Spotlight: Effective and Healthy Leadership in the New Year

Virtual – Live/Online

Fee: $135 for MCN members / $175 for nonmembers

Register Now

As we wind down 2024 while simultaneously ramping up for 2025, let’s gather as leaders to develop our plans for leading more healthily and effectively in the New Year.

This Spotlight brings together some of MCN’s top-rated leadership trainers from the recent past to offer a full day of learning focused on clarifying your purpose and intent as a leader, understanding the impact you have as a leader, and developing strategies and acquiring tools for bringing greater transparency and internal operations acumen to how you lead while remaining mindful of your wellbeing and that of your staff. If you are a leader at the executive, director, or manager level within the charitable sector, this training is for you.

Participants of this Spotlight will:

• Sharpen their ability to communicate effectively, compassionately, and boldly
• Learn how to strengthen their financial management for easing transitions and operations
• Examine practical ways to succeed at work without sacrificing your wellbeing
• Reframe their thinking around impact to center outcomes rather than outputs

Spotlights are day-long virtual trainings, offering four to five 60- to 75-minute sessions, each exploring a different aspect of a specific topic. Each session will be led by experienced nonprofit leaders and subject-matter experts. Spotlights are designed to offer practical information that can be applied immediately along with larger-picture questions and possibilities to consider for the long-term.

We know it’s difficult to carve out large chunks of time in your day to attend trainings, so we’ve spread the sessions out over a full day, with breaks in between. You will have access to the session recordings for three months!

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Schedule (All times listed in Central Time)

9:00 – 10:15 a.m. // From Theory of Change to a Practice of Change
Janie Dunckley Moore, founder & lead change maker, Brico Works and director of impact, Entrepreneur Fund

What if change wasn’t just a strategy on paper, but a daily practice that drives meaningful outcomes?

In the rush of nonprofit work, it’s easy to focus on outputs—what we produce, how much we do. But true impact comes from centering on outcomes—the difference we’re making in the world. This workshop will help you reframe your thinking, moving from a focus on tasks and deliverables to a deeper practice of change that gets results. Through interactive exercises and practical tools, you’ll learn how to build a daily habit of outcome-focused work, where change isn’t something to plan for—it’s something you live, test, and refine every day. You’ll walk away with strategies to shift your organization’s mindset, simplify complex change concepts, and build experiments that measure real impact. Let’s transform your theory into action and your work into a powerful practice of change.

10:30 – 11:45 a.m. // No Money, No Mission: The Importance of Strong Financial Management through Leadership Transitions
Melissa Sones-Martinez, co-founder, Mighty Consulting

Organizational leaders of all levels need to learn how to make sure their finances can survive an expected or unexpected leadership transition. With many retirements on the horizon and continuing increased pressures on our organizations, the sector will continue to see significant leadership turnover. When finances only live in one or two people’s brains, things can fall into disarray quickly! And as we all know, good financial management – and accountability! – can make or break an organization. During this session you will learn how you can be better prepared with your finances and financial management for a transition, and how to navigate the transition once it happens.

1:00 – 2:15 p.m. // Holistic Leadership for Purpose-Driven Leaders
Terri Allred, principal and founder, Allred Coaching & Consulting and the Holistic Leadership Academy

In this interactive workshop, nonprofit leaders will explore the core principles of holistic leadership—a leadership style that integrates well-being, emotional intelligence, and trauma-informed practices to create balance and resilience. Holistic leadership goes beyond traditional leadership models by emphasizing the importance of leading with purpose and compassion, while also focusing on personal growth and sustainability. Leaders will gain practical tools to apply holistic leadership in their daily work, helping them manage stress, prevent burnout, and foster a healthier, more effective organizational culture. Holistic leadership is crucial for nonprofit leaders as it enables them to make a lasting impact while maintaining their own well-being, creating environments where both leaders and their teams can thrive.

2:30 – 3:45 p.m. // Communications that Speak Community: A Recipe for Deep and Lasting Impact
Chanida Phaengdara Potter, head of communications, Women Donors Network

As leaders of nonprofit organizations, communication is both an art and a science when it comes to meaningful community engagement and growing a nurturing culture that not only speaks to your organization’s mission and vision but leans into your core values. Tending to the current era of nonprofit communications is about setting the conditions for a fully engaged community that includes staff, board, constituents, and broader stakeholders. Whether it’s a critical internal announcement or the latest societal crisis, being mindful of your people, timing, framing, shared language, and instilling process-oriented planning in your organization’s communications makes all the difference in managing messaging and shaping your shared story. In this session, you’ll learn about the digital and sociopolitical realities we’re in and some baseline tips and tools for helping you navigate your brand of communications that uses a community-centric approach through storytelling that builds more trust across stakeholders, fosters action in your field, and brings constituents and supporters along with you.

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Event Details

This virtual event will take place on the Zoom platform. Your access link will be emailed to you the day before the event after 12 p.m.

This session will be recorded. The recording will be made available to registrants after the live event.

Captioning is provided automatically through Zoom. For information on requesting CART, ASL, or another accommodation, please visit our Registration Policies page.

Small Team Rate: Register three people from the same organization at once and the fourth registration is free! To register online, one person will login to their MCN account and will add colleagues to your group – your fourth colleague will be free! Visit our Events and Registration FAQ page (choose “How do I register multiple people?” from the FAQ options) for instructions on how to complete online group registrations.

To learn more about events, registration, and payment, visit our Event & Registration FAQ page.

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Speaker Information

Terri Allred is a dynamic and experienced consultant, leadership development expert, and catalyst for team transformation. With a passion for helping nonprofit and business leaders unlock the full potential of their teams, Terri brings a unique blend of skills and expertise to drive impactful change. For more than 25 years, she has provided training, leadership and personal coaching, program development and many other services to hundreds of individuals and organizations. Terri’s work is trauma-sensitive in both theoretical approach and interactions with people and organizations. She brings her extensive experience working in the sexual and domestic violence field to all of her interactions. She celebrates the diversity of human experience recognizing that we all come from unique backgrounds, perspectives and life experiences.

Janie Dunckley Moore, founder & lead changemaker at Brico Works has a passion for social impact that stems from her childhood, where she witnessed the transformative power of community support for her and her amazing single mother. This experience shaped her career dedicated to empowering changemakers. As founder of Brico Works, Janie helps social change leaders create fulfilling, impactful environments for themselves and their teams. With nearly 20 years of diverse nonprofit experience and degrees in Public Policy and Communication, she specializes in building systems that enable sustainable change. Janie’s expertise spans program development, fundraising, and evaluation across various causes, including women’s issues, environmental advocacy, and economic development. Originally from Colorado she now calls Duluth, MN, home.

Chanida Phaengdara Potter (she/they) is a community development strategist, engagement designer, and strategic communications leader. She’s currently the head of communications for Women Donors Network. Previously, she was the vice president of strategic communications & narrative change at Women’s Foundation of Minnesota. She was the founding executive director of The SEAD Project (Southeast Asian Diaspora). She has worked more than 15 years in nonprofits in community engagement, program development, resource mobilization, and strategic communications. She has a Bachelor’s in Global Studies and Communications from the University of Minnesota and a Master’s in Public Administration from Hamline University. She led narrative change initiatives and rebrand launch for Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, published Minnesota’s first Southeast Asian-authored anthology titled Planting SEADS: Minnesota Diaspora Stories, and co-led coalitions and initiatives alongside community members on anti-deportation, data disaggregation, anti-trafficking, and refugee + immigrant rights. Her work has been featured on Twin Cities Daily Planet, Asian American Press, The Uptake, Minnesota Public Radio, MinnPost, Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America; among others.