• Nonprofit CEOs, executive directors and senior nonprofit leaders looking to gain an understanding of their role in planning for their organizations’ futures
• Nonprofit board members interested in setting strategic direction within their organization

• Understand how your organization creates value in a competitive world
• Learn frameworks to support prioritizing your mission through all activities
• Develop an analytical approach to your organization's strategy
• Discover how to engage internal and external stakeholders through strategic communication
• Understand the essential risks facing the nonprofit sector today

Building (or Rebuilding) Your Theory of Change

• Understand how your theory of change needs to evolve to meet changing internal and external challenges
• Identify your roadmap from strategies to resources to impact
• Explore potential evolution of your business model

Prioritizing Mission and Money

• Empower professional leadership to balance the key aspects of nonprofit organizations – mission impact and financial stability
• Utilize academic frameworks to analyze and prioritize strategic decisions to further the theory of change
• Identify strategies to engage board members in essential conversations regarding organizational priorities

Frameworks for Your Strategic Plan

• Operationalize your theory of change through your strategic plan
• Understand the key elements of an effective strategic plan
• Engaging stakeholders in the creation of your strategic plan

Understanding Nonprofit Risk

• Understand the essential risks facing the nonprofit sector today including financial and human resource risks

• Discuss risk mitigation strategies for your organization

Communicating Change

• Identify, prioritize and effectively engage key organizational stakeholders
• Empower strategic and frontline leaders to stay ahead in their highly competitive industry by developing a deliberate and compelling stakeholder engagement strategy
• Recognize the power of stakeholder mapping
• Lay out and prioritize the communication channels to maximize effectiveness for communicating to service markets and stakeholders
• Deploy communications to ensure the organization is visible, accessible and accountable

Liz Livingston Howard - Academic Director; Clinical Professor of Management; Executive Director of Nonprofit Executive Education

Michelle Shumate - Academic Director; Associate Professor, Communication Studies; Associate Faculty, Institute for Policy Research; Director of Graduate Studies, Master’s in Communication Studies; Founding Director, Network for Nonprofit and Social Impact

Ernest Duplessis - Industry Lecturer, Integrated Marketing Communications, Northwestern Medill (retired); Founder/Pastor, S.T.U.D.Y.S. Ministries; Former – SVP, Communications and Government Affairs, Mondelèz International; VP, Corporate Communications, Kraft Foods; Public Affairs Officer, US Navy

Ivy Walker - Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Helios Digital Learning

Location

This program is delivered in a live virtual format via the Zoom platform. Please visit our live virtual programs page for more information.

Application Deadline

The deadline for registration is 10:00 am one business day prior to the program start date.

Scholarship Assistance

Up to 50% scholarships are available for all of our nonprofit executive education programs for those working in nonprofit organizations. All scholarship requests are reviewed by our registrar and any scholarships granted will be charged to your credit card.

Payment

• If you request a scholarship, your credit card is submitted upon registration and will be charged once your request is approved (allow 1-2 business days for review).
• If you do not request a scholarship, your credit card will be charged upon application submission.

Cancellation Policy:

Participants must notify the Program Manager five business days in advance of the program start date if they are unable to attend. Otherwise, participants will be charged 20% of the stated program fees.

When canceling a program registration, participants may choose to rollover their payment to a future program or receive a refund. Participants are allowed two rollovers, after the second rollover, participants forfeit the money paid to the Center for Nonprofit Management.

*Refund or rollover must be requested at the time of the program cancellation. Once a program payment has been rolled over, a monetary refund is no longer an option. The participant must continue with the rollover process.

Northwestern University reserves the right to cancel a program at any time for any reason. In the unlikely event of a course cancellation, paid program fees will be refunded. For in person programs, the university is not responsible for any travel or other related expenses accrued by the program registrant.