Special Session in the Warrior Room

Marketing automation tools are helpful but fail to deliver the necessary functions to be transformative for nonprofits. Attendees will discover a new paradigm of fundraising where Giving Automation completes the donor lifecycle and empowers breakthrough growth.

Josh McQueen
Founder at McQueen, Mackin & Associates

Josh McQueen will be sharing a major new study that documents the major shifts in our landscape. These findings
focus on the differences between generations: dollars, hours, values, and interests.

Since the huge drop after 2009, overall giving has recovered; but 25% more non-profits are competing for share-of-heart and depth-of-trust.

Understanding the trends and differences from this study can allow you to apply fresh insights to your fundraising.

Jamie Blomquist
Agency Lead at Google Marketing Solutions

Where nonprofit marketers are spending their budgets is quickly diverging from where their constituents are spending their time, leading to poor donor experiences, wasted marketing investment and a focus on the totally wrong metrics. In this talk, Jamie will give an outline of how giving behavior, especially online behavior, has changed and how leading brands are evolving their marketing strategy to meet their constituents’ expectations. Expect to hear about:

The Current Nonprofit Landscape
How donors are changing how they discover and engage with charitable organizations and what’s driving that behavior

Changing Donor Demands
How to meet constituents’ changing expectations with your brand online- including mobile performance and personalization

A Charge for Marketers
A call to action for advertisers to focus on metrics that actually matter- those that enable the organization to fulfill its mission

sponsored by
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Dr. Page Piccinini, Senior Data Scientist at Classy
Special Session in the Warrior Room

The supporter’s journey is multi-faceted, and begins long before they arrive at a donation checkout form. They can engage through mobile devices, interact with a variety of campaign types, commit to a recurring gift, and participate in unplanned inflection points like disasters and political events.

To better understand the supporter’s path, Classy’s data science team analyzed millions of data points from the Classy Fundraising Suite to separate the journey into four major influences: source, destination, actions, and timing. Each influence has its own core metrics, which Classy leverages to further dissect user behaviors and gain actionable insights to help you improve your fundraising.

In this session, the Classy team will provide data from their recent report, The State of Modern Philanthropy, including thought starters for your organization to consider in your quest for growth.

Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Orbit Media

They are the two numbers that matter most: total visitors and conversion rate. But most websites miss huge opportunities to optimize for these two numbers. We’re going to fix that.

This session is equal parts mousetrap and cheese. We’re going to find the low-hanging fruit for SEO, improve our rankings and attract more targeted visitors. Then we’ll find the content that inspires our visitors to take action. When we connect the traffic champs to the conversion champs, our results multiply.

You’ll learn to use analytics to discover the following.

• Which phrases are the best opportunities in search …and most highly visible
• Which content is on the edge of greatness …and how to improve it
• Which pages trigger action …and how to promote them

Once complete, you’ll know the smallest actions that can result in the greatest outcomes.

Brian Davis
Chief Technology Officer at ActiveEngagement

sponsored by
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Brian Davis, Chief Technology Officer at Active Engagement
Special Session in the Warrior Room

Jon Powell
Senior Director of Research and Education at NextAfter

When it comes to writing subject lines, there seems to be limitless options out there on what’s going to work and EVERYONE seems to have an opinion. In fact, many articles even promise you nonprofit-specific subject lines that you can just copy and paste!

But will they really work for you? And if they do, WHY?

How can you tell the difference between a good and bad one?

And finally, if you run out of options, how can you know how to write an effective subject line yourself, even if you are not a crafty wordsmith or expert on a particular topic?

In this 30-minute workshop, we’ll examine a strategic approach for writing effective nonprofit subject lines based on 50+ statistically significant nonprofit email experiments that will significantly increase your chance of getting someone to read your email, even if you are not a wordsmith and have tried other methods.

Amy Harrison
Copywriter, Consultant & Speaker at Write With Influence

Do you feel there are vast numbers of people who would love to support you but just aren’t donating? You’re probably right.

If you’ve sent out emails, or direct mail campaigns that aren’t converting it can feel like a lot of people are saying ‘no’. But that’s not the case and it is possible to turn ‘no’ into ‘yes.

There are four key barriers that stop people making a donation, but you can overcome this with copywriting: the language of persuasion.

This talk isn’t about trick words or manipulative tactics, it’s a simple and practical plan to break down these barriers and engage potential donors. You’ll discover how to identify what might be stopping people from giving to your organisation, and then see how to write copy that gets past no, soothes objections, and gets donations.

