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Workshops + Speaking Engagements

We deliver online and in-person workshops for nonprofits of all sizes. Each session is uniquely tailored to an organization's needs. No two workshops are alike, but we have a core curriculum of sessions developed in response to the needs of the groups we work with. We have listed short descriptions of sessions we commonly lead, but we can also create a curriculum based on your organization's unique needs.

Speaking Engagements

With decades of experience and accomplishments, we welcome the opportunity to advance our mission, values, and commitment to dismantling nonprofit inequity at your next event. Please complete the contact form to connect with us.

About the Sessions

Workshops vary in length from 60-120 minutes to half or full-day sessions with an optimal group size of 10-15 for discussion purposes.

 

With larger groups, we engage facilitators to enhance and encourage discussions. 

Fee Structure

Each fee structure is agreed upon in writing before the project is undertaken as a flat, fixed project fee or a monthly retainer. 

 

All contracts are written for a negotiated length of time. They can be canceled with a written 30-day notice. All travel and out-of-pocket expenses are approved and billed monthly.

 

We do not work on a percentage, commission, or contingency basis. ​Learn why here.

Effective Board Recruitment within a DEIA framework
(60-90 minutes)

Utilizes Talem’s "Building An Inclusive Board" guidebook with pathways for education, exploration, and action.

  1. Aligning with organizational strategy

  2. Embedding an inclusive mindset

  3. Codifying DEIA through policies and procedures

  4. Setting benchmarks to effectively incorporate DEIA values into board committee goals

  5. Learning how to ensure success for process goals to meet qualitative and quantitative goals

Board Education 101 (90 minutes to 2 hours)

  1. Defining responsibilities and accountability within the board and staff structures.

  2. Defining the three hats of a board member: governance, implementation, and volunteer.

  3. The duties of care, loyalty, and obedience as legal obligations for board member

  4. Understanding financial statements (e.g., balance sheet, income statement, functional expense, cash flows)

  5. Fundraising principles

  6. Board expectations

Hiring and Retaining Diverse Board Leadership
(60-90 minutes)

Hiring and Retaining Diverse Board Leadership (60-90 minutes)

  1. Quantifying the cost of turnover

  2. Effective onboarding

  3. Prioritizing diversity retention targets

  4. Providing mentorship and growth opportunities

  5. Creating and maintaining a culture of inclusion and engagement

Building a Culture of Trust Through Confidentiality and Transparency (2 hours)

The session focuses on balancing privacy and transparency to build public trust.

  1. Defining confidentiality, transparency, mandated reporting, and public trust

  2. Value of reinforcing privacy as part of a DEIA lens

  3. Complying with confidentiality requirements while maintaining transparency

  4. Managing potential harm before it occurs by crafting a confidentiality policy and the consequences of breaching the duty of confidentiality, alongside other related policies

Developing Consensus Around a Vision for the Future
(2-4 hours)

Once a strategic planning session is completed, this session helps the board and staff focus on establishing strategic directions and goals through a planning session focused on

  1. Direction

  2. Oversight

  3. Resource allotment

  4. Resource development

Understanding What Inclusivity Means for Your Organization (60-90 minutes or a 4-hour working session)

After you set a goal to engage diverse staff, board, volunteers, or clients what do you do next? This session identifies methods to engage, onboard, and maintain positive working relationships with these groups. 

  1. Identifies key areas of diversity for your organization (e.g. racial, ethnic, cultural, ability, neurodiversity, language, citizenship status, age, family/ upbringing, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, education, socioeconomic status, and privilege)

  2. Defines the process necessary to engage and cultivate working relationships 

  3. Identifies necessary cultural shifts and changes to maintain a positive workplace

Hiring and Retaining Diverse Staff Leadership
(60-90 minutes)

How to implement practices designed to widen and diversify the pool of candidates for employment, providing transparency around selection and promotion criteria, and updating qualification standards so they are consistently applied among candidates.

