Workshop Presenters: Crystal Ellis, Naya Diaz, Charla Hale, Cherese Ledet

Are you wondering how to begin racial justice work or looking to go deeper at your association? This session is for you! Join YWCA leaders from Austin, Evanston/North Shore, Hamilton, and San Antonio as they share where and how racial justice works shows up across their associations, from human resources to youth programs, to mental health services, to community education, advocacy, and more! Presenters will share strategies for creating tangible impact across programs, communities, and beyond. If you are struggling with where to start, where to go next, or how to do this work in a more conservative locale, this presentation is for you. Presenters will provide ideas for you to take back to your association. Come prepared with questions and be ready for a fireside chat on how to lift racial justice work!

Workshop Presenters: Sharon Roberson, Susanne Shephard Post

This session will discuss ways to turn a volunteer's passion into an initiative. We will use the case of a volunteer-initiated training program that equips local beauty professionals with the tools needed to help clients (and co-workers) if they are in a domestic violence situation. Realizing that domestic violence awareness education could benefit more than the local community of stylists, and knowing that at least one state (Illinois) has a law on the books to require beauty industry professionals to have DV awareness training, the volunteer and YWCA Nashville & Middle Tennessee's Advocacy Committee turned its attention to getting a law passed in the very anti-regulation state of Tennessee.

Workshop Presenter: Sarah Graham

Communications is an important part of any nonprofit organization. But what do you do when you don’t have a communications team, a limited budget, and even less staff time? Join YWCA National Capital Area to learn some best practices on running a communications department of one or none with limited resources. What tools are helpful? How do you organize social media? Why does it even matter? Attendees to this workshop will walk away with social media planning insights, a list of cost-effective resources, examples of where to spend money and where not to, and sample communications planning documents.

Attendees are encouraged to bring a communications problem/plan to the workshop with other attendees.

The YWCA World Service Council (WSC) invites members and all conference attendees to a hear about the variety of ways the Council engages in and enhances the global work of the World YWCA - its powerful ability to help train young women leaders, build capacity, and meet emergency needs of YWCA associations around the world. Headlining the event will be World YWCA General Secretary Casey Harden and YWCA USA World Council Board member Andrea Arbogast who will provide an overview of World YWCA’s recent work and accomplishments.

How would you respond if your Association was facing media inquiries or public stakeholder criticism that could affect its reputation within the community? Crisis Communication 101 will walk you through what types of crises you may encounter, how to face those crises head-on utilizing a crisis communication plan, and help you learn how effective crisis communication within your Association can protect the YWCA brand identity and maintain the organization’s firm standing within the community.

Workshop Presenters: Tracey Madden-Hennessee, Stacy Johnson

Nearly every market in the U.S. is experiencing catastrophic shortages of early education teachers and childcare providers. Join leaders from YWCA New Britain and YWCA Metro St. Louis as they share about innovative women’s economic development programs, they have developed to address childcare availability challenges. YWCA New Britain will share about their first-of-its-kind Childcare Business Incubator, designed to address the shortage of care in their community through creation of private family childcare businesses in a shared space. YWCA Metro St. Louis will share about their Successful Pathways Child Development Associate (CDA) Apprenticeship program, an accelerated opportunity to earn a CDA credential while being paid to work in the classroom. Following the presentations, join in a time of Q&A as we dig into the mechanics of innovation!

This workshop will provide an overview of the features and benefits of your YWCA Retirement Fund. The YWCA’s retirement plan is a uniquely beneficial pension plan, and this presentation will highlight its unique and valuable features. We will also explain the role the YWCA’s pension plan plays in your employees’ retirement preparedness as well as the effect of your association’s contribution election choice on their retirement readiness. This information will provide valuable data for deciding which contribution rate to target in future years.

Workshop Presenter: Kimberly Stemley

One of the biggest challenges nonprofits face is fundraising, which has been heightened since the global pandemic. Donor behavior is evolving, and their expectation of engagement has changed. Nonprofit agencies must be willing to change their fundraising models to survive the shifts and ensure they have the needed support for programming. These shifts in the market are concerning, but making internal changes to your fundraising efforts can be downright scary. The YWCA Metro St. Louis has responded to the landscape shifts by taking a holistic approach to fundraising. Successful fundraising depends on excellent programs, a strong development plan and methodology, quality data and metrics, and the commitment to raising awareness through marketing and communications. While this is a multi-year effort, we will share with you our process to identify obsolete fundraising efforts, improve board engagement in fundraising and how we crafted a detail strategy to ensure our fundraising efforts will yield expected results.

Workshop Presenters: Casey Harden, Dr. Suchi Gaur, Caterina Lemp

Senior Specialist of Movement Building, World YWCAWho leads? How does feminist co-creation work in practice? How can feminist processes and evidence progress the YWCA Goal 2035 and an intergenerational YWCA movement? This session provides insight into use of World YWCA’s newly published Feminist Consultation Methodology (FCM) as a much needed approach to engage communities in consultations, evidence-building and advocacy. Research is framed as the spark for transformative justice and anchored in a diverse, democratic and decolonised approach, centering girls, young women, youth and women in all intersecting realities. Join us for a powerful session where we explore the FCM and other World YWCA tools like Safe Spaces and RiseUp! Young Women’s Transformative Leadership Guide to bring accountability and evidence to YWCA leaders, strengthening the mission and Goal 2035 of the YWCA movement. First 20 participants get a free copy of the FCM!

