Workshop Dialogues
Venture Skill Workshops
Venture Skill Workshops offer the skills needed to launch and grow your organization, venture or budding new idea. These sessions will be hands-on, interactive, and offer tangible lessons to spur you to impact and action. Select one:
1. Design Thinking: A crash course
Thinking like a designer can transform the way you build, strategize and act. What’s behind this approach to problem solving? Participants will gain an overview of the design thinking mindset and go through an interactive, rapid crash course on the key stages of the design thinking process. Learn how to utilize elements of empathy and experimentation to land at innovative solutions.
2. Lean Impact: Lean principles for social change
The Lean method took the startup world by storm by providing a new playbook for how startups could develop businesses and products while minimizing wasted efforts. “Going Lean” encourages testing and experimentation instead of elaborate planning, values customer feedback over intuition, and uses iterative methods over traditional “big planning up front” development. Learn how to apply this framework to the world of social good organizations.
3. The Business Model Canvas: Creating your one page business plan
Every organization – even a non-profit – needs a business model. The business model canvas is an approach at distilling the key components of your venture such as key partners, activities, resources, customer relationships, cost structures. Come learn how this tool can strategically and visually break down what you want to do and how you are going to do it.
4. Storytelling for Change: How to tell your best story
Stories are an essential part of how we think, feel, remember, imagine, relate and connect. They make complex data accessible, engage new audiences, and enable you, as a changeleader, to inspire. How can we use the art of the storytelling to translate multifaceted issues, build trust and catalyze action? Come learn how to tell compelling stories to propel your venture forward.
5. Using Your Business as a Force for Good: the B Corporation mindset
Measuring and managing your social and environmental performance isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a better way to do business. Come learn from B Lab on the many ways you can help your business engage with the movement – from using assessment tools to measure your company’s impact, to certifying as a B Corp; from adopting the legal framework for your business to helping pass legislation. Come learn how over 5,000 business globally are putting this mindset to work.
6. Finding your Life’s Work: How your venture can kickstart the work of your life
The Japanese believe that finding your ikigai - or your “reason for being” – can help you figure out what to do with your life. How can we use this concept of ikigai to gain greater meaning and purpose? Knowing yourself – your skills, passions, networks and resources – and identifying your ikigai is key to not only find personal balance, but to leading meaningful organizations and companies. Join us to embark on AGLN’s self-reflection tools - used in Aspen’s Challenge of Leadership Seminar - to help you find your actionable “sweet spot” and identity ideas for impact.
7. Pitch Perfect: Nailing your pitch
You finally land that meeting with your dream investor and she's giving you 5 minutes to make your case. Have your elevator pitch ready? Got your facts and projections right? Know how to inspire with your vision? Expect curve ball questions and tight purse strings. Come learn from the John P. & Anne Welsh McNulty Foundation what makes for an exciting pitch that’s crisp, compelling and investable.
8. Guided Journaling: A U-Process practice
How can we be more conscious, aware, present? How can we know ourselves better, and in turn, lead better? U-Process is an awareness-based method of letting things go (our old ego and self) and letting things emerge (our highest future possibility). Take part in a self-reflective guided journaling – allowing you to step into a deeper level of reflection and identify concrete action steps – for your life and your venture.
9. Bring the World Closer Together: Building Communities on Facebook
Membership to community groups is on the decline, leaving people seeking purpose and connection elsewhere. Yet, we have never been more globally connected through the rise of social networks. How do you lead your community in the ever-connected digital era? How can the principles of community organizing and digital technology be combined to further your impact? Come learn from Facebook about their latest tools and programs to help you create, grow, and manage meaningful communities.
10. Transforming Fundraising: How to build your generosity network
What if you could turn what seems like the "necessary evil" of fundraising into one of the most exciting and fulfilling expression of your organization's mission? The truth is that you - or anyone with a passion for the cause - are already an effective fundraiser. In this workshop, learn how to move away from a transactional approach to fundraising to one that is transformational for you and your philanthropic partnerships. You’ll take away new learning for how to effectively source new partners, how to build committed relationships from the start, and how to make the perfect ask.
11. Non-Profit Board Leadership: Best practices on serving and building
How can you extend your service leadership by sitting on a non-profit board? How can you deliver the most value to a board you currently serve on? How do you best develop your board members to serve your mission? Whether you are active on a non-profit board or looking to grow your venture’s governance capacity, come learn best practices for high-performing non-profit boards. We’ll aim to demystify non-profit board service, covering everything from deciding how to best serve to cultivating board engagement.
12. Corporate Board Leadership: Best practices on serving and building
Taking on a corporate board seat can be an exciting endeavor. As a new board member, what do you need to know? How can you have the greatest impact? What pitfalls should you avoid? On the flip side, as an entrepreneur establishing your first board, extending control to others is a big step – how do you choose the right mix of leadership and industry experience? How do you create the right balance between governance and management? How does the role of a board member differ when serving on a public vs private company?
13. The Power of Play: How to create engaging corporate culture through play
When you look at your organization today, what practices are in place to promote norms for a collaborative spirit and shared values? To create meaningful experiences for your team? To retain talent and cultivate leadership? How might you use games and play to further these goals? In this session, we’ll explore how play – and infusing a sense of playfulness in your organization – can help you consciously shape a positive, productive corporate culture. This session will include both games and discussion, using design thinking methods to help you understand and prototype how you can use play to strengthen culture - from onboarding new staff to structuring meetings.
Action Workshops
Participants will be automatically enrolled in a Peer Consultancy and Collaborative Action Groups during registration.
- Peer Consultancies: Using the Young Presidents’ Organization’s “forum” model, participants serve as a personal board of advisors to help presenters overcome a specific challenge within your organization or venture. Contact Alexis Ettinger to request presenting a challenge for peer feedback.
- Collaborative Action Groups: Use this time to meet with others participants who have Action Pledges, ventures, or interest in the following areas.
