Date: October 22, 29 & November 5, 1-2:30 PM ET
Cost: $100pp or $150 for two people from the same organization (Zoom Meeting)
*Please note, all registrants will be provided with a link to the recording and presentation slides following the sessions. The recording will be available for 60 days.
Audience: marketers, fundraisers, volunteer leads, advocacy leads, EDs
This three-part working series is designed for organizations that want to move beyond one-off campaigns and toward intentional, integrated supporter experiences. Across three sessions, you'll learn how to gather actionable supporter insights, translate them into experience design that connects marketing, advocacy, volunteering and donating, and build metrics and accountability so the work sticks.
Each session includes a 20-min small group working segment, and you'll also hear from expert guests in volunteer engagement and brand strategy, as well as eNGO peers from CPAWS-BC, Ecojustice and the Nature Trust of BC who are actively reshaping their supporter experience.
Part 1 – October 22, 1-2:30 ET
Beyond Donors: Advocacy, Volunteering and Supporter Lifespans
Supporters don’t start as donors — and they don’t stay in one box. They sign petitions, show up as volunteers, share your messages, and eventually give in different ways over time. In this session, we’ll focus on advocacy and volunteering as essential parts of a full supporter life, not just stepping stones to donations. Jessica Parks Pang of Learn with JJP will share her volunteering expertise on the risks of treating supporters as “donors only,” and Eden Luymes from CPAWS BC will talk about how understanding the overall experience of young potential advocates has informed youth programs and how youth messaging flows through their broader communications.
Part 2 – October 29, 1-2:30 ET
Designing the Experience: Brand and Supporter Insight in Practice
Brand is what your supporters actually experience. In this second session, we’ll explore how real supporter insights can guide brand and experience design so your communications, website, and campaigns feel coherent and human. Reesa Del Duca from Good Thing Going will share how brand and marketing can act as the “connective tissue” of supporter experience, and Dominique Bowden from The Nature Trust of BC will show how listening to supporters helped shape a brand and website redesign that resonates with a new generation of supporters.
Part 3 – October 29, 1-2:30 EST
Making It Stick: Metrics, ROI, and Supporter-Centred Culture
Supporter experience becomes real when it’s measured, shared, and owned across teams. In this final session, we’ll look at how to connect supporter experience to metrics, ROI, and everyday culture so it doesn’t live only in one department. Kristy Hayter and TBD from Ecojustice will share how bringing fundraising and marketing into a single plan, and working with supporter archetypes, has helped them align goals, track what matters, and build cross-functional habits that keep supporter experience at the centre of their work.
Our Lead Presenter
Leigh Sandison started her career in fundraising in the UK—first in corporate partnerships, then product development and innovation in mass market fundraising. She then moved agency side with a focus on strategy and insight-led experience design for top global companies. Drawing on experiences from both the nonprofit and for-profit worlds, Leigh is a founding partner of Real Path, an insights and strategy consultancy focused on helping nonprofits maximize the lifetime value of their supporters.
Jessica Pang-Parks is CEO and Principal Fractional Volunteer Engagement Executive at Learn with JJP Consulting.
Eden Luymes is Conservation Campaigner, Ocean Program at Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society - British Columbia (CPAWS-BC).
Lauren Venegas is Associate Director of Philanthropy, Individual Giving, at Ecojustice Canada.
Reesa Del Duca is Principal and Lead Designer at Good Thing Going.
Dominique Bowden is Communications & Engagement Specialist at The Nature Trust of British Columbia.
Kristy Hayter is Director of Strategic Communications at Ecojustice Canada.
The DEFNP workshop series will offer tailored programming designed to match ENGOs on their decolonial (un)learning journeys. In Spring 2026 members of the ENGO sector will be able to choose one of three workshop tracks: Introduction to Decolonization in the ENGO Sector, Advanced Decolonial Theory and Application or For Indigenous Ears Only - A Space for Reflection and Action. Each series consists of four three-hour sessions.
Collectively, Decolonizing ENGO-First Nation Partnerships fosters:
Awareness of settler colonialism and the ways it potentially harnesses civil society;
Understanding about how Canadian law such as the Indian Act and the Income Tax Act has suppressed Indigenous governance systems;
Awareness that Indigenous peoples have unique inherent political and legal systems, with which ENGOs may want to form partnerships;
A better understanding about how to navigate partnerships with Indigenous communities that promote decolonial environmentalism;
A stronger sense about how to identify and explain individual and organization social locations (i.e. positionalities) as part of ethical partnership development;
Promoting the resurgence of Indigenous self-determination in the Canadian ENGO sector.
Cost: $100 (Register 2 spots, get the 3rd free)
70 participants max.
All registrants will be provided with a link to access the recordings and presentation slides for 60 days following each session.
Session 1: Settler Colonialism 101
Introduce ENGO representatives to the fact that colonization is a structure and not an event. Identifies key ways that colonialism moves through individuals and organizations.
Session 2: Positionality
ENGO representatives learn how to articulate their social location within a settler colonial state, and in relation to potential Indigenous partners.
Session 3: Inherent Indigenous Governance 101
Introduce the fact that Indigenous nations have their own sources of political authority that they can (and do) draw on when addressing environmental issues. Examples provided.
Session 4: Building Better Relations
ENGO representatives will road test ways they can implement previous workshop key points to re-imagine partnerships with Indigenous nations.
Cost: $100 (Register 2 spots, get the 3rd free)
All registrants will be provided with a link to access the recordings and presentation slides for 60 days following each session.
Session 1: Diagnosing Settler Colonialism in the Enviro Sector
Participants will be asked to share ways in which they have diagnosed and traced power in social justice movements and/or in the ENGO sector. This workshop will make space for discomfort as part of promoting decolonization.
Session 2: Inherent Indigenous Governance
A mix of advanced and introductory theory, this workshop delves into legal and political pluralism, naming the fact that Indigenous nations have their own sources of political authority that they can (and do) draw on when addressing environmental issues.
Session 3: The Nonprofit Industrial Complex
ENGO participants are introduced to theories and examples describing the Nonprofit Industrial Complex and the “Shadow State.” Purpose is to show how settler colonialism structures civil society.
Session 4: Decolonizing ENGO-First Nation Partnerships
This workshop delves deep into how ENGOs can partner with Indigenous nations beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex while promoting deference to inherent Indigenous political leaders.
Cost: Free
The Indigenous only space will be collaborative in nature but critical in approach. This track is a space for Indigenous folks within the ENGO sector to come together to discuss their experiences and work, with an eye to taking a position on what the sector might need to do in order to promote decolonization. Participants will use the first session to define our goals for the remaining three meetings. Therefore, session topics named here are proposals only.
Session 1: Naming the Cannibal: Settler Colonialism in the ENGO Sector
Session 2: Proposed topic: Reflections on working in the ENGO Sector
Session 3: Proposed topic: Centering Indigenous Thought in the ENGO Sector
Session 4: Proposed topic: Visioning a Decolonial Environmental Sector
.png)
© 2026 Sustainability Network
