The World of Nonprofits…..The New Normal

This event is sold out.

The conference is co-sponsored by the Center for Nonprofits in the Welch College of Business and Technology, the Master of Public Administration Program at SHU and Fairfield County’s Community Foundation.

Join other nonprofit leaders for an informative discussion how to move your organization forward in a time of difficult management and financial challenges. This conference will focus on solutions rather than restating problems. External factors such as financial pullback by the state, overall reduction in giving, increased demand for services, and greater scrutiny and demand for performance metrics by funders have created a “new normal.”

The result is that NPOs must rethink how they operate. What is required?

• Rethinking the organization’s purpose, operating methods and scope of services
• More collaboration, forming partnerships
• Merging with “competitors” or complementary organizations
• Adoption of business solutions/applications/measurement tools
• Getting beyond survival; more strategic thinking
• Developing a new generation of NFP leadership
• Changing the dialogue about the role of the nonprofit sector.

Can we identify the “disruptive” influences that can change how NPOs operate? Some larger organizations have embraced “social enterprise” which speaks to the intersection of business and socially responsible organizations. Are these principles applicable to smaller/medium size nonprofits? This conference will help answer these questions in addition to hearing from one of the NPOs space’s most entertaining and professional speakers.

Keynote Speaker: Vu Le

Vu Le (“voo lay”) is a writer, speaker, vegan, Pisces, and nonprofit leader who has spent over 13 years as an executive director. He is experienced in nonprofit management, capacity building, leadership development, fundraising, and funding dynamics, all done with a lens of equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice.

Vu’s passion to make the world better, combined with a low score on the Law School Admission Test, drove him into the field of nonprofit work, where he learned that we should take the work seriously, but not ourselves. There’s tons of humor in the nonprofit world, and someone needs to document it. He is going to do that, with the hope that one day, a TV producer will see how cool and interesting our field is and make a show about nonprofit work, featuring attractive actors attending strategic planning meetings and filing 990 tax forms.

Known for his no-BS approach, irreverent sense of humor, and love of unicorns, Vu has been featured in dozens, if not hundreds, of his own blog posts at NonprofitAF.com. He was named as “Writer with an Attitude” by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and was selected as one of the Power and Influence 50 in 2019 by the Nonprofit Times.