2025-2026 Emerging Leaders Program
Program Calendar and Session Descriptions
*All sessions will begin at 9:00 am and end at 3:00 pm.*
Session 1 – Thursday, September 25
Kickoff Session – Who I Am as a Leader: Exploring Your Leadership Purpose and Values
The first session of the program will focus on exploring and defining each participant’s unique leadership style. We will discuss the expectations of nonprofit executive and senior leaders and the characteristics and qualities that make them effective. Delving further, we demonstrate how this level of leadership is distinct from other types of organizational leadership. Using a diagnostic tool, participants will learn their specific strengths and how they can leverage them to work well with others. Participants will be encouraged to evaluate their awareness and understanding of power, justice, and equity—and to incorporate these values into their leadership. By the end of this session, participants will be able to clarify their personal values (and how they show up in leadership), leadership style, and how to use their strengths to become a successful nonprofit executive or senior leader.
Session 2 – Thursday, October 16
Financial Leadership: Exploring Your Personal Relationship to Money and Organizational Finances
One of the foremost responsibilities of a nonprofit organizational leader is fiscal management and oversight. Organizational budgets – revenue and expenses – should reflect the organization’s mission, vision, and values. Organizational resources should also be secured and spent in ways that support long-term organizational health and sustainability. Understanding your organization’s financial statements and fiscal systems and processes is critical to leading an impactful and sustainable nonprofit. This session will introduce nonprofit leaders to the basics of nonprofit finance and accountability and how they are distinct from program or project budgets. Participants will learn how to read and analyze organizational financial statements, accessible financial reporting practices, common financial metrics for nonprofits, and strategies for effective financial storytelling.
Session 3 – Thursday, November 6
Fund Development and Network Building: Securing the Resources Your Organization Needs to Thrive
Building on financial leadership concepts, this session will focus on raising resources and creating an intentional network to support your nonprofit. Participants will learn the basics of fund development — identifying diverse types of funding sources; approaching, cultivating, and stewarding financial supporters; and making fundraising asks. Because honing these skills require a strong and healthy network, this session will also ask participants to identify strategic community and organizational relationships and discuss strategies to develop them. Participants will leave the session with the confidence to build a public profile, leverage a network, and secure and develop organizational funds.
Networking Opportunities with Financial Supporters – Thursday, December 4
Nonprofit leaders throughout southeastern Louisiana regularly emphasize how important personal relationships with funders are to organizational sustainability, while also noting how daunting the process of identifying and forming relationships with aligned funders can be. This networking session will provide an opportunity for participants to meet with financial supporters who are resourcing nonprofit organizations in the Greater New Orleans area as well as support participants in developing tailored strategies to initiate and nurture relationships with funders.
Session 4 – Thursday, January 8
Sustainable Leadership: Embracing Care-Centered Practices to Support Yourself, Your Organization, and the Communities You Serve
Leading a nonprofit is challenging. Organizational leaders can experience layers of additional stressors. And yet, leaders must still show up and be in right relationship with organizational stakeholders, families, and friends. This session will explore time and energy management practices and help identify habits that impede care and sustainability. We will discuss how community care, organizational care, and personal care and sustainability are linked; what self, organizational, and community care look like in practice; and how they all support the health and well-being of everyone in and connected to your organization.
Session 5 – Thursday, January 29
Leadership through Relationships: Working with Your Board and Staff
An organizational leader is often pulled between managing their staff and answering to a board of directors. This session will offer strategies for working with both groups and cultivating their strengths and talents. We will also share ways to center your mission and values in decision-making processes with your board and staff. Sometimes these decisions can lead to difficult conversations; we will offer tools for navigating tensions and conflict resolution as well. Participants will leave the session with effective team building plans, project management strategies, and ways to support the leadership and professional development of staff members.
Session 6 – Thursday, February 25
Closing Session: Leaders as Visionaries
All organizational leaders need space to innovate and envision! As nonprofit executive and senior leaders, vision–setting, strategic relationships, and community partnerships are critical to your ability to move your organizations, including the people you serve, toward a common vision. The morning networking session will provide an opportunity to interact with community leaders and policy advocates – including former Emerging Leaders – who are intentionally and collaboratively strategizing to solve our communities’ persistent problems. The afternoon will offer time for leaders to design a program or organizational innovation or address a program or organizational topic of their choosing. As this is the program’s closing session, you will have an opportunity to share your learnings and any leadership goals and plans you may have.