Board Leadership Lethbridge 2023 Session Options

Board Leadership Lethbridge 2023 attendees will be able to attend 4 sessions over the course of the day. There are 5 options offered concurrently, with some of the most popular sessions being offered more than once. You will be able to select the sessions that best suits your needs. If multiple board members from your organization attend, we encourage you to spread yourselves out to take in a larger variety of topics. Please note the Strategic Planning sessions are a Part 1 and Part 2 format, and if you register for that session, you are registering for both sessions.

  • Developing Effective Teams - Board, Staff and Everyone in Between

    Effective team work is the key to the successful operation of your organization and a strong team will make it through challenging times that may lie ahead. In this session you will learn:

    • Ways to understand skills, interests and motivations of team members

    • Know your Role - How structures and processes can help support your team

    • Tips to help prevent and address conflict

    • How to divide and conquer the work while ensuring everyone fulfills their roles and responsibilities

  • Committee and Executive Roles

    So you hold an executive position on the board, now what? These positions serve important roles on the board. Committees can be an effective way for boards to carry out many of their responsibilities. This interactive workshop will cover the basics of committees including how committees can support the board's work, how to start a committee, how to write a terms of reference and how to delegate authority to a committee while ensuring oversight as a board.

  • Effective Meetings: The Art of Time Well Spent

    Have you ever left a meeting and thought to yourself “That could have been an email!” Learn the ingredients of effective meetings and leave with tips and resources to help your board have productive and energizing meetings. Join us to learn more about how to structure and run a meeting with:

    • effective and timely agendas

    • minutes that help us track our progress, record policy and manage risk

    • ground rules and rules of order help support full participation, engagement, and inclusive decision making, and;

    • ways to improve the quality of your meetings, team morale and cohesion

  • Grant Writing: Increasing your Success Rate

    What are the steps to putting together a great grant? There is a lot of work to do before you even start writing the grant. This workshop will explore organizational preparation before starting to write a grant, what funders are looking for and exploring the components in developing a successful grant application.

  • Grant Writing: Funding Opportunities

    Learn about various funding opportunities available in Lethbridge & South Western Alberta for your organization. Whether you are planning a community event, need assistance with a social program, expanding community initiatives this session will help you understand when and how to apply to some of the local funders.

    Grant Writing 101 is not a requirement for Grant Writing 102.

  • Explore how technology can streamline and support your organization's processes so you can focus on your mission. Learn how technology can improve your communication, project management, email and digital marketing, engagement, data management, and more, all on your non-profit budget.

  • Board Basics: What Does Good Governance Look Like?

    Non-profit boards function effectively when they understand what it means to be a non-profit organization and what is expected of them as a board of directors. Join us for an interactive session to learn more about:

    • The function, structure, and legal landscape of non-profit organizations

    • Key roles, responsibilities and relationships of board members

    • Tips and resources for effective governance

  • Liability/Legal Fundamentals

    To understand the risks your nonprofit faces, you need to understand the legal fundamentals that shape your organization as well as the liabilities and protections that board members have when volunteering for organizations.

    In this workshop, you will learn from an experienced charity lawyer about:

    • What is the legal framework that surrounds your organization and how do you find out?

    • What are the fundamental duties of board directors? What is the board’s role in managing risk?

    • What liability protections exist for board members? What is not protected and how does that relate to insurance coverage?

    • Starting points to identify risks in your organization

  • Practical Strategic Planning: The Basics

    As a non-profit leader, you may realize that strategic planning is more important than ever, but it is not always easy to begin the process. Through interactive exercises and resources in this session, you will experience how to develop a basic strategic plan, from the earliest planning stages all the way through to ensuring the outcomes can take root throughout your organization. You will leave this session with actionable tips, resources, and confidence to return to your organization and apply proven-by-practice methods and new insights and ideas from current strategic thinking approaches.

    This is a 2-part session. If you register for one you will be automatically registered in the other.

  • Bylaws, Policies, and Procedures:

    Integral to a healthy organization are its bylaws, policies, and procedures. But what is behind an organization’s bylaws, policies, and procedures? What are the differences and what are the limits of these important tools?

    In this workshop you will learn from an experienced charity lawyer about:

    • Differences and relationships between bylaws, policies, and procedures

    • The basics of managing, drafting, and changing bylaws

    • The limitations of bylaws, policies, and procedures and as it applies to organizations incorporated/registered under a variety of legislation

    Learn about the inner workings of bylaws, policies, and procedures and try your hand at creating a new policy and pertinent bylaw clause for your organization.

  • Considerations to Guide Quality Evaluations

    Evaluation is the assessment of the design, implementation, or results of an initiative for the purposes of learning or decision making. In this session, you will learn about evaluation steps, and decisions to be made at each stage, including planning, developing an evaluation structure, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, and sharing the results.

  • The Fundamentals of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

    The session will discuss Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) fundamentals and the importance of Intersectionality and understanding when we are operating from a place of unconscious bias.

  • Succession Planning: Setting your board up for success

    Planning for succession is critical to ensuring board continuity and the success of your organization. Learn how board evaluations, understanding skill gaps, nurturing people and having frameworks in place (i.e. orientation, job descriptions, training etc.) can give potential recruits the confidence that this a board they want to join. Discussion about the benefits of building a strong board will complement practical tools that boards can use.

  • Asking for money from Donors and Sponsors – is it really that scary?

    This interactive worship will focus on the ins and outs of asking donors and sponsors for money and helping your organization raise the necessary funds. The workshop will include discussions and examples to demonstrate how to do a successful cold call to potential sponsors and donors. Participants will learn about how to retain sponsors and donors once you secure them including what to do to make them feel like their money is going to the right place. This workshop will also provide discussions about some of the more challenging aspects of sponsors and donors including the ins and outs of saying no to a donation and the ethics and rights of the sponsor.

  • Adapting to New Volunteer Trends & Desires

    Volunteer Lethbridge is THE advocate for nonprofit organizations South of Calgary. We collect information and statistics from our own centralized membership base, as well as from our trusted partners. These include the Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organizations, the Edmonton Chamber of Voluntary Organizations, Volunteer Alberta, Volunteer Canada, and Imagine Canada. Because we have this access to data and to broad provincial and federal information, we can distill sector and voluntary trends.

    In this session, Volunteer Lethbridge will describe local, provincial, national, and international trends in volunteerism, and describe how this impacts our sector in Southern Alberta. You will leave this session with statistics, as well as how a local voluntary organization can adapt their volunteer management programs, with specific tools and advice. We will cover the Canadian Code for Voluntary Involvement, and how this code can be adapted to reflect post-pandemic volunteering realities.