Interested in submitting a breakout session for the 2016 Communications Network Conference? Head over to ComNet16.org.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a breakout session proposal for ComNet15. After reviewing numerous proposals representing nearly 140 foundations and nonprofits, the Communications Network Board and staff selected the below 12 breakout sessions to be featured at this year's conference. 

In keeping with this year’s conference theme, Making Ideas Move, the sessions below will show folks how to combine their ideas with the power of strategic communications to raise awareness, change attitudes and encourage people to get involved.

Let’s Talk About Race: Communicating Effectively for Social Change After Baltimore and Ferguson

Sponsored by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Perception Institute

What You'll Learn:

1. Working understanding of the social psychological phenomena implicit bias, racial anxiety, and stereotype threat and their link to the continuing racial polarization in our country.

2. How to use effective language and graphics with various audiences to promote race equity and inclusion as part of a mission. 

3. How to lead/promote a national conversation about the impact of racism and unconscious bias on a key issue like law enforcement’s relationship with communities of color.

Session Description:

America is urgently confronting issues of race – and nonprofits and foundations need the right communications tools to seize the opportunity of this historic moment for lasting change. Racial disparities and inequities are at the heart of many ideas that funders seek to move, yet the sensitivity and complexity of these issues makes them hard to discuss. How can funders talk openly and effectively about race while balancing the considerations of board members, policymakers on both sides of the aisle, stakeholders in the field and communities where they are working? This session will offer messaging examples, graphic tools and lessons from philanthropic efforts including the Executives’ Alliance to Expand Opportunities for Boys and Men of Color; the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s launch of the Race for Results data index and Race Equity and Inclusion portfolio; the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s America Healing project; and Public Welfare Foundation’s work to reform juvenile and criminal justice. The panel will also build on the groundbreaking findings emerging out of the mind science community. In essence, these findings make the case that if we — as a country -- want to find a different place, a better place on race, we must address the overlapping dynamics of implicit bias, racial anxiety and stereotype threat. 

Session Presenters:

Kate Shatzkin, Senior Communications Manager, The Annie E. Casey Foundation; Rebecca Noricks, Communications Officer, W.K. Kellogg Foundation; Diane Camper, Communications Officer, Public Welfare Foundation; Rachel Godsil, Director of Research, Perception Institute; Alexis McGill Johnson, Executive Director, Perception Institute

In Over Your Head? How Foundations and Nonprofits Can Carefully Tread Politically Charged Waters

Sponsored by Nellie Mae Education Foundation

What You'll Learn:

1. Learn to plan for a reputation attack, assess real and potential attacks, and determine if and how to respond.

2. Learn to assess organizational risk when working on a politically-charged issue.

3. Learn methods to strategically frame an approach to an issue without setting off alarm bells with political interest groups.

Session Description:

The nonprofit sector increasingly finds itself at the center of political debates, making the line between the political and social sectors ever grayer. There are methods – rooted in strategic framing and crisis preparedness – for nonprofits and foundations to play a role in politically-charged issues while protecting their reputations in the long term. This workshop will explore the basic elements of reputation management for nonprofits, prevention techniques that will allow nonprofit leaders to assess risk and navigate around it, and methods of assessing ideological attacks on your brand and determining an appropriate response. Who puts out the fire when a political interest group targets your organization? What is your method of assessing a potential attack, and deciding whether and how to respond? Who is responsible if you overreact, and unnecessarily accelerate a negative story? We’ll address these questions and more in this informative and spirited discussion.

Session Presenter:

Shaun Adamec, Director of Strategic Communications, Nellie Mae Education Foundation

Journalism, Art, and Impact: Blending Journalism, Storytelling and the Arts to Engage Communities to Bring About Change

Sponsored by Center for Investigative Reporting

What You'll Learn:

1. How to set impact goals for media and communications projects. 

2. Methods and strategies for measuring change.

3. Why measurement and analysis is valuable for media organizations.

Session Description:

A Ford Falcon van retrofitted into a mobile art installation. Coloring books translated into six languages. Graphic novels. One-act plays and spoken word poetry. Does any of that make you think about credible, fact-based public service journalism? If not, it will after this conversation on the future of journalism with The Center for Investigative Reporting.

At this session, we’ll share how we’ve learned that breaking with traditional story telling while upholding the high standards of investigative journalism has tremendous value. We innovate at the intersection of arts and journalism, unleashing the creative potential of our reporters and multimedia producers.  This makes us more effective —at reaching diverse new audiences, communicating the emotional truth of fact-based stories, and sparking real world changes that improves lives.