Workshop Presenters: Teresa Garza, Nadia Gooray

At YWCAs across the nation, we work to mobilize communities, investors, and lawmakers in the fight to achieve justice. Authentic storytelling opens the possibilities for changing mindsets and cultures by amplifying the voices and lived experiences of survivors. It shifts the narrative from shaming and blaming the individual to highlighting structural racial and economic barriers to self-sufficiency. Through elevating these stories, the intersection of racial, gender, economic, and survivor justice becomes more tangible. Yet, the process of authentic storytelling requires a set of practices that centers the survivor’s agency, moves away from a transactional lens, and constantly embraces change. Learn how to put together a survivor-centered storytelling and communications plan rooted in equity, collaboration, and belonging. You will walk away with tangible steps on how you can implement this framework at your organization.

Workshop Presenter: Cathy Zeiner

During this informative, engaging, and interactive session, YWCA Hartford Region will co-present with their coaches at No Margin, No Mission (a social enterprise and national consulting practice) to illustrate and share how we are building entrepreneurial capacity, boosting revenue, and heightening mission impact by launching a social enterprise. Multi-faceted, highly engaging, and results-oriented, this presentation is designed to help a wide range of nonprofits and their stakeholders (especially leadership, board, and staff) to better understand, explore possibilities, and determine readiness for earned income. A variety of exercises, worksheets, and tools unique to their model are shared throughout the session to help participants consider new ways of thinking and doing. This session is designed to give participants an understanding and appreciation for (1) how social enterprise works to address the full earned income continuum; (2) highlights of the process; and (3) an opportunity for participants to brainstorm and discuss practical applications of the topic to their own organizations. The presentation will feature the experience of YWCA Hartford Region and how we used this approach to develop and launch our social enterprise, Persimmon Petals, an online flower and gift boutique, which is generating earned income for the association.

This workshop will review core framing concepts as well as introduce participants to key recommendations based on FrameWorks research on childcare. The training will be highly interactive with many opportunities for participants to apply the framing strategies to their own communications.

Workshop Presenter: Sereka Barlow

Women can be extremely critical of themselves and one another. It has been said that women (we) can be our own toughest critics. The YWCA is a women-led organization with a women’s majority. As women in leadership, we need to be mindful of how we treat one another. It is unreasonable to impose our expectations for ourselves on other women, often with an unfair and highly critical bias. As women, we need to check our W.H.A.T (Women Haters at Times)! We can be the biggest women haters and our own worst enemies. Let us learn to support one another.

Workshop presenter: Jill ODonnovan

Educate attendees on the existence of the product (i.e. what is an ETF, how someone buys shares for ETFs in general, how it is an "impact investment"); what this particular ETF is focused on (i.e. the criteria and process used to select stocks to be held by the ETF); why it involves YWCA (i.e. how came to be and what YWCA's role is going forward); and how to harness the full power of the ETF (besides as an investment) to amplify our mission (i.e. introducing new audiences to YWCA, deepened corporate engagement, donated revenue from Impact Shares)

Workshop Presenter: Ginny Giles

Racial justice work is complex, relational, and may look dramatically different in each community. Yet, funders and donors want measurable data and impact on an annual basis. Dismantling racism requires us to not only challenge structural policies, but to challenge beliefs and attitudes. For those of us doing this work every day it can feel like it is impossible to measure and impossible to quantify. However, there are tools available that can help us measure the small steps we are taking towards larger systemic change. This workshop will explore one of those tools, the logic model, and how we can use it to integrate data and narrative to make a compelling case to funders.

World Service Council Co-Chairs Mildred Morrison and Gloria Chun Hoo invites World Service Council members and those interested in joining the WSC to come together for a meet and greet where ideas can be exchanged as we look forward to the work ahead.

Workshop Presenters: Phyl Flanagan, Danielle Boyd

This workshop explores the fundamentals of restorative practices: a framework for centering community, fostering an environment of mutual respect, and responding restoratively to instances of harm. Through reflection and discussion, you will deepen your understanding of how restorative practices can benefit relationships across your organization, personally and professionally. You will also learn ways to incorporate restorative approaches into your organization’s internal and external operations and interactions, and how to center accountability in efforts to repair harm and prevent harm from reoccurring. This presentation guides you along the path of creating a restorative workplace that fosters trust, empathy, and healthy community.

Workshop Presenter: Kayla Suarez

Join this session to learn about YWCA El Paso's partnership with the City of El Paso to create Banned Books Sections in city libraries, along with tips, ideas, and samples of materials. They will discuss why banned books align with YWCA's mission, how to organize key stakeholders/allies in communicating with city government, tips for communicating with the community (getting books donated, the importance of the issue, themes, etc.) and lessons learned. Be inspired about to think about how this might be replicated in your own community!

Presenting the new YWCA National 403(b) Plan from Mutual of America. Topics will include an introduction to the program, plan set-up, administrative features of the plan, online access for employees, and investment options available, as well as how the new program complements your existing YWCA Retirement Fund retirement plan. There will be time for Q&A with Mutual of America and the YWCA Retirement Fund to answer any questions that you may have regarding the program.