The digital strategy field never sits still—new platforms, tools, and technologies reshape how organizations connect with their communities seemingly overnight. In this candid conversation, experienced digital strategists pull back the curtain on what's actually changing, what's overhyped, and what it all means for organizations trying to make an impact today. Expect honest talk and practical wisdom you can put to work.

We've produced and edited dozens of videos for organizations that have played at fundraising luncheons and galas to supercharge fundraising. We've also created video content specifically to approach high net worth individual donors in order to convey sensitive subject matter and testimonials to encourage investment in an organization's vital work.

In this session, we'll share our approach and best practices on outlining the story, how we interview, what we capture, how we edit, and what we deliver, including case studies from our client base.

Every few years, organizations need to overhaul their websites. It's as predictable as it is fraught and often contentious. There are deadlines and budgets to manage in addition to posting questions that run the gammut from the highly strategic "How do we see ourselves and how do we want our audiences to see us?" to the ultra-technical "How do we ensure that our tech stack will be flexible enough to accomodate updates for the next three to five years?"

This session will share the lessons learned in a web overhaul from the persepctive of both the client and the vendor in an interactive conversation with plenty of time left for questions at the end.

Say you need to get a message to Kevin Bacon. Get in line. He won't take your meeting, and your social media posts will never land in his feed.

But what if you could get the attention of his favorite podcast host? The opinion writer he follows on Instagram? His co-producer? The charity he started? Reach them, earn their engagement and interest, and suddenly your message is everywhere Kevin looks.

Decision-makers work the same way. Legislators, donors, and agency heads are all surrounded by peers, media, experts, and organizations they trust. Win over those voices and they will carry your message into the echo chambers you can't reach.

Build an Atmosphere of Advocacy around the people who can move your mission forward.

Your next report draws on a spreadsheet, project notes, last month’s report, and updates from colleagues. Bringing it together means copying information, reconciling differences, and chasing gaps before anyone can review what it actually says.

In this practical session, we’ll demonstrate how AI can assemble a report draft from multiple sources while making missing information, conflicting figures, and unsupported conclusions visible.

Using a fictional project example, we’ll show how to define the sources, reporting requirements, and review expectations. You’ll practice writing a brief for one report from your own work and learn where human judgment remains essential.

Strong digital work doesn't start with tools — it starts with a solid foundation. In this session, we'll dig into the three pillars of organizational digital strategy: Strategy, Capacity, and Infrastructure. You'll learn how to align your digital efforts with your broader organizational goals so your tactics are effective today and sustainable and scalable tomorrow.

We'll walk through practical ways to strengthen each pillar — from investing in professional development and building human capacity, to assessing and roadmapping your technical infrastructure. Whether you're refining existing digital initiatives or building a strategy from the ground up, you'll leave with a clearer picture of where your organization stands and a path for where to go next

If your organization’s strategy relies on your best people working late, ignoring boundaries, and pulling off constant miracles, your internal machine is broken. Nonprofits and mission-driven agencies are hitting hard capacity limits, but asking staff to endlessly "do more with less" is a fast track to burnout.

It’s time to stop treating strategy and culture as two separate conversations, and stop treating AI as a shiny trend or a threat to staff.

In this session, Strategic Architect Brenna Holmes flips the script on AI deployment through a strict #TechForGood lens. You’ll learn how to architect AI as a "tireless teammate" by looking directly inside the tech stack you already own to unlock hidden automation you're already paying for. We’ll bridge the gap between big vision and daily execution, handing off repetitive friction to machines so your humans can focus on high-value impact. Stop surviving your mission on brute-force heroism and start building resilient systems that carry the load.

• How to recognize patterns before creating categories
• Why useful taxonomies are discovered, not imposed
• How to move from individual content → themes → territories → systems
• Why organizing by meaning can be more powerful than organizing by format
• How to build an editorial matrix that guides future decisions instead of simply cataloging past ones
• What The Twilight Zone can teach us about designing systems that make complexity navigable

Most change management involves having hard conversations, and most change management practices were built for in-person teams. But misalignment hides more easily across screens, and the nuances required for strong team-building get lost in the silence of remote work.

So how can teams have more effective conversations about organizational change - especially the hard ones - even when working remotely?

Many of the same foundational change management practices designed for in-person teams apply to virtual meetings as well; good facilitators just need to adapt these to virtual workflows:

+ Discuss with organizational leaders the overarching goals for holding the meeting

+ Learn about the current changes and any past changes that may be having effects on the team

+ Set and share with the group the meeting agenda clearly in advance

But virtual meetings need a skilled facilitator that can also pay attention to the quiet details, by doing the following:

+ Asking the hard questions in writing before the meeting - answers are often more candid in a short survey than they are on camera

+ Requesting cameras be on and use gallery view during the hard moments - you can't read the room if you can't see it

+ Using 1:1 chat functions, polls, and breakout rooms to give quieter voices more than one way to weigh in

The session draws on Ingrid Daffner Krasnow's 20 years in nonprofit strategy, communications, and management, including guiding organizations through mergers and helping young nonprofits grow past their founding teams.