The Spazmatics
Geeks and Nerds and the 80s

Remember the good ol’ days when music was happy and fun? When songs were catchy and everyone knew the words? Well, for a few hours at the Aztec Theatre in San Antonio, you’ll be able to take a trip down memory lane and dust off your dancing shoes…the Spazmatics will be in the house!

Come on out and have some fun with your fellow fundraisers at the Official NIO Summit Party. With a Spazmatics set list that includes classics like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, “We Got the Beat” and “You Spin Me Right Round”, the 80’s will be front and center. Kick back with a cool beverage and get ready to have a blast. We’re pretty sure this will be a night you’ll never forget. Don’t miss it!

sponsored by
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Karl Gilis
Managing Partner at AGConsult

For many years, Karl Gilis has been using his quirky presentation style to teach marketers all over the world how to get better at their jobs. In a comedic, yet super-informative session, Karl will show you:

• Why you suck at online marketing (yep, this session is going to be fun)
• Why words are so much more important than design
• 7 universal but often forgotten principles to boost your online success

Marie Vaino
Web Conversion Manager at Pipedrive

Not everyone has enough traffic to run split tests (within a reasonable amount of time). But testing does not equal optimization, it’s only part of it. Marie will show you how you can optimize your site for higher conversions – no matter how much traffic you’ve got! Her session is practical and full of real life examples.

sponsored by
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Ray Gary, CEO at iDonate
Special Session in the Warrior Room

Peer-to-Peer campaigns are all the rage. You know you need one, but how do you engage fundraisers in a world where you can make 500K playing a video game online? Attendees will discover the key to unlocking your Peer- to-Peer fundraising potential.

Brady Josephson
Vice President of Innovation & Optimization at NextAfter

Recurring donors are consistently worth 4 times more than one-time donors over their lifetime, give more in a year than one-time donors, and are 2 times more likely to be retained as a donor. So what are organizations doing to attract, appeal to, and acquire recurring donors?

That’s what the State of Recurring Giving Study sought to answer by giving multiple gifts to 117 organizations and tracking the donation process, subsequent communications, and upgrade/retention strategies. In this session we’ll share the results and key insights from that study so you can see how your recurring giving program compares (or how to get started with one) and where you can improve based on real research in the market today.

Jeff Giddens
President at NextAfter

Jeff is serving as the moderator for two case studies about recurring giving programs. Your fundraising peers are doing some incredible things and this is a great opportunity to learn how you could apply some innovative tactics to your own campaigns.

Amy Zhang
Senior Acquisition Marketing Manager at charity: water

Curious if Facebook Ads can work as an ROI-positive acquisition tool for nonprofits? We’ll talk about some ways you can optimize your Facebook Ads program to create sustainable, scalable growth for recurring monthly donors. Topics include audience targeting, ad testing, and landing page testing, among other tips and tricks.

Matt Monberg
Senior Manager of Retention & Engagement at Compassion International

Confused about where to spend your time and energy on building the best recurring gift program? If you’re like most fundraisers, you’ve got big goals paired with a modest budget. And you feel the pressure to maximize the value of your donors for your organization’s mission. But where do you start?

With over 1 million recurring donors worldwide, Compassion International’s child sponsorship program generates over a half a billion dollars in revenue each year. And that growth has generated a lot of learning about how to keep and grow donors over the long haul. In fact, 2 percent of their recurring donors have been giving continuously for over 30 years! To help you achieve success, this session will focus on three proven keys to Compassion’s long-term growth and retention of recurring givers over the last seven decades

Using real-world examples from Compassion’s successes and failures, you’ll walk away with practical and actionable ideas you can implement immediately in your own recurring giving program.

sponsored by
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Brady Josephson, VP of Innovation & Optimization at NextAfter
Special Session in the Warrior Room

How does my organization compare to others? That’s one of the most commonly asked questions we get and just one of the many questions we answered for you with The Canadian Online Fundraising Scorecard.

Brady Josephson will share what he learned by signing up for the email lists of and donating to 152 Canadian charities. While donating, we analyzed 29 different items in each charity’s online giving funnel. Finally, we scored the timing and content of the charity’s thank-you communications.

Based on the research, you’ll see:

• The biggest mistakes on donation pages.
• The largest areas of opportunity in the email signup process.
• How you can best stand out from other organizations in a crowded donor inbox.

