Mission and Metrics: Cultivating Our MEAL Systems through Holistic Practices - Breakout #1

ECHO, HOPE International, Seed Effect, Oakland University

Daniela Riley, Erica Lauren Calhoun, Claire Brosius, Missy Williams, Doug Carr

---

This interactive workshop equips practitioners with practical tools to strengthen MEAL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning) systems. Participants will be introduced to four core pillars for effective MEAL practice, developed through a global symposium and published in an ECHO whitepaper, along with a complementary framework of holistic MEAL from the new book Mission & Metrics.

Grounded in examples from ECHO, HOPE International, and Seed Effect, the session focuses on how these approaches work in practice. Participants will engage in guided small-group work to assess their current MEAL systems, identify strengths and gaps, and develop concrete, context-specific actions they can implement.

A facilitated conversation with organizational executives will address how trust, philanthropy, and MEAL intersect in faith-based contexts. Participants will have opportunities to submit questions and engage directly with panelists.

Participants will leave with a clear understanding of the four MEAL pillars, practical ways to align mission and measurement, and actionable steps ready for implementation in their own organizations.

Faithful Innovation: Technology that Strengthens Agricultural Relationships - Breakout #2

IDEA

David Vanderpool

---

Using field examples, participants will apply a practical stewardship framework to design digital agricultural services that extend timely support while strengthening farmer dignity, trusted local relationships, accountability, and local capacity.

Participants will learn the Responsible, Appropriate, Impactful, Sustainable, and Empowering (RAISE) framework for evaluating technology through stewardship, farmer dignity, local ownership, practical impact, and relationship strength. They will also participate in a design lab and constructive peer exchange to apply these principles to real examples in presented case studies and their own organizations.

From Research to Reality: Applying Christ-Centered Flourishing in Your Context - Breakout #3

KIF Learning Community and Harvard Human Flourishing Program

James Waters

---

The Global Flourishing Study has given the sector powerful evidence. But how do you apply it faithfully — without losing the theological distinctive that makes Kingdom work different from secular development?

This workshop moves from research to practice. Drawing on the Harvard Global Flourishing Study, three years of KIF Spiritual Impact Learning Community work on Christ-centred flourishing, and the Christian Impact Framework's community flourishing outcomes, participants will hear from practitioners who have grappled with this in the field, engage with a shared vocabulary for measuring Kingdom outcomes, and leave with a concrete next step for their own organisation.

Designed as the application session related to the Brian Fikkert and Byron Johnson conversation, this workshop is for practitioners and leaders who want to move from flourishing frameworks to actionable measurement and learning. 

Expand Your Donor Appeal Using High Impact Measurement Tools - Breakout #2

Radiant Global Insights

Kate Williams-Whitley, Ashley Williams

---

Institutional-style reporting was built for compliance, not connection. Your donors are investors who want to feel their impact. This session gives executive and marketing teams new frameworks that attract donors. 

AI Jumpstart: Build Your Marketing Assistant In One Hour - Breakout #4

Dan Kennedy Marketing

Dan Kennedy

---

For marketing and fundraising leaders ready to practically integrate AI into their workflow: build a working AI marketing assistant in Claude - live, in the room. Watch the demo, follow the steps, leave equipped. This session is for marketing, development, and executive leaders who are past curious, and ready to make AI practical in their day-to-day work. No technical background required.

For Loves Sake: How Stories, Staff and Strategy Change as Your Nonprofit Grows - Breakout #3

The Kipos Group

James Misner

---

You'd ride three trains and two buses to save $72 on a ride to the airport. You'd drive across the county at midnight for a family in crisis. Love makes you do hard things...until it's time to raise money. Then the powerful story doesn't get told because telling it feels like bragging. The staff member who hasn't hit a goal in three years keeps a job because letting them go feels cruel. The $50,000 ask becomes $5,000.

It feels like love. It isn't. And it costs your organization revenue every year.

This session examines how the very virtues that build nonprofits (humility, compassion, restraint) become the ceiling that caps revenue, and why the problem intensifies as organizations grow. Using a three-stage growth model (the Plot, the Garden, and the Farm) participants will diagnose where their organization sits today and identify which fundraising practices their stage now requires. Relevant to executive directors, development leaders, and senior staff at organizations of any size.

After this session, participants will be able to:

• Assess which of three organizational growth stages (Plot, Garden, Farm) their organization currently occupies, and identify the storytelling, staffing, and solicitation practices that stage requires.

• Recognize the leadership instincts that suppress fundraising performance, and apply a diagnostic test to distinguish a staff member who needs a season of support from one that requires a change.

• Apply specific practices for sourcing and telling impact stories with dignity, and for structuring asks that match the magnitude of the need rather than the leader's comfort level.

Thinking in New Ways About Your Funding Model - Breakout #1

Innovation in Mission

Jon Hirst

---

Often we make huge assumptions about how a new program or initiative will be funded. Funding Model Innovation is often overlooked with tragic results. Learn how to innovate with funding models and unlock new opportunities to expand your ministry impact. Filled with practical helps, this session will help you assess your current funding models, expand your view of funding model options and explore how you might test different models with your new efforts. 

When Values Don’t Travel: Closing the Gap Between What We Say and Do- Breakout #2

The Meros Center, Chalmers Center, Orange Sky Initiatives

Jason Paltzer, Lauren Woodside Alegre, Ryan Smedes

---

Mid-level leaders in Christian development organizations carry values they cannot fully enact. In this session, participants will name specific structural gaps affecting their team and leave with a diagnostic practice they can use the following week.

Measuring Spiritual Safety in Christian Spaces - Breakout #1

The Spiritual Safety Center

Lianna Chong, Abram Kielsmeier-Jones

---

Spiritual safety is protection from the harm of spiritual abuse and freedom to flourish in one's relationship with God, others, and oneself. Spiritual Safety Center Co-founders, Lianna and Abram, will share about a new validated measure for spiritual safety in a Christian community, the Spiritual Safety Survey, and how you can use it to create healthier teams and cultures that prevent spiritual abuse.

AI Tools in Nonprofit Finance: Real Examples You Can Use Today - Breakout #4

Accord Finance Community of Practice and Hope Rises

Beverly Elmore, Craig Calvert, Kelly Parks

---

AI tools are already showing up in nonprofit finance offices — the question is whether we're using them intentionally. In this hands-on session, finance staff from Hope Rises International will share real examples of how they are using AI to streamline reporting, build financial dashboards, improve efficiency, and take on work that used to require outside help or hours of manual effort. Come with your laptop and AI platform account ready - you'll leave this session with practical ideas and a tool you can put to work right away.

From Silos to Synergy: Growing Your Knowledge Management Maturity - Breakout #3

Accord Knowledge Management Community Group

Gena Thomas, Katie Appel, Chris Gammill

---

Better understand how Knowledge Management (KM) maturity models can help you move from siloed knowledge to collective wisdom. Hear from a variety of voices and organizations. Walk away with a personalized KM assessment plan that fits you.

AI Strategy in Practice: From Clarity to Application- Breakout #1

Strategy & Execution Community Group

Jason Rickey, Claire Brosius, Lauren Woodside Alegre

---

This workshop equips leaders with shared language for AI strategy, principles, policies, tools, and training, so they can discern, compare, and apply AI approaches with clarity and confidence across diverse organizational contexts.

Beyond Intention: What Global NGOs Are Learning in Disability Practice- Breakout #4

Disability Community of Practice

Rebecca Heidorn, Melissa Blauvelt, Aaron Kates, Lanre Williams-Ayedun, Anna Vines, Michael Schwinger

---

Explore real-world disability inclusion through global NGO case stories from diverse geographic and programmatic contexts, including education, economic development, WASH, M&E, and inclusive ministry. The session culminates in small-group discussions where participants will translate insights into practical next steps for their own agencies.

Shift the Power: An Executive Table Debate - Breakout #2

Bridgely

Heather Neely

---

Every NGO Executive carries a double burden: the fiduciary duty to safeguard compliance, and the moral calling to foster true local power. But where does necessary oversight end and local paralysis begin? Join host Heather Neely for an interactive executive think-tank designed for leaders ready to lean into the friction. No lectures. No boilerplate answers. Just unfiltered, table-level debates with fellow leaders tackling:

Risk vs. Trust: Navigating compliance without choking local initiative.

The Gatekeeper’s Dilemma: Protecting the mission vs. paternalistic isolation.

True Local Agency: Shifting power directly to frontline leaders.

What you will experience:

Peer Debate: Tackle high-stakes operational scenarios around power dynamics and institutional control alongside fellow executive leaders.

Data-Backed Insights: Examine how shifting church and donor expectations are changing the landscape of global partnerships.

Strategic Audit: Challenge assumptions about traditional development models and discover actionable ways to migrate true autonomy to frontline leaders.

Come prepared to lean into the friction, ask uncomfortable questions, and help reshape the future of global ministry.

US Government Foreign Assistance: Navigating in a Time of Rapid Change - Breakout #3

Foreign Assistance Community Group

Mark Lorey, Randy Tift

---

The Accord Network Foreign Assistance Community Group will be joined by James Maloney of the Global Health Security and Diplomacy (GHSD) Bureau, and Meghan Hanson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Disaster and Humanitarian Response (DHR) Bureau. We also have Eric Ha, CEO of Medical Teams International, joining as a discussant. The workshop will focus on challenges that US foreign assistance is facing in addressing protracted crises globally, especially in the areas of health and nutrition.