TANGO 2026 Building Bridges Educational Sessions
2026 Sessions & Speakers
Our one-day educational conference specifically for nonprofit organizations will focus on business-oriented sessions where you’ll learn strategic best practices in an array of areas to help your organization thrive. Our sessions will be presented by industry experts who either work directly with Nonprofits or are affiliated with a Nonprofit organization. We are proud to offer a variety of topics for you to choose from!
We will have two simultaneous educational sessions running for you to choose from.
Thank You to Our Sponsors
GOLD SPONSORS
Sessions & Speakers
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
8:15am – 3:30pm
Registration, Light Breakfast & Meet the Partners
Registration and a light breakfast will take place casually from 8:15am to 8:40am During this time, you’ll also be able to network with leaders in the nonprofit sector, our TANGO Business Partners, along with our guest speakers and TANGO Members.
Conference Welcome
TANGO’s President and Founder Rollin Schuster will kick off our conference with a warm welcome and updates about TANGO’s achievements and steady growth over the past year.
Creating Space in a Nonstop World: Leveraging Reflection as a Leadership Practice
The greatest challenge facing many leaders today isn’t a lack of information; it’s a lack of space to think.
Nonprofit leaders, and the organizations that support them, spend their days responding to urgent needs, making complex decisions, building partnerships, and advancing missions that matter deeply. Yet in the midst of serving others, it can become difficult to create space to pause, reflect, and hear our own voice.
As we begin a day filled with new ideas, learning, and connection, this interactive keynote invites participants to do something unexpected: slow down long enough to notice what they’re learning…not just from the speakers around them, but from themselves.
Through dynamic storytelling, guided reflection, and practical tools, Lauren will share simple ways to create intentional moments of reflection amid the demands of everyday leadership. You’ll will leave with greater clarity, deeper self-trust, and practical strategies to carry the day’s insights back to your teams, organizations, and communities.
Guest Speaker:
Wellbeing at Work: The Socioeconomic Impact of Investing in Nonprofit Employees
The connection between employee wellbeing, financial stability, social determinants of health, and nonprofit organizational performance.
This presentation explores why employee wellbeing matters in the nonprofit world and how it connects to financial stability, health, and organizational success. We’ll look at the unique pressures nonprofit employees face, how those challenges impact both people and mission delivery, and practical, affordable ways organizations can better support their teams. Ultimately, wellbeing isn’t just a benefit—it’s an investment in people and organizational success.
Guest Speakers:
Genuine AI Use vs. Gimmicks: Marketing with Today’s Technology
Learning how to meaningfully implement the use of AI within your business can feel like one more thing on an already overflowing “to-do” list. We’re told it’s a game-changer that will save us hours, but because the technology is ever-changing, it often feels like a waste of time we don’t have. In the nonprofit world, we can’t afford to sound like a machine—we need to sound like people who care.
Ben Abbas and Ryan Krejci from the Cause Inspired team are stepping away from their digital playgrounds to have an in-person, real conversation about what AI looks like in the trenches of nonprofit marketing in 2026. Between Ben’s strategic eye and Ryan’s deep dive into digital tools, they’ll break down which AI shortcuts actually help you reach more people and which ones just add more noise to an already loud world.
In this session, they’ll talk about how to:
- Spot the “Helpful” vs. the “Hype”: Figure out which AI tools actually give you your afternoon back and which ones are just shiny distractions.
- Write Like a Human (With a Little Help): Use AI to beat writer’s block for donor emails and ads without losing the heart and soul of your mission.
- Keep Your Reputation Safe: Learn why “copy-pasting” from a bot can actually hurt your standing with Google and how to keep your content feeling authentic.
- Navigate the New Way People Search: Understand how AI is changing the way donors find you online and how to stay visible when the rules of the internet are shifting.
- Decide What to Automate (and What to Touch Yourself): Create a simple “gut check” to know when to let a tool handle the work and when a task needs a real person’s touch.
Whether you’re curious about AI but don’t know where to start, or you’re worried it’s going to make your marketing feel “cold,” this presentation is about finding a balance. You’ll walk away with a game plan from Ben and Ryan on how to implement these tools in the most authentic way possible.
Guest Speakers:
Ready for Anything: Master the Art of Emergency Preparedness
This fast-paced emergency preparedness session will provide information to evaluate, update, or create your emergency plans considering all employees and people that you provide services to. This session will discuss the concept of All Hazards Planning and how organizations can prepare for all types of emergency situations. This class will also incorporate planning for people with disabilities and seniors into your emergency plans.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand the concept of All Hazards Planning.
- Review how to assess your organization for potential hazards.
- Review resources for emergency planning.
Guest Speaker:
Brandon Eldridge
Founder and CEO
The Edison Institute
Princess Hyatt
Executive Director and Head of School
Grace Academy
Karen Jarmoc
CEO
Springfield Jewish Community Center
Balancing Mission and Market: Nonprofit Compensation and Benefits That Work
Nonprofit organizations face a unique challenge: attracting and retaining talented employees while remaining true to their mission, budget realities, and governance responsibilities. In today’s competitive labor market, compensation and benefits decisions must strike the right balance between organizational values, workforce expectations, compliance requirements, and financial sustainability.