  1. Quantifying the cost of turnover

  2. Effective onboarding

  3. Prioritizing diversity retention targets

  4. Providing mentorship, opportunity programs, and affinity groups

  5. Creating and maintaining a culture of inclusion and engagement

Supporting the Needs of Diverse Team Members
(60-90 minutes)

The session focuses on cultivating a welcoming and healthy organizational culture that supports employees, volunteers, and board members from diverse backgrounds.

  1. Ways to promote an inclusive culture

  2. How to foster open communication

  3. Tools to avoid subjective employment decisions based on hidden biases

  4. Steps to enforce anti-harassment and other employee policies

Nonprofit Management Skills (half to full-day session)

The session delves into nonprofit topics that are key to a successful organization such as:

  1. Understanding the organization’s financial position

  2. Building effective program metrics and evaluation tools

  3. Developing and executing culturally responsive fundraising strategies

  4. Incorporating community organizing and advocacy into the agency’s work to support its mission

  5. Implementing strategic marketing and communications

Approaches to Leadership (60-90 minutes)

The session moves beyond traditional, top-down, vertical management approaches to discuss culturally diverse management approaches and how to effectively move toward a nontraditional model:

  1. Co-CEO (shared responsibilities across two individuals with different attributes and strengths)

  2. Horizontal or “flat” structure: People are empowered to make decisions at all levels of the organization and there is a shorter decision-making process

  3. Intercultural/comparative: Managing across cultural divides and setting up an inclusive environment to support teams

How to Be an Inclusive Leader (60-90 minutes)

  1. The Inclusive Leader continuum: unaware, aware, active, advocate

  2. Understanding bias and privilege

  3. Engaging those who have effective resources for change

  4. Shifting your perspective and interrupting exclusion/bias

  5. Centering underrepresented voices

  6. Moving from an individual and interpersonal lens to a systems lens

The Power of Community (60-90 minutes)

​The session discusses the change we seek to develop within our communities, the theories behind the change, and how the key lever to change is the community itself. Incorporated into that are the foundational themes of racial equity and systems change to ensure nonprofits are effective and impactful

Language Matters: Incorporating Equity into your Marketing and Fundraising Materials (90 minutes to 2 hours)

Storytelling models and what they tell us

Moving toward a community storytelling framework

Seeing, naming, and resolving bias and othering in fundraising and marketing

Creating a paradigm shift in communications materials

Approaching and creating culturally responsive fundraising appeals for diverse communities

Incorporating inclusive language in messaging and what to avoid in your writing

Writing and image recommendations

Decolonizing Fundraising: How to fundraise ethically and with awareness when approaching individuals, corporations, and foundations (60-90 minutes)

Educating and examining your personal and organizational unconscious and conscious biases

Educating and examining the individual privileges that exist within staff/board/volunteers and the privilege the organization hold in comparison to the community served

Steps to prioritize the needs and desires of the community being served

Collective listening exercises to learn about how the community wants to engage with your organization

Creating donor asks that conform to the community’s giving traditions rather than a one-size-fits-all approach

Setting boundaries for the types of gifts and from whom the organization is willing to work (e.g., not accepting gifts from oil or tech companies if the organization’s mission is around environmental change)

Fundraising within Diverse American Populations  
(90 minutes - 2 hours)

  1. The color of a person’s skin, age, education, or how long they have lived in this country is not a significant predictor of giving amount. What drives how much a donor gives is that person’s connection to faith or house of worship. The amount a person gives in total dollars maps to total income.

  2. Historical concepts of giving and their modern relevance

  3. Philanthropy across languages with unique traditions and connotations

  4. Fundraising in non-White communities: Latinx, African American, Asian, and American Muslim community fundraising

  5. Fundraising plans to engage new communities

Incorporating Institutional Giving into your Fundraising Program (60-90 minutes)

  1. An overview of Family Foundations, Giving Circles, Identity-Based Funds, Community and Independent Foundations

  2. U.S. domestic foundation giving landscape and how equity impacts funding

  3. Benefits and drawbacks to grant writing

  4. Tools to build, research, identify, and cultivate potential donors with a comprehensive grants calendar

  5. Utilizing multiple strategies to create the right fit with institutional donors

  6. Understanding how unconscious/implicit bias impacts your grants

  7. Strengthening your grant writing using inclusive, ethical, and culturally responsive language

Fundraising in Times of Crises (60-90 minutes)

  1. The workshop discusses:

  2. Historical patterns of giving during a crisis

  3. How to maintain and sustain current giving and donors

  4. How do adapt quickly and gracefully

  5. Ways to reframe your message 

Fostering a Culture of Gender Inclusivity
(90 minutes - 2 hours)

  1. Systemic gender bias and sexism are pervasive in the nonprofit sector. It is a myth that the “do-gooder” nature of nonprofits means an organization is more self-aware or better equipped to challenge power imbalances that exist in society. The racial, gender, and class power structures we see in the wider world are common in the nonprofit world. How should organizations address inequities within the philanthropic sector they rely on? 

  2. Basic patterns of gender bias

  3. How gender bias/exclusion differs by race and culture

  4. Examples of subtle acts of exclusion, implicit bias, and discrimination

  5. Implications of gender exclusion in the workplace

Fostering Gender Inclusivity: Moving from Awareness to Action (90 minutes - 2 hours) 

  1. The session builds on the previous gender inclusivity session with a focus on identifying actions for community change, organizational systems, interpersonal relationships, and individual growth.

  2. Organizational tools to create gender equity (e.g., recruiting/hiring practices, standardized and transparent pay policies, promotions policies, flexible work options, destigmatization of parental leave, etc.)

  3. Allyship tools to overcome gender exclusion in professional and community spaces

  4. Sample scenarios and perceived impact of discrimination on workplace dynamics

Dealing with White Fragility and Racism in Community Spaces (60-90 minutes)

  1. This session discusses fragility, privilege, and creating equity in personal and professional spaces

  2. Impact of exclusion and bias on organizations

  3. How to notice and interrupt white fragility, exclusion, and bias

  4. Understanding how personal identity traits differ from the dominant identity, what characteristics cannot be changed, and the differences/similarities to dominant identities at the organizational level

  5. Scenarios to create change

Thinking About DEIA Within a Culturally Responsive Organizational Framework (90 minutes to 2 hours)

  1. The session answers the questions:

  2. What is DEIA and what does it mean within the context of the communities you serve?

  3. Are the right community members involved and can advocate for substantive change?

  4. How can the programs address the needs of the community in a way that provides the right type and right amount of resources needed?

  5. What do you need to know about the community to offer the best programming?

Prioritizing Self-Care in Nonprofit Spaces (60-90 minutes)

  1. ​Finding a work/life balance

  2. How to set boundaries for yourself, board members, staff members, donors, and community members

  3. Advocating for yourself through pay raises, benefits, time off, and other needs

  4. Effective and professional communication as the voice of your organization

  5. Prioritizing spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional health and growth​

Practical Wisdom for Leadership (60-90 minutes)

​Overcoming discrimination, acts of exclusion, and other barriers in organizations and communities that prevent you from thriving.

The Talem team has been featured as speakers, presenters, facilitators,
moderators, and panelists at conferences, forums, and events

American Muslim Community Foundation (AMCF) Social Impact Accelerator

Annual Symposium on the Conservation and Biology of Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles

Atlas Corps

Association of Fundraising Professionals  (AFP)
     ICON conference
     LEAD conference
     Central Virginia chapter
     Washington, DC chapter
     New Mexico chapter

Association of Philanthropic Counsel (APC) Conference and Professional Education 

Coalition on Adult Basic Education Conference

Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training (GIFT) Conference

The Masterminds Series by DonorSearch

Virginia Fundraising Institute Conference

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