Leading Locally 2025: Call for Sessions

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As community, private, and corporate place-based funders, you have a stake in creating what is often called “a sense of community” — that feeling you get when you look around and see active and engaged residents enjoying local activities and connection points. It is both this intangible sense and the visible indicators of a healthy and vibrant community that make up the unique context that you operate in. The intersectional nature of the work that place-based funders support (education, environment, economic development, heritage, arts, faith, civic activities, housing, transportation), and the entities that work together (philanthropy, government, business, nonprofits) are the focus of this conference.

How does your work demonstrate the power of place-based and community philanthropy?

We are looking for sessions that will highlight how your work as place-based funders contributes to creating and maintaining this “sense of community.” We’re looking for sessions that share the structures, strategies, practices, and tools that you incorporate in support of this work. This conference will draw people from these roles: CEOs, boards, programmatic staff, policy staff, communications staff, donor engagement staff, HR leaders, and finance and legal professionals.

Guiding Principles for Sessions 

Make it Funder to Funder: The session's main purpose should be to highlight funders and their structures, strategies, practices, and tools, with the goal of sharing lessons learned and practical take-aways that other funders can apply. Each session proposed should include at least one funder on the speaking roster. 

Make it Practical and Engaging: Sessions should be engaging and include audience participation. Adults learn better when they have an opportunity to discuss ideas and apply frameworks, approaches, or tools in real time. While we welcome both theoretical sessions that address systems, structures, or strategies and applied sessions that share practices, resources, and tools, speakers should always plan to speak less than 50% of the session length.  

Apply a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Lens: Inclusive and equitable organizations can nurture and grow a diverse community of skilled philanthropic and nonprofit professionals. We encourage sessions that apply a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) lens to the work of place-based funders. 

Highlight Diverse Perspectives: The goal of our overall program is to showcase the diversity and differences among community and place-based funders and the many perspectives that drive our approaches to building a healthy and vibrant community. We encourage sessions that bring voices together from more than one organization or community. 

Lean into Authentic Connection: Just like each community has a unique context, so does each person within it. When we show up with authenticity, it strengthens the bonds that tie us together. We are making space for people to give and receive knowledge, talents, experiences, skills, or gifts that make you you. For our peer share and networking roundtable sessions, we invite you to bring something of yourself to share with your peers.  

Bring Your Local Voice: We are excited to highlight the work that philanthropy is engaged in across local communities. We encourage sessions that highlight local work, especially from organizations working within Minnesota. 

About the Audience 

This conference attracts staff and board members from community foundations and corporate and national funders with a place-based focus. Sessions should be designed with all or a specific part of this audience in mind.  

Session Types

Concurrent Session

These 75-minute sessions will be offered on both days of the conference and are an opportunity to share highlights from your work, focus on a call to action, and provide an interactive and engaging space to develop new thinking and strengthen relationships among your peers.  

We are particularly interested in hearing from people serving in various roles and how their approaches to their work are leading to greater impact. Sessions should be relevant to at least one of these audiences: 

• Executive Leadership 
• Grantmaking/Programs 
• Donor Services/Development 
• Communications/Marketing 
• Human Resources/Talent/Culture 
• Investments/Finance/Operations 
• Board Members/Trustees 

Networking Roundtables

Design a series of discussion questions and prompts around a topic or shared challenge, feature a speaker or colleague, provide an opportunity for news from, or a Q&A about, your organization, or see what current/emerging topic emerges from a group of role-based peers. These are organized, but informal ways to create discussion of shared interests with your peers. We will provide breakfast and a designated room for you in one of our breakout spaces. 

Examples could include a roundtable based on roles, like donor engagement staff, finance staff, or programmatic staff or a roundtable based on a topic or shared challenge like overcoming community polarization, building diverse committees, or avoiding employee burnout. 

Peer Shares

Create a structured opportunity for attendees to get to know one another on a more personal level through workshop style activities that encourage sharing, learning, and doing. This 45-minute time-block is for our members to build community by bringing an unexpected (or not!) aspect of yourself or your team to share. We'd love to see your imagination shine here. We’ll provide the space in one of our breakout rooms and you convene a group for conversation, games, collaboration, fun, creative pursuit, wellness, or a movement activity.  

Examples could include hosting a game, crafting, a book swap or “club,” a dance class, astrology reading, a social media tutorial, guided meditation, or a podcast, movie, or show discussion.

Session Topics

Session topics can span the why, the what, the who, and the how of grantmaking. Some examples of topics are below.   

• Mission-Focused topics, like housing, climate, health, DEI,  or arts 
• Partnerships, like local, federal, or state partnerships, funder collaboratives, or examples of collaborating across difference 
• Decision making, like volunteer-led grantmaking committees, board development and diversity, or participatory grantmaking 
• Organizational culture, like staff well-being and morale, employee retention, or inclusive celebrations 
• Giving strategies, like trust-based grantmaking, community impact funds, or funds for specific groups 
• Donor strategies, like DAFs, identity-based collectives, endowment tax credits, next gen donors, or community-centric fundraising 
• Federal, state, or local policy, like advocacy and lobbying, building movements for policy change, or resident engagement in local policy decisions 
• Financial stewardship and investments, like risk management, impact investing, PRIs and MRIs, or donor intent 
• Communications and storytelling, like community narratives, using plain language, using asset-based language, translation and accessibility or social media 
• Learning and evaluation, like participatory evaluation or grant reporting practices 
• Leading with integrity, like leadership values and practices, leading across difference, or leading teams and projects 
• AI and data, like data privacy and sharing, setting principles for AI use for staff and grantees, or data mapping and assessment 
• Grantmaking systems and processes, like internal systems integration, user experience, accessibility, or creating rubrics 
• Frameworks, assessments, or toolkits, like organizational assessments, DEI frameworks, or toolkits for implementing practices 

Eligibility to Submit

We welcome session proposals from both members and eligible non-members. Eligible non-members include: 

• Foundation staff and board members
• Corporations and other philanthropic entities, including limited liability companies (LLCs)
• Nonprofit and for profit philanthropy service and support organizations, intermediaries, and philanthropy-serving organizations (PSOs)
• Businesses and individuals that provide services and support to the philanthropic sector and/or have an active involvement in philanthropy

Process to Submit

If you’d like to submit a session for review, you will need to choose 1 or 2 session designers to submit basic session information. A session designer is the individual who submits session details during the call for sessions and is the main point of contact for the session and speakers. 

You’ll need to create a login for and fill out a form in our Cvent system that will ask for contact information for the session designer(s), and include answers to the following questions. 

Please note: the login for the Cvent system is NOT the same as your cof.org login. Also, you may already have a Cvent login from past events that use the Cvent system. Follow the onscreen prompts to know if you need to create a Cvent account or if one already exists for your email address. If you already have an account and you do not remember your password, you can request a password reset. If you have any questions, contact conferences@cof.org.

Form Questions

For your reference and to help you prepare, here are the questions that are included on the submission form.

• Session Designer's Name and Contact Information
• Co-Designer's Name and Contact Information (Optional)
• Are you and/or your co-designer a Council on Foundations or Minnesota Council on Foundations member?
• Session Type
• Proposed Session Title — Limit of 100 Characters and no session subtitle
• Proposed Marketing Description for Session — No more than 600 characters that answer the following:
  • What’s the main idea or thesis of this session? 
  • Who is the intended audience? Consider role, experience, type of foundation, programmatic or organizational strategy, interest, etc. 
  • What will participants leave the room knowing, being, or doing? 
• Learning or Networking Objectives — No more than 3 bullets 
• Session Format:
  • Lecture
  • Panel 
  • Interactive Workshop 
  • Roundtable Discussion 
  • Movement/Wellness (applicable to Peer Share sessions only) 
  • Arts/Culture (applicable to Peer Share sessions only) 
• Speakers: 
  • We do not encourage more than three speakers per session, but any additional speakers may attend at the full cost. We understand you may not have identified all the speakers for your session at this point. If you do know, you can list them below. Otherwise, tell us what unique perspectives or experiences you plan to feature in this session? 

You’ll receive confirmation of your submission via email. 

Selection Process 

Our volunteer working group will review these sessions during its November and December meetings.  

Your submission will be rated against the Guiding Principles for this event. 

We will notify sessions accepted in January 2025, and final speaker information will be due in early March 2025. Up to three speakers will receive a code to register for the conference at a discounted rate. Please note, separately, scholarships are available to support speakers who need additional financial support to attend and are not being supported by their organization or funding partner. 

Submit Your Session