This practical and engaging session explores how nonprofits can build total rewards programs that support both mission and market competitiveness. Participants will examine current trends in nonprofit compensation, governance and regulatory considerations, executive and employee pay practices, and strategies for designing compensation programs that are equitable, competitive, and affordable. The session will also explore how organizations can enhance their employee value proposition through benefits strategies, including Professional Employer Organization (PEO) and Administrative Services Organization (ASO) models that can help smaller nonprofits access broader benefits, HR resources, and administrative support.
Attendees will leave with actionable insights and frameworks for evaluating compensation and benefits programs that attract talent, manage risk, support compliance, and strengthen long-term organizational impact.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the unique compensation and benefits challenges facing nonprofit organizations.
- Identify current market trends and key differences between nonprofit and for-profit compensation and benefits programs.
- Apply practical approaches for designing compensation and benefits strategies that balance competitiveness, affordability, compliance, and mission alignment.
- Explain how PEO and ASO models work, including how employer responsibilities are shared and key factors to consider when evaluating providers.
- Recognize governance, compliance, implementation, and emerging workforce issues that may influence nonprofit compensation and benefits decisions.
Guest Speakers:
Sharla St. Rose, DBA
Managing Director, PEO & Staffing Practice Leader
NFP, an Aon company
Megan Nail, CCP, SHRM-SCP, CEBS
SVP, Total Rewards Practice
NFP, an Aon company
Rollin Schuster
President & Founder, TANGO
Managing Director, NFP, an AON Company
Less Time in Spreadsheets, More Time on Mission: What Today’s ERPs and AI Can Do for Nonprofit Finance Teams
Many nonprofit finance teams are running on a mix of spreadsheets, disconnected systems, and a key person or two who knows how it all fits together. Reporting gets built by hand every month. Allocations get rebuilt from scratch. Grant and program performance is maintained in a spreadsheet somewhere rather than in the accounting system. None of that reflects badly on the team. This is a common breakdown in efficiency when an accounting structure designed for an earlier, simpler version of the organization has to carry the complexity which the organization actually operates in today.
Melissa Perkins, who leads CohnReznick’s Sage Intacct practice, and John Turgeon, who has spent decades working alongside nonprofit leaders and boards, will open with a conversation about what is actually breaking for the people in the room. From there the session turns to what today’s cloud-based financial systems can change: how entities, funds, and dimensions can be designed so that reporting, compliance, and day-to-day operations all draw on the same data, and what that looks like for a finance team in practice.
The session also covers where automation and AI genuinely reduce manual work in a finance function, from pulling data out of spreadsheets to shortening the month-end close, and where those spreadsheets are still more promise than help. Expect real examples and plenty of room for questions. You will leave with a clearer sense of whether your current setup is holding your team back, and what a realistic path forward looks like.
Learning Objectives
- Recognize the signs that your accounting systems and manual processes are limiting your team
- Understand what integrated, cloud-based financial systems change in day-to-day operations
- Identify where automation and AI can realistically reduce manual work in a finance function
- Evaluate what a move would take, including cost, timeline, and internal readiness
Guest Speakers:
From AI to Influencers: Two Legal Trends Impacting Nonprofits
In this session, our law firm partner, Harris Beach Murtha, highlights two hot topics emerging from its experience advising and representing nonprofit organizations.
Topic 1 is Governance and AI. Nonprofit directors and officers must meet their statutory fiduciary duties as their organizations integrate AI. HBM has been helping these fiduciaries responsibly and strategically adopt AI rather than engage in casual experimentation. If responsibly and strategically implemented, AI can increase mission impact while its associated risks are prudently managed.
Topic 2 is fundraising legal developments. Funding challenges have instigated fundraising developments including the exploration of cause marketing / commercial co-ventures as well as social media Influencer arrangements.
Guest Speakers:
Julia Boisvert
Partner
Harris Beach Murtha
Timothy Plunkett
Senior Counsel
Harris Beach Murtha
Ed Spinella
Partner
Harris Beach Murtha
What’s Sticking With You? Reflecting on the Day and Bringing It Back to Work
Before heading back to your organizations and communities, join Lauren for one final opportunity to pause, reflect, and make meaning of the day’s learning. Through guided reflection, partner conversations, and facilitated audience dialogue, you will identify the ideas you want to carry forward, the actions you want to take, and the ways you hope to lead differently
Guest Speaker:
Register Today
Building Bridges is complimentary to TANGO Members and Nonprofit Organizations.
Non-Members pay a fee that goes to the
TANGO Foundation.
Thank you to our Partners
TANGO has put together a team of partners who can provide seasoned advice and counsel within many areas of expertise. We have learned there are often times when nonprofit organizations are faced with strategic or operational business decisions where consultation from an outside voice can ensure they are making the best decision for the organization’s future.
Are You Bored with Your Board?
How to Energize Your Board for Greater Impact
Our panel of experienced nonprofit leaders and advisors will explore practical and emerging strategies for building a more engaged, effective and impactful board. From recruitment and diversity to governance, leadership, accountability and engagement, this session will provide actionable ideas to help you strengthen your board—and get the most from the volunteers committed to advancing your mission.
Guest Speakers: