Nonprofit Leadership Excellence

Leadership for Impact & Change

Join us for a dynamic learning experience designed to elevate your leadership potential and drive transformative change. Dive into the art of leading with vision and purpose by crafting and communicating your personal and organizational story in a way that inspires and engages your team and stakeholders. You'll learn how to build strong followership and generate significant impact through the practice of storytelling, sharpening your ability to connect with your audience and lead with authenticity.

This program also provides strategic insights into influencing without authority and managing change effectively. You'll explore ethical influence strategies, develop new approaches to advancing change initiatives and learn the science of habit change to drive cultural shifts and improve performance at scale. Additionally, you'll enhance your presentation skills by learning the principles of whole-brain persuasion, ensuring your ideas are communicated persuasively and inspire action. Discover strategies for impactful leadership and transform your approach to leading and influencing to drive transformation.

Center for Nonprofit Management
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Who Should Attend

  • Senior leaders of nonprofit organizations
  • Senior public sector leaders, government leaders, educational institution leaders, leaders of faith-based organizations and NGO leaders
  • All forward-thinking senior leaders

Key Benefits

  • Learn new ways to think strategically about organizational issues and challenges
  • Uncover your true leadership style by discovering strengths, motivations and the conditions necessary for authentic and powerful leadership
  • Harness the power of story to develop your own leadership narrative and vision to motivate others
  • Create an environment for moving your organization and constituents to meaningful and lasting action
  • Learn to communicate your vision and ideas, effectively, through visualization
  • Equip yourself with key tools for leading organizational changes in the future

Program Content

Leading with Vision & Purpose: What’s Your Story

  • Learn how to maximize your performance and engage and inspire others by communicating a sense of purpose, values and vision
  • Understand the daily behaviors that differentiate leaders with extraordinary impact
  • Focus on how leaders identify and develop their own “Story,” or personal narrative
  • Explore how to create a collective identity “Story” that communicates a compelling and inspiring vision
  • Build strong followership, create value and generate significant impact through leadership
  • Distinguish “Story” from “story” and learn how to communicate your identity Story, vision and values through the practice of storytelling

Influence without Authority

  • Explore the ethical implications of influence as means of advancing your change initiatives
  • Develop new approaches to influencing others
  • Consider how to apply concepts to your current change initiatives

Strategic Change Management

  • Understand why most change programs fail and how to overcome corporate inertia
  • Diagnose your current organizational context and focus on the key levers that will drive your success
  • Craft an individual plan that will enable you to be an effective agent of change

The Secret to Change Success: Context Design

  • Understand change management through the lens of habit change
  • Learn why changing habits is a context design problem
  • Encode new habits into the contexts that surround all human beings for the purpose of effectively creating new habits, driving culture change and improving performance at scale

Presenting Your Ideas: The Science of Whole Brain Persuasion

  • Learn how to assure that your ideas for the future may be communicated effectively, through persuasive presentation
  • Identify strategies for using compelling visuals, concrete stories and familiar metaphors to engage your stakeholders
  • Learn how to make your message stick and inspire action as a leader

Faculty

Elise Madrick - Academic Director; Associate Director, Nonprofit Executive Programs

Michelle L. Buck - Clinical Professor of Executive Education

Brenda Ellington Booth - Clinical Professor of Management & Organizations

Loran Nordgren - Professor of Management and Organizations

Richard Jolly - Clinical Associate Professor of Management & Organizations

Andrew W. Sykes - Adjunct Lecturer of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Steven Franconeri - Professor of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences; Director, Northwestern Cognitive Science Program; Professor of Leadership, Kellogg School of Management (Courtesy)

Accommodations, Fees & Policies

Location

Nonprofit Management Programs are held at Northwestern University's Chicago Campus.

Wieboldt Hall
340 East Superior Street
Chicago, IL 60611
Directions

Chicago Campus Parking Map - Please Note: the Huron Superior Parking A lot and the Erie Ontario Parking C & D lots are available to the public and should be used when attending programs at Wieboldt Hall.

Application Deadline

The deadline for registration is 10:00 am one business day prior to the program start date.

Scholarship Assistance

Up to 50% scholarships are available for all of our nonprofit executive education programs for those working in nonprofit organizations. All scholarship requests are reviewed by our Registrar and any scholarships granted will be reflected in the amount charged to your credit card.

Payment Deadline

  • If you request a scholarship, your credit card is submitted upon registration and will be charged once your request is approved (allow 1-2 business days for review).
  • If you do not request a scholarship, your credit card will be charged upon application submission.

Hospitality during the Program

We strive to provide healthy meal choices for our participants for breakfast, lunch and breaks. We typically provide a range of choices, including some vegetarian-friendly and gluten-avoidant selections. We cannot meet all dietary preferences, but we will do our best to accommodate health restrictions, religious restrictions and food allergies.

Accommodations

Participants are responsible for booking their hotel accommodations during their stay in Chicago.

Download Nearby Hotels List

Cancellation Policy:

Participants must notify the Program Manager five business days in advance of the program start date if they are unable to attend. Otherwise, participants will be charged 20% of the stated program fees.

When canceling a program registration, participants may choose to rollover their payment to a future program or receive a refund. Participants are allowed two rollovers, after the second rollover, participants forfeit the money paid to the Center for Nonprofit Management.

*Refund or rollover must be requested at the time of the program cancellation. Once a program payment has been rolled over, a monetary refund is no longer an option. The participant must continue with the rollover process.


Awaiting Approval By CFRE

THIS PROGRAM IS APPROVED BY THE CFRE TO AWARD CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS

Full participation in this Kellogg Nonprofit Executive Education program entitles you to XX points in Category 1.B—Education of the CFRE International application for initial certification and/or recertification.

Note: Participants who wish to apply for continuing education points on their CFRE application for initial certification and/or recertification will be able to access a tracking form on the course site, once they register for the program.

Learn More

Please email or call us if you would like additional information about Nonprofit Programs

2025 Session

October 14-17, 2025

Start: October 14 at 8:30 AM

End: October 17 at 6:00 PM


Format: In-Person on Chicago campus


Program Days
October 14-17

$2,000

Kellogg School of Management

Kellogg Executive Education
2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208
Directions
847.467.6018