To illustrate, we’ll draw on our experiences producing “The Dark Side of the Strawberry,” a yearlong investigation into the health and environmental impacts of highly controversial pesticides used to grow California strawberries. This project included feature length text stories and a first-of-its kind data interactive, a digital animation now nominated for an award from the Online News Association, an original theater piece commissioned from one of the nation’s preeminent Hispanic playwrights and performed in Spanish and English, door-to-door surveys of 800 homes located at the epicenter of our reporting, a mobile app, and the development of a high school curriculum that engaged teens with the series.

In addition to showing what we did, we’ll take you behind the scenes in our newsroom to explain why we employed so many creative strategies for just one story. We’ll share other examples of our work, and show you how we are measuring indicators of success far beyond audience and social media metrics. As a special bonus, we’ll preview a sneak peak of our Impact Tracker tool, which has transformed how we think about, plan for, and measure the effectiveness of our work. 

There’ll be plenty of time for audience participation so come prepared with questions and challenges, as well as your best success stories. 

Session Presenters:

Robert J. Rosenthal, Executive Director, The Center for Investigative Reporting; Annie Chabel, Associate Director, Development, The Center for Investigative Reporting; Dr. Lindsay Green-Barber, Media Impact Analyst, The Center for Investigative Reporting; Tanya M. Barrientos, Director of Executive Communications at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will moderate the discussion portion of the session.

Ready Are You? Communications Jedi Training For Your Next Frontier

Sponsored by Barr Foundation

What You'll Learn:

1. What the next step forward in communications practice and effectiveness at their organization can look like.

2. Guiding principles and strategies for leading this change.

3. Pitfalls to avoid.

Session Description:

Maybe you are a novice in the ways of the communications force, your most urgent task to liberate your organization from the swamps of skepticism and doubt about its potential. Maybe you have already earned your Jedi stripes, and are leading whole squadrons of communications pros in ambitious campaign for hearts and minds and to bring down death stars. Wherever you and your organization are on your path, when the forces for good call upon you to lead your organization into new frontiers of communications effectiveness, what do you do? What are the key questions to ask, steps to take, and pitfalls to avoid? And how do those questions, steps, and pitfalls change as you attain new levels of mastery in the communications Jedi Order?

Facilitated by three communications leaders from organizations at different points on this path, this interactive session will enable participants to explore these questions together, and to identify guiding principles they can immediately put into practice.

Session Presenters:

Stefan Lanfer, Director of Communications, Barr Foundation; Judith Zimmer, Communications Director, Milbank Memorial Fund; Daniella Léger, Senior Vice President for Communications and Strategy, Center for American Progress

Communications and Evaluation: Kindred Spirits or Mortal Enemies?

Sponsored by The Atlantic Philanthropies

What You'll Learn:

1. Helpful suggestions and tips for building working relationships with evaluation colleagues.

2. Confidence that it is possible to create solid partnerships within foundations with evaluation colleagues.

3. How these productive working relationships can enhance the overall work of foundations.

Session Description:

Communicators are responsible for using the most compelling information about the work of our organizations to create equally compelling communications. Often our evaluation colleagues are the keepers of that information. Because many evaluators are academics, success or failure sometimes comes down to how well we can use our own powers of persuasion to convince them that their often jargon-laden, academic and just plain wonky ways of speaking and writing won't work with the audiences we need to reach. Conversely, our evaluation colleagues may see communications staff and consultants as crass Satans of spin, willing to jettison accuracy and nuance for the sake of a good juicy story that embellishes or burnishes a funder's or grantee's standing or reputation but that bears little resemblance to the underlying complexity of the evaluation or to “the truth.” This session will explore how to create a happy marriage between communications and evaluation.

Session Presenters:

Kevin Rafter, Director of Client Engagement Harder+Company; Ben Kerman, evaluation executive, Atlantic Philanthropies; Ellen Schneider, Director, Active Voice Lab; Dr. Debra Joy Pérez, Vice President, Research, Evaluation and Learning, Annie E. Casey Foundation

The Making of Movements: the Wins, the Losses and the Missteps

Sponsored by  The Irvine Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

What You'll Learn:

Conference attendees will learn: 

1. Realities of what it takes to catalyze and build movements with a successful communications infrastructure.

2. The do's and don'ts of movement building - lessons learned from others who have taken a wrong turn or two. 

3. How to zig when their movement has zagged and best practices for developing high-impact tools and resources that draw coalition partners together.

Session Description:

Organizations, brands and causes are all trying to create movements around their ideas, products and issues. "Building a movement" has become the strategy de rigueur for many communications leaders and their organizations. Often times, we learn about the steps to build a movement, but we don't often hear what the missteps are. This session is about bringing together social change agents to share their movement’s journeys – the wins, the losses and the missteps. What can you plan for and how much is luck? What are the do’s and don’ts of movement building? This breakout is intended to be a transparent session about what it REALLY takes to build a movement.

For questions about this session or to suggest a topic of discussion, please email .

