Nonprofit fundraising has become highly specialized, and each segment of your donor market requires a different set of relationship management skills. Whether you are reaching out to private foundations, wealthy individuals or your own members, you need to understand who they give to, and why. The Chicago Summit focuses on the relationship aspects of fundraising, and offers you several ways to enhance your relationship management skills:

WHY ATTEND THE FUNDRAISING SUMMIT?
Fundraising is primarily a relationship business, and with increasing pressures facing all nonprofit professionals to build key relationships, it is becoming more important, though much more difficult to meet people face-to-face. Our innovative Summit format provides the most efficient and cost effective use of time away from the office by enabling attendees to interact with experts in the field, as well as other nonprofit leaders.

CAN ONE ATTEND SPECIFIC SESSIONS ONLY?
We understand the demands that are placed on you and on your time. That’s why you can attend only the seminars that are of interest to you. Come for the day or stop by for a couple of hours. You pay for only the seminars you wish to attend and only for the information relevant to you. It’s a novel approach to learning that allows you to get exactly what you’re looking for in a short amount of time. In 2009, we are also introducing a two-day pass so that attendees can attend all sessions at a reduced price.

WHAT IS THE FORMAT OF THE SEMINARS?
Each seminar features a panel of 3-4 experts who will give a short overview of the key developments in that field. After that , we will move into a moderated discussion to explore what these developments mean for nonprofit organizations. During the seminar, panelists will engage with the audience in an interactive manner to ensure the real-world implications of these developments emerge, and the session will end with a summary of practical next steps.

ONE-ON-ONE MENTORING SESSIONS
In 2010, we added an exciting new component to our Summits: one on mentoring sessions. In these 30 minute sessions, you can sit down with an experienced nonprofit fundraiser to discuss specific questions not addressed by the seminars. Mentoring sessions will cover the same topics as the seminar topics. However, each mentoring session that you sign up for will focus entirely on questions facing your organization.

HOW IS THE SUMMIT DIFFERENT FROM OTHER EDUCATIONAL EVENTS?
The Summit offers a unique format to help you accomplish the following:

• Build relationships: to ensure maximum exposure to the experts and other nonprofit leaders, each seminar offers structured networking before the session starts
• Hear different perspectives: the experts are drawn from different sectors of the nonprofit community to ensure cross-pollination of ideas and practices
• Provide a global view: speakers give an overview of key issues so that you can eliminate any gaps in your understanding of the subject
• Drill down to the specifics: speakers will also focus on providing specific answers to real-world questions that are common to most attendees
• Obtain information you can use: the emphasis in all sessions is on avoiding theoretical discussions in favor of practical tools and techniques that nonprofit leaders can actually use
  

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SUMMIT?
The Summit is organized by the Center for Nonprofit Success, a nonprofit organization that specializes in bringing highly relevant information that nonprofit leaders need to run their organizations successfully. We developed the Fundraising Summit series as a follow-on to the Nonprofit Success Forum, a highly successful educational series on grantmaking that has been taking place around the country for the past two years. The Fundraising Summit drills down into specific areas of fundraising to give nonproft leaders cutting edge tools and techniques.

HOW DO I REGISTER FOR THE SUMMIT?
Simply click on the seminars listed below to learn more about the topics that will be covered in each seminar. Then select only those seminars that you wish to attend.