Steve MacLaughlin
Vice President of Data & Analytics at Blackbaud

There is a lot of buzz about Big Data, Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence. But how to do nonprofits separate the hope from the hype? This session will focus on understanding how we got here and where it’s all going.. This session will not be about chasing unicorns or other mythical creatures unlikely to drive improved performance. We’ll cover the basics and the buzz words before having a meaningful discussion on what it takes to be successful in the Age of Data.

Michelle Hurtado
Head of Ad Grants at Google

Google Ad Grants empowers eligible nonprofits with $10,000 per month in free advertising on Google Search results pages. Google’s ads reach large audiences in a relevant, actionable and measurable way and can help nonprofits educate, attract donors, and help people around the world.

Learn how to succeed online using the power of Ad Grants for effective and scalable marketing and fundraising.

sponsored by
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Gabe Cooper, President at Virtuous
Special Session in the Warrior Room

Over the past 15 years the world has shifted from 1-to-many to 1-to-1 communication. Most brand experiences are completely personalized to you (think about Amazon, ESPN, Netflix, online clothing ads or even your local pizza place!). Unfortunately, the nonprofit world never fully made the shift to personalized marketing. The problem is that giving is intrinsically personal – and nonprofits have the most to gain from personalized, 1-to-1 marketing using social media insight, marketing automation, data analytics, etc. In this session, learn how to use marketing automation to close the growing chasm between the expectations of modern donors and the impersonal marketing capabilities of nonprofits. We’ll also learn several practical tactics including:

• Building a series to set a second gift and prevent churn
• Using story telling in automation to increase engagement and gift size

Kevin Peters
Chief Technology Officer at NextAfter

OK, so you’ve got data – meaningful data, but now what? Great information is useless if you can’t communicate it effectively.

In this session, Kevin Peters will show you how to:

• Identify the ways different people understand and consume data
• Use the different mediums for communicating data and dig into the strengths and weaknesses of each
• Communicate universal truths regardless of the person or medium
• Craft information and data into a compelling story

Lee MJ Elias
Founder at Game Seven Group

Learn how you can use existing resources to build a culture of fans who are intensely loyal to your organization and are willing to talk about it. It’s about exponentially expanding reach and ultimately creating new revenue streams by authentically interacting with your fan-base.

Join Lee Elias as he takes you through his journey starting as a stay-at-home father to the owner of multiple successful business ventures in a very short time by utilizing these tactics.

Jon Powell
Senior Director of Research and Education at NextAfter

Are your donation and landing pages performing at optimal levels? Do you know the different types of pages and how they should be designed differently for different purposes? This workshop will arm you with research-based principles that you can immediately apply to your fundraising pages to produce dramatically improved results.

Upon completion of the workshop, you’ll also have a chance to get NextAfter Level 1 Certification by completing – and passing – a written examination.

You’ll learn: What landing pages are, why they produce double and triple-digit gains, and how to recognize the difference between a good and bad one.

You’ll learn: The strategic underlying force of visitor acceleration for landing pages, how it applies to your cause, and how to know if your version of it is strong enough to further inspire your donors to act.

You’ll learn: How to determine what your audience intends and what they are interested in using information you already have available to you.

You’ll learn: How to apply principles to the email acquisition landing page. Includes a detailed template, and is based on data from 180+ landing page experiments.

You’ll learn: How to apply principles to the general donation page. Includes a detailed template, and is based on data from 100+ general donation page experiments.

You’ll learn: How to apply principles to the campaign donation page. Includes a detailed template, and is based on data from 100+ campaign donation page experiments.

You’ll learn: How to apply principles to the instant donation landing page. Includes a detailed template, and is based on data from 50+ instant donation page experiments.

You’ll Learn: The result of research from every experiment in our library on gift arrays and publicly accessible studies on the topic. This will be followed by a Q&A session and review before the exam.

Although not required, attendees may obtain NextAfter Level 1 Certification and upon successful completion of the written examination following the workshop.

Get registered early and join your fellow attendees for some food and fun.

We’ll have an assortment of team games and participants will have a chance to win some great individual prizes and also garner a donation for their charity of choice.

Grand Prize: $3,000 charitable donation

2nd Prize: $2,000 charitable donation

3rd Prize: $1,000 charitable donation

We’ll also be giving away an assortment of cool electronics and gadgets courtesy of our awesome sponsors.

There is no set agenda, so feel free to come and go as you please. Attire is super-casual (t-shirts and jeans are just fine).