Session Presenters:

Daniel Silverman, Vice President for Strategic Services, The James Irvine Foundation; Susan Feeney (moderator), Partner, GMMB; Aaron Belkin, Professor, San Francisco State University; Emily Brew, Principle, Brew Advisors

Uniting for Change: Funders Join Forces to Increase Capacity for Tar-Heel Nonprofits

Sponsored by North Carolina Network of Grantmakers

What You'll Learn:

1. What funders gain (often unexpectedly) from a relatively modest investment in building their grantees' communications capacity.

2. What nonprofit grantees find MOST useful in these kinds of training and TA programs.

3. What works -- and doesn't -- when helping nonprofits boost their communications savvy (from the perspective of the coaches working directly with them).

Session Description:

We know that philanthropists struggle with how to help nonprofit grantees increase their communications know-how -- so we want to share a case study on our approach. Over two years, members of the North Carolina Network of Grantmakers developed and tested a program, comprised of training and tailored follow-up, that helps grantees plan specific goals, target their audiences, and implement tactics that immediately benefit the organization. Coaches help grantees earn quick communications “wins” like placing an op-ed, launching a Facebook page, writing an elevator speech, or redesigning a newsletter. These tangible projects allow grantees to take communications theory and apply it in practical, tactical ways. Ultimately, the funders believe these wins are critical to ensuring that grantees continue to apply the strategic communications framework that lies at the heart of the program.

Session Presenters:

Nora Ferrell, Director of Communications, Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust; Charity Perkins, Director, Communications, The Duke Endowment; Shaheen Syal, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation; Mark Dessauer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC Foundation; Jacqueline Gottlieb, Ed D, President and CEO, Hinton Rural Life Center

Turning 💻 (Computer) Into 👪 (Community): How to Make Your Social Media Voice More Human

Sponsored by The Science Friday Initiative

What You'll Learn:

1. What a social media persona is, and why it is important for your organization to have one.

2. How you can use personas to engage your community and advocates.

3. How your organization can develop personas themselves.

Session Description:

Does this sound familiar? You’ve set up your organization's Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and now they’re full of press releases. You post sporadically when you have a big announcement or during a fundraising campaign, but you get very little traction. Your Executive Director has an account, but it’s just a mirror of your organization. It all feels very… robotic. No, it doesn’t have to be this way. Brandon Echter, community manager at The Science Friday Initiative, offers practical tips and tricks to help you breathe life into your social media. Learn how to create a persona that will humanize your organization’s social media presence, and how to use that persona to help your staff advocate for your mission. Most importantly, learn how to use your social media to emphasize that you and your advocates are a community of people, creating stronger bonds and building a better groundwork for your mission.

Session Presenter:

Brandon Echter, Community Manager, The Science Friday Initiative

Your Own Media Brand

Sponsored by Heritage Foundation

What You'll Learn:

1. Things to consider when launching a new publishing platform.

2. How to decide if you should integrate with your main site or create a new destination?

3. Driving traffic and engaging broad and niche audiences alike.

4. Building your brand through a cohesive content strategy.

5. What it actually means to think like a publisher.

Session Description:

From 2008 to 2012 The World Bank published 517 reports that were never downloaded.  Not once.  Google now punishes websites that are not mobile optimized in its search results.  Traditional blogs just don’t resonate with influential audiences.  

The ways organizations like ours shared information, effective even a few years ago, are no longer working.  But foundations, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations have an opportunity to break through the clutter by realizing that in many ways, our organizations are publishers.  And for many of us, the best way to engage our audiences may be by launching our own digital media brands or publishing destinations.

It worked for The Heritage Foundation, which transformed its blog into a news and commentary site that reaches over 5 million readers each month.  It also worked for Everytown for Gun Safety which seeded the now-independent news site, The Trace.  

The session will highlight the launch and growth stories of these two brands, told through the strategy sessions and discussions that guided their approach.  Throughout, audience members will have the chance to pose their own questions and describe their considerations, getting live feedback and reaction from the presenters and the audience.  

Session Presenter:

Ory Rinat, Director of Digital, Heritage Foundation

You’ve Got the “Big Idea”, How the Hell Do You Execute It?

Sponsored by The Ad Council

What You'll Learn:

1. How to take a really big goal and turn it into a tangible, executable and measurable strategy (that doesn’t take years to achieve).

2. How to use really smart research to achieve your goals (for example, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is relying on funding from the Fink Foundation and KaBoom! from Annie E. Casey Foundation to map out their strategies.

3. How communications and policy staff worked together to create action (versus handing off their program to communications staff to “make my graph look better”).

Session Description:

Food waste. Hunger. Playability. They’re humongous issues that call for complex solutions. And in today's polarized and fast-paced media environment, it's easy to go down the rabbit hole of “systemic change” and theories of change. In this panel, we’ll talk about how to translate big ideas into action and how to meet middle people in the middle to change behaviors (not necessarily their minds). You’ll hear how NRDC took the amorphous issue of food waste and turned it into a relatable and bite-size effort to engage American families. Or how KaBoom!, after building 15,000 playgrounds nationwide, is going big with a national strategy to ensure all children have access to play in their lives. Finally, we'll engage the audience for their insights on what we see as some common threads: implementing bold goals that are grounded in really good research where the policy and communication teams worked hand-in-hand to achieve results.

Session Presenters:

Sally McConnell, Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer, KaBoom!; Lisa Benenson, Chief Communications Officer, Natural Resources Defense Council; Jade Floyd, Director of Communications, Case Foundation; The panel will be moderated by Kate Emanuel, Sr. Vice President, Nonprofit & Government Relations, Ad Council

Meet the Parents: Why Moms and Dads Hold the Keys to Social Change and How to Effectively Reach Them

Sponsored by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

What You'll Learn:

1. What’s in the secret sauce at Sesame Workshop that helps them engage parents so successfully?

2. How are millennial parents different from previous generations, and what are some effective ways to motivate them on issue you care about?

3. What does it take to produce a successful public education campaign to change the behavior parents?

Session Description:

Back in the Eighties, Will Smith made his name rapping that “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” Today, the social sector needs to understand parents – and how to mobilize them. Moms and dads have huge social and economic clout. They’re also primarily responsible for 100% of the children in our society. The future really is in their hands. In this session, you will learn the do’s and don’ts from those who have mastered the art of parent persuasion. Learn trusted secrets from Sesame Workshop, and hear about some of their latest plans to strengthen families and young children. Watch GOODcorps uncover the mysteries of what makes millennial parents tick and what is most likely to activate them. Discover how Too Small To Fail became the most talked, read and sung about campaign of the decade. So join us, and make your own parents proud.

Session Presenters:

Jeanette Betancourt, Senior Vice President, Community and Family Engagement, Sesame Workshop; Matt James, President and CEO, Next Generation; Grace Kim, Co-Founder and Director of Partnerships and Strategy, GOODcorps; Eric Antebi, Senior Vice President, Fenton; Brent Thompson, Senior Communications Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Using Influence to Achieve Impact

Sponsored by Rockefeller Foundation

What You'll Learn:

1. The difference between communications and influence.

2. That impact can be achieved through influence.

3. How to ensure program staff begin to value influence and the role communications staff plays.

Session Description:

This session will show you how to use influence to achieve institutional goals. The Rockefeller Foundation recently refreshed both its operating model and its approach to innovation and influence. The Foundation sees influence as a way to achieve impact beyond grant dollars alone. Now, in addition to more traditional strategic communications planning and execution, the Foundation’s Communications Team works closely with initiative teams both to ensure that influence is explicit in overall strategic planning and owned by the initiative team. Additionally, the Foundation gives grants directly from a newly created influence fund that is focused exclusively on achieving impact through influence. In this session, learn how the Foundation has shifted how it uses its Communications resources to drive its overall goals. Session presenters will give an overview of the approach, offer concrete examples of how it is being operationalized, and lead a discussion among session participants. Presenters will highlight the difference between influence and communications, and help attendees think more explicitly about influence goals.

Session Presenters:

Laura Gordon, Senior Associate Director, The Rockefeller Foundation; Carey Meyers, Associate Director, The Rockefeller Foundation; Galit Gun, Senior Strategy Director, Purpose

FAQs

Each year, our conference brings together senior nonprofit and foundation professionals from across the social sector for three days of learning, networking, and idea sharing to improve strategic communications.

Breakout sessions are a highlight of the conference. Presenters have an opportunity to showcase their talents and share their insights into the world of communications. Attendees are able to learn new communication strategies, as well as provide valuable insight to expand the conversation.

When will breakout sessions take place?

Presentations will take place Thursday October 1, and Friday October 2, at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort in San Diego, CA. 

How do I register for a breakout session?

It is not necessary to register for breakout sessions. If you register for the conference, you'll have the opportunity to choose your breakout sessions during the conference.

Do presenters have to register for the conference?

Yes. Presenters can register for the conference at the reduced presenter rate. Details about the discounted presenter fee were e-mailed with acceptance letters. 

Will the sessions or keynotes be recorded? 

We are investigating recording the sessions and keynotes and will provide an update at a later date when we have finalized our decision.

Additional questions?

Please e-mail The Communications Network’s at .

The Communications Network reserves the right to make adjustments to session proposals, including panel make-up, format, and description. The Communications Network reserves the right to decline or accept any proposal in full or in part in the interest of providing a balanced program or due to limitations in space. The Communications Network does not accept sessions that are geared toward promoting any one institution or program.