The Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW) and The Nonprofit Alliance (TNPA) will convene a major new fundraising conference this March following the recent cancellation of what had formerly been a go-to event for nonprofit direct marketing fundraising professionals.
The 2023 Nonprofit Fundraisers Symposium will take place March 15-17 at the Hilton Washington D.C. National Mall – The Wharf and is expected to draw 300 industry professionals to the fully in-person event, according to Shannon McCracken, CEO of The Nonprofit Alliance (TNPA).
The joint announcement by DMAW and TNPA comes in the wake of multiple shakeups at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), which culminated recently in the ANA Nonprofit Federation being folded into a new group within the ANA and the cancelling of its 2023 winter and summer fundraising conferences. A virtual event of the larger coalition will take the place of the winter conference.
“Nonprofit fundraisers are confronting a compounding series of challenges, underscoring the need for new approaches,” said McCracken. “The symposium is an opportunity for experienced fundraisers to learn from experts, innovators, and thought leaders, and to return to their organizations with new ideas and resources to fortify their funding strategies.”
Topics, programming and content for the conference will be geared to those with at least 10 years of fundraising experience, according to McCracken. The conference organizers are not issuing a call for papers and are instead curating a line-up of speakers and program leaders outside the circuit of regular and repeat conference presenters, they said.
“Producing a brand-new event means that we don’t have to follow a pattern of what has been done before,” added Donna Tschiffely, executive director of DMAW. “With this partnership between DMAW and The Nonprofit Alliance Foundation, we are bringing the best of what both associations have to offer: DMAW’s deep experience in programming and education for fundraisers and TNPA’s strength in leadership development and community-building.”
Registration and partnership opportunities for the 2023 Nonprofit Fundraisers Symposium will open in December. Those considering attending should continue to check the DMAW and TNPA websites for updates.
The ANA acquired the Data and Marketing Association – known for decades as the Direct Marketing Association – in May 2018 following a years-long financial decline at DMA punctuated by a 2009 board membership proxy fight, unusual for a nonprofit membership association, that the DMA barely survived.
The ANA moved forward recently with plans to incorporate it into a new “Brands for Humanity Coalition,” part of a stable of brands it billed internally as leveraging ANA’s “forces for good” to promote multicultural and gender equity, sustainable practices, and other causes embraced by nonprofits in their approaches to marketing and advertising.
Multiple ANA Nonprofit Federation event sponsors later said they were considering withdrawing from the ANA. The move came as nonprofits were grappling with privacy and data usage issues in general as well as state-specific regulations on registration and fundraising nexus that some felt could conflict with ANA’s for-profit members.
