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At last year’s conference, participants shared a practice that has changed within their organization, noted them on sticky notes, and tacked them to a wall that was organized around topic areas.
Exponent Philanthropy is an association of nearly 1,600 members who are lean funders, meaning almost all the members are very small organizations, with three out of 10 having no supporting staff at all. An inside joke of how the organization got its start almost 30 years ago, said Exponent Philanthropy Senior Director of Education Lauren Kotkin, is that “someone sat at a conference with a sign that read, ‘Are you alone with millions?’”
Given the solitary nature of Exponent Philanthropy’s members, connecting them is central to its strategic plan, and that emphasis is reflected in structuring Exponent Philanthropy Annual Conference’s networking opportunities, she said, “without being prescriptive.”
After the pandemic, “our first meeting was in fall of 2022,” Kotkin said. She realized that attendees couldn’t launch right into the educational program without “a buffer,” she said. Initially called “R&R: Reconnection & Reflection Post-COVID,” and changed to “Connection Sessions” the following year, the interactive session continues to be part of the conference program.
Lauren Kotkin
Member volunteers with facilitating experience led small group conversations of between 25-50 people in the first session after the pandemic. “The first question for round one was: It’s 2035, and someone asks you, ‘What is the one inspiring thing that really stands out for you from the pandemic time?’ It was open-ended,” Kotkin said. “They talked for about 15-20 minutes. Then I asked the facilitators to encourage people to get up and move around, so they got a chance to meet other people.
“The second question was: How has COVID changed your foundation’s priorities in any way? Then the third round was: How has COVID changed your thoughts about…? I had a two-page handout with a list of 20 different things it could be,” she said. “You could either talk about one of those things or come up with your own.”
There were two rounds of questions for the connection session in 2023, and participants used sticky notes to write down their responses to the second question. The first one posed this question: “What trends are you seeing in the headlines that affect your philanthropic work, and how has that impacted what you’re doing?” For the second round, participants were asked to write down a practice or an efficiency that has changed in the past year. “Everyone stood up, found a couple of people they didn’t know, and then brought their sticky note with them and talked about their practice,” Kotkin said. “I encouraged people to put their names on it, and then we had a wall after that session where we organized them by taxonomy, including grant-making, governance, admin, tax, and legal. We added the stickies there and you could see people taking pictures and just chatting about it during the conference.”
Questions were chosen that everyone could answer, regardless of the nature of the philanthropic organization they represented. “People really liked it,” Kotkin said, and as a bonus, the sticky notes helped inform the staff on what’s on their members’ minds.
At the end of the Annual Conference, participants are asked: “Do you feel more connected to your peers? Because we know from years of work that the more you feel like you have to share and give, the more connected you feel to the network,” Kotkin said. “Coming out of COVID, what’s the value of a conference if I can sit through a webinar on that topic? I come to the conference to connect. We’re even encouraging [speakers] to allow stopping points to ask the participants a question and let them chat with each other just for two or three minutes, so you feel like, ‘Oh, I’ve had a chance to connect with someone new.’”
Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.
Read the Sept.-Oct. Convene issue as it appeared in print in our digital edition.
Earn CMP Credit
In the following stories from Convene’s September-October CMP Series, we share how event organizers are creating innovative and flexible spaces and formats that foster meaningful connections. You can earn one clock hour of CMP certification by visiting the CMP Series web page to answer questions about the networking articles below.
- Architects of Connection: Event Organizers Offer New Ways to Network
- Building Authentic Connections: The Human-Centric Vision of C2 Montréal
- Higher Ed, Advanced Networking
- Beyond the Old Boys’ Club: How Women Are Networking Their Way
- Why Are These Women-Only Networking Spaces So Popular?
- Designing ‘A Beautiful Nesting Ground’ for Deeper Relationships
- Event Attendees ‘Don’t Want to Waste Their Time Anymore’
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