Organizing is built on relationships. Leaders grow through one-on-ones, direct asks, trust and when we notice what a leader is capable of before they see it themselves. We often assume that technology is the opposite of all that: efficient, impersonal, built to manage lists and produce data rather than grow people.

But does it have to be? As AI enters our work, can it actually play a role in developing leaders and deepening relationships? Or does it risk hollowing out the very thing that makes organizing work? We'll dig into that tension honestly, including where we’re still figuring it out.

We'll preview the Organizing Center - a new tool specifically designed to help volunteers, activists and members build their leadership and relationships in their communities, while staying connected to the larger movement your organization is creating.

Then we'll talk about how to orient members and volunteers to use new tools consistently, with tips for creating an atmosphere of collaboration, relationship-building and action that keeps volunteers engaged and organizing.

We'll talk through what should remain human and how technology can support, rather than replace, that energy.

After this session, you'll be able to use AI to build a curated social media feed that works for the work you actually do. No algorithms deciding what you should see, and no noise.

This session is for nonprofits who are members of coalitions, organizations who have a long list of endorsees, candidates who have a long list of endorsers, Executive Directors who want better communications with their Board, comms professionals who want to monitor journalists posts across platforms, and nonprofits keeping track of their subsidiary organization's events,

The goal is to get curated social feeds delivered as a single email that makes it easier for you and your audience to take action.

When fundraising, you're sending people to your website to hopefully make a donation. But is your your content optimized to improve donation conversions? This session will provide key steps to take with site content, information architecture, and tracking to make sure you get the most out of your campaign.

AI is already saving your team time, whether it's drafting variants, resizing creative, or pulling reports. IDEO calls this the AI Dividend, and for nonprofits it has a way of disappearing. Some of it gets absorbed into business as usual, some gets captured as budget cuts, and in digital programs a lot of it quietly turns into more of the same: more sends, more versions, and more noise in your supporters' inboxes.

This session makes the case for deciding in advance where that time goes. Ben Childers of Stratovation Partners shares Mission Dividend, an approach for setting clear boundaries for AI, building what fits inside them, naming the capacity it frees up, and investing it in the creative work that moves campaigns forward. You'll hear what this has looked like at organizations like PETA and Marie Curie, and you'll leave with a question your team can start answering on Monday.

You're hearing a lot about AI for nonprofits. But most guidance focuses on what AI can DO (write faster, generate ideas quicker). What's missing is how to use AI to think BETTER about strategy. This session fills that gap.

Learn eight advanced prompting techniques that transform AI from a content tool into YOUR best strategic brainstorming partner. We'll show you exactly how to use AI to challenge your own assumptions, uncover blind spots, stress-test your ideas, and develop an integrated digital strategy that actually moves your mission. We'll also be highlighting what responsible AI use looks like in practice—keeping human judgment, and marketing and organizational expertise at the forefront.

Audiences have gotten really good at spotting a paid post that doesn't belong. When a creator campaign feels forced, it can cost you trust with the exact people you're trying to reach. So how do you work with creators in a way that feels natural to their viewers while still advancing your campaign goals?

This session breaks down what separates creator campaigns that resonate from the ones that get scrolled past. Drawing on real campaign examples and the perspective of creators themselves, we’ll explore:

• What makes a partnership feel genuine to a creator's audience, and what quietly undercuts it
• Where to give creative control and where to hold the line
• What a healthy brief looks like, and why over-scripting backfires

At Ad Grants Pilot, we built an AI Agent that analyzed the digital marketing maturity of over 200,000 nonprofit websites to establish a new set of benchmarks

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Nothing here was surveyed or self-reported. We looked at what nonprofit websites actually do — the platforms they’re built on, the tools running behind them, how they’re structured for search, and what happens once someone arrives.

One pattern came through clearly: nonprofits are good at being found, and far less consistent at everything that follows.

We’ll walk through:

• The technology nonprofits are actually running — which website platforms, donor databases, email tools and donation platforms dominate the sector, where the market has consolidated, and where it’s still wide open.
• What separates mature digital programs from everyone else — the choices that show up again and again at the top, most of which cost nothing to copy.
• SEO and GEO fundamentals — what nonprofits already get right, the one structural mistake almost every organization makes, and how to make sure search engines and AI assistants actually understand what your organization is.
• Social advertising — how many nonprofits are running Meta ads and the messaging those ads tending to include.

You’ll leave knowing roughly where you sit relative to the sector, which technology decisions are worth revisiting, and a short list of fixes you can act on without a budget or a developer.

Mission driven organizations tend to prioritize programs, finance, and operations -- leaving smart and savvy digital staff under resourced and overworked. But a strong digital program is the key to growth in all of those areas, and leadership just needs to understand how to connect those dots.

This session will share all the lessons a 25-year marketing and communications executive learned from her nonprofit leadership, and translate them into actionable takeaways for beleagured digital teams.

In June, I showed how to set up Claude Code from scratch. This session picks up where that one left off. I run Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex every day on client work, and I've collected a set of habits that keep them from quietly getting things wrong.

It's for folks who already use Claude or ChatGPT daily and want to hand it bigger jobs. You don't need to be a developer. Every example comes from my own setup (client details removed), including the mistakes behind each habit, like the time an AI reported a job finished and passing while the thing it built was completely down.

We'll cover:

- Layered CLAUDE.md files: org-wide rules, per-project rules, and memory that carries over between sessions

- Having Claude and Codex review each other's work, since two different models catch mistakes that one model checking itself misses

- Backups and undo: a checkpoint before every change, and separate copies so parallel sessions don't overwrite each other

- Making AI prove it's done, because a "finished!" message isn't evidence

- Keeping passwords and client data out of places they shouldn't be, and why AI should treat web pages as data, not instructions

- Session logs and a lessons file, so the AI stops repeating last month's mistakes

Creator partnerships aren’t just for organizations with six-figure budgets. Small and mid-sized nonprofits and advocacy groups can build effective creator programs by being smart about who they work with, what they ask creators to make, and how they structure the relationship.

This session will focus on practical ways to make creator work more accessible and scalable, including:

• Finding the right creators without relying on celebrity-level reach
• Choosing between sponsored posts, UGC, and longer-term creator relationships
• Using creator-made UGC in paid and organic channels
• Building clear briefs, compensation structures, and approval processes
• Using AI and agentic tools to handle creator outreach, coordination, follow-up, and reporting without adding a large staff
• Measuring what worked and building a creator program that gets better over time

Bill Harvey, an Emmy Award-winning media innovator and futurist, passed away last month at age 84, leaving behind a legacy that shaped the world of advertising as we know it. While Bill was known for his inventions that led to the creation of DMAs and technology that fueled TiVo, he also spent decades studying the inner workings of the human mind. One of his last projects was devoted to applying his work on resonance to the political space.

In this session, you'll learn about a polymath who left behind a toolkit that causes and campaigns can apply to moving audiences and elevating ideas in a fragmented and crowded attention economy.  You'll hear from Myles Bugbee, founder of Persuasion & Pixels, who worked closely with Bill on an Analyst Institute innovation grant this year, and Steve Walsh, a protege and partner of Bill's.

Whether you're an activist at an organization who needs to make an idea catch fire or a campaigner trying to decipher how voters really make decisions, you won't want to miss this session on a person who expanded knowledge of human motivations and actions.

Learn about a few models of how nonprofits, advocacy organizations, and campaigns can work with content creators. We'll cover:

• Models for working with creators in paid and unpaid capacity
• Real world examples of how organizations worked with creators in 2026
• Step-by-step guidance on the process of working with creators

The most important question in any communications campaign is not "what does the public think?" It is "who is still moveable, and what would move them?" AI tools are changing that calculus fast. And communicators who use them for audience insight, not just content production, will have a significant advantage in a fragmented and skeptical media landscape.

This session draws on original research testing what AI-assisted communication can actually do to shift audience opinion (a 1,009-person national survey experiment using the SAGO Methodify platform). The study tested an AI-generated "Perspective Bridge" narrative against standard polling presentation on two contested topics (ROI on college degrees, ROI on World Cup tickets). Key findings:

• Standard polling formats reinforce the majority view — and may actively work against communicators making the case for a minority or underdog position
• The Perspective Bridge produced up to an eleven-point shift toward the pro-value position versus a nine-point reinforcement of the majority in the standard format; this is a twenty-point divergence on the same underlying facts
• The persuadable audience responds to narrative — formats that deliver the other side's best argument in human terms, not caricature
• Sharing intent is a multiplier — Perspective Bridge audiences were more likely to share with someone who disagrees

Attendees of this session will leave with a practical AI-assisted framework for finding the persuadable, surfacing the strongest minority-position argument, and treating audience data as a design thinking problem. Whether you are an issue advocate, a campaign team targeting persuadables, or a brand in a contested category, the format is the message. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/8478/

Earning a living is essential, but doing work that connects you to the people and causes you care about is even better.

This session is for you if you want to seek out values-aligned clients, partnerships, and communities so you can leverage your business, work, or volunteer hours as a vehicle for good.

When you operationalize, lead with, and market your values, impact follows.

Creative is not the sprinkles on top. It’s an integral part of the marketing recipe from the start. Pulling from Kate Gazillo's recent guest lecture to GMU Costello Business students, she'll focus on (3) recent & relevant campaign case studies in the successful harmony between when paid media marketing strategy and creative strategy are infused together from the very beginning of a project.

Through three very different campaigns, attendees will see that creative doesn’t have one look, one process, or one job. Sometimes it builds trust. Sometimes it finds the opportunity hiding inside the rules. Sometimes it turns a complex message into a story people can’t forget.

The goal is simple: expand what marketers truly think creative's role is, and how it changes the game for impactful campaigns.