Agile in Nonprofits Online Summit

Find ideas and inspiration for your organization

Oct 2nd 2026 12-2pm ET

In this free 2-hour interactive summit you will hear from nonprofit organizations who are successfully using Agile methodologies including the Scrum framework to help you learn from their experiences and successes.

This event is designed for you to come and go as your schedule allows. Each of our six presenters will give a 15-minute presentation on a set schedule so you can log in for the sessions you choose and ask questions live of each presenter. Don’t worry, if your schedule doesn’t allow you to make it to all the presentations, all of the recordings will be emailed to registrants after the event!

Schedule to be released soon!

Our Speakers:

Exploring Agile and Lean Adoption in Nonprofit Organizations: Leadership Strategies for Enhanced Outcomes

Mariette Njumbe – Walden University/ Sista4Sistaz

This session will present the findings of my doctoral research on the adoption of Agile and Lean methodologies in nonprofit organizations. The presentation will discuss the strategies they use to support successful adoption, common challenges they encounter, and the impact of Agile and Lean practices on project performance and organizational sustainability. Participants will also gain practical insights and recommendations that can help nonprofit organizations improve efficiency, adaptability, and mission-driven outcomes.

Agile in the Rustbelt: Breaking the cycle of poverty in one small midwestern community

Nicole Derr – Independent

In this session, you’ll learn how a cross-functional group of non-profit and public service leaders, guided by a seasoned agile coach, approached the complex issue of poverty in their community. We’ll discuss how, over the course of a year, the group worked to identify an objective, set a clear, measurable goal, and perform a small experiment designed to “break the cycle of poverty.” We’ll talk about what worked (and what didn’t), as this team learned to work together instead of competing with each other. We’ll wrap up with what the team accomplished and what they have planned for the future.

Responsible Agility: The Infrastructure That Lets Nonprofits Move Fast Without Breaking

Latoya Robinson – LUR Growth

Most nonprofit leaders have been told to be more agile. So they move faster, take on more, and pivot on demand, and quietly burn their people and their institutional memory to the ground in the process. Here’s the reframe this session offers: what looks like agility in most organizations is actually reactivity, and reactivity is not a strategy. It’s a slow-motion stability crisis.

True agility, the kind that lets an organization adapt to a lost contract, a funding shift, or a leadership transition without losing a step, is not a personality trait or a mindset. It is a design outcome. It comes from infrastructure: the systems, sequences, and shared ownership that let an organization move quickly because the foundation underneath it is steady.

In this session, Latoya U. Robinson introduces the principle of Responsible Agility, the discipline of building nimbleness on top of stability rather than in place of it. Drawing from 20 years in the sector and 15+ years as an Executive Director and a national consultant, she’ll show why organizations don’t fail because their people are broken, but because their systems are misaligned and what to build, in what order, to fix it.

Participants will leave able to tell the difference between reactive scrambling and responsible agility in their own org, with a clear sequence for the infrastructure that makes fast, confident decisions possible, and with language to bring funders along as collaboration and collective impact reshape the sector.

This session is for executive directors, senior nonprofit leaders, and capacity-builders who are tired of confusing motion with progress and who want their organization to stay steady and adaptable no matter what the sector throws at it.

Latoya speaks from inside the work: she is designing this infrastructure in her own organization while advising foundations, United Way affiliates, and nonprofits doing the same.

Scrum in Small Bites: Growing Agility Without Growing Resistance

Melissa Molongo – WealthForward ROC

This session will focus on the incremental adoptation of scrum in our organization, starting with translating current projects into epics, introducing a new tool, scrumming one project first, then expanding to the whole organization. The key takeaway will be that you don’t have to do everything at once and recognizing maturity, signaling time to add a new layer of scrum.

Life as a Part-time Scrum Master

Beth Archer – DH Leonard Consulting and Grant Writing Services

In this session, we’ll explore the unique dynamics of balancing life as an active team contributor while also serving as a part-time Scrum Master. We will break down the hidden advantages of this dual role, such as enhanced flexibility and fresh perspectives, while tackling real-world challenges like context switching and time management. We will also dive into how to use AI as a strategic brainstorming partner to overcome hurdles, sharpen your problem-solving, and boost your efficiency with practical, ready-to-use tips.

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