2026 Axelson Center Conference
More details coming soon!
Past conferences
October 18, 2024
The nonprofit sector has undergone major shifts in recent years—around employment, racial justice, resource generation, and more. The 2024 Axelson Conference, More Than Money, offered space to explore how nonprofits can navigate today’s landscape, secure sustainable resources, and deepen their impact.
October 20, 2023
The Axelson Center’s 2023 Nonprofit Conference, Synthesizing Strengths: A Nonprofit Sector That Works Together, focused on exploring the full spectrum of collaboration within the nonprofit sector, from informal internal partnerships to organizational mergers. Attendees had the opportunity to learn how to foster collaboration across departments and organizations through insights shared by nonprofit leaders, philanthropic funders, and industry experts.
October 13, 2022
What connects “building the world we want?” and “building organizations we want to work at”? Interweaving individual and organizational health, Leadership Transformation provided team-oriented professional development which explored the connections between self-knowledge, healthy teams, and organizational excellence. Our plenary speakers for this conference were author and entrepreneur Deanna Singh and CEO of Working Well Daily, Farah Harris.
May 19, 2021
Alchemy of Change: Better Nonprofits for Better Communities engaged questions of both organizational and structural change, engaging the strategic and systemic realities that structure the work of nonprofits in Chicago. Our speakers included Mae Hong of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Courtney Williams of the Obama Foundation, Brady Josephson of NextAfter Institute, Cyndi Suarez of Nonprofit Quarterly, and artist Tonika Lewis Johnson of the Folded Map Project.
May 2, 2019
In celebration of its 20th anniversary, the Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management held The Arc of Innovation: Timeless Lessons from Thriving Nonprofits on May 2, 2019. Nearly 500 nonprofit leaders from across the Midwest gathered for the conference, which reflected on timeless lessons and tested innovations from thriving nonprofits and their leaders. The plenary speaker was Vu Le, executive director of the Rainer Valley Corps and author of the well-known blog Nonprofit AF.