Sponsors

2025 Edition

Powerful Keynotes, Intensive Breakout Sessions, Panel Discussions, Case Studies, Networking, Special Reports, Unique Takeaways

April 23rd, 2025
OBA Conference Centre | 20 Toronto St | Toronto, ON.

Confirmed Speakers Include:
• Dan Kershaw, CEO, The Furniture Bank: Opening Keynote Address
• Tareq Alani, CEO & Co-Founder, ChorusAI
• Aaron Sanderson, Group Head and Executive Vice President, Advancement and Donor Experience, Kids Help Phone
• Faisal Abid, CoFounder & Head of AI, 2Humans1AI (2Humans1.ai)
• John Weigelt, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada
• George Irish, Founder, Fundraising with AI
• Mark Blumberg, Partner, Blumbergs Professional Corporation & Canadian Charity Law
• Michael Johnston, Founder and President, hjc
• Elena Yunusov, Executive Director, Human Feedback Foundation
• Norman Valdez, CEO & Founder, BrainTrainr Ai
• Maddy Sawyer, Associate, Blumbergs Professional Corporation
• Jason Shim, Chief Digital Officer, Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience
• Eugene Astone, Director – Digital Fundraising Innovation and Bryan Tenenhouse, EVP and Chief Creative Officer, STella! Fundraising
• Matthew Charters, CEO, CharityCan (Session/Breaks Sponsor)

AI is being implemented, evaluated and considered in more charities and nonprofits every day. Find out what you need to know now. Learn the benefits. Understand the technology. Find the areas where you can start using AI today. But also, uncover the hidden perils, discover what to watch for and see what actual organizations are doing to keep donor trust while leveraging this power.

Bring your team including marketing, fundraising, finance, technology, operations, donor engagement and donor experience managers, staff and consultants across your organization. Special rates for group registrations. Register now guarantee your seat. Space is limited for this event. Receive updates & insights.

Conference Media Partners & Founders

AGENDA

ROOM SALON 1/2

8:00 am | Registration, Breakfast, Networking
Sponsored by CharityCan

8:45 am  | Welcoming Remarks, Jim Hilborn, Publisher, Foundation Magazine & Hilborn Charity eNews

9:00 am | Morning Keynote, Dan Kershaw, The Furniture Bank

ROOMS: SALON 1/2 (first listed) | SALON 3 (second listed)

9:45 am |  Concurrent Session:  Eugene Astone, Director, Digital Fundraising Innovation and Bryan Tenenhouse | Concurrent Session: Matthew Charters, CEO, CharityCan

10:30 am | Super Session Salon 1/2 with John Weigelt, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada

11:15 am | Networking & Refreshment Break

11:30 am | Concurrent Session: Norman Valdez, CEO & Founder, BrainTrainr Ai| Concurrent Session: Mark Blumberg & Maddy Sawyer, Blumbergs

12:15 pm | Lunch & Networking

1:15 pm | Afternoon Keynote: Tareq Alani, CEO & Co-Founder, ChorusAI

2:00 pm | Concurrent Sessions: Jason Shim, Chief Digital Officer, Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience| Faisal Abid, CoFounder & Head of AI, 2Humans1AI (2Humans1.ai)

2:45 pm | Concurrent Sessions: Aaron Sanderson, Group Head and Executive Vice President, Advancement and Donor Experience, Kids Help Phone | Michael Johnston, Founder and President, HJC Hewitt and Johnston Consultants

3:30 pm | Concurrent Session: George Irish, Founder, Fundraising with AI  | Elena Yunusov, Executive Director, Human Feedback Foundation

4:15 pm | Conference Closes

Session Speakers & Presentations

Tareq Alani,  CoFounder, ChorusAI. Chorus AI is designed for nonprofits and campaigns, centralizing data to streamline access to critical news, social media, and documents, enabling quick content creation and efficient sharing with stakeholders. Learn more: chorusai.co

George Irish, Founder, Fundraising with AI. George is an AI Strategist, Developer, and Digital Fundraising Strategist & Tech Analyst. He has 25+ years digital fundraising for nonprofits and charities in Canada, USA and global, with extensive experience in CRMs, PowerBI, audience segmentation , conversion, cultivation, donor journeys. He works on AI / ChatGPT / Predictive Modelling, Prospect identification – Planned and Major Giving, – Python, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, Azure, Sagemaker, Power BI.

John Weigelt, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada. John is responsible for driving Microsoft Canada’s strategic technology efforts. In this role, John helps business and governments innovate with technology while avoiding the unintended consequences that might arise.

Matthew Charters, CEO, CharityCan. Helping Canadian fundraising organizations raise more money with CharityCAN, a cloud-based platform that lets you find, qualify and connect to major individual, corporate and foundation donors. We bring past donation records, wealth indicators and biographical information together into donor profiles which are then connected in our relationship map, helping charities know who to connect to and how to connect to them, ensuring they get the most out of their fundraising.

SESSION: Friend, not Foe: AI in Prospect Research. Advancements in AI tools are helping workers across different industries to be more productive. But it’s also raised questions, in fundraising and prospect research in particular. Can the data that these language models provide be trusted? Are there ethical implications for using AI tools in fundraising? How can these tools be used in a meaningful way? In this talk, the team from CharityCAN will try to answer some of these questions and give some concrete examples about how you can use AI tools for prospect research and fundraising.

Dan Kershaw, CEO, The Furniture Bank: Opening Keynote Address. Leads Furniture Bank’s social enterprise & tech-forward national mission to end furniture poverty
Dan Kershaw, MBA, has led an eclectic career spanning over two decades across a wide variety of industries and sectors. With a passion for digital innovation, and a focus on data-driven processes and decisions, Kershaw has led Toronto-based Furniture Bank since 2014. In his role as Executive Director, Kershaw seeks to expand Furniture Bank’s integrated social employment, environmental and social enterprise model to end furniture poverty across Canada. In 2022, Kershaw pivoted Furniture Bank’s annual campaign to leverage new AI technology, shifting the charity away from “poverty porn” and establishing a new industry standard for using ethical, responsible images within the charity sector. Kershaw has over 17 years of digital experience in which he led the management and growth of a variety of industries, business challenges, and product innovations from Internet Gambling, Telecommunications, Payment Processing, Web Hosting, Mobile Dating, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content Solutions, and a variety of eCommerce projects. It was these intensive years that motivated him to build things, analyze everything, and push the limits of conventional thinking and apply himself to a career with meaning. Under Kershaw’s leadership, Furniture Bank has re-purposed over 400,000 items of furniture heading for landfill into ‘homing’ for over 21,300 families in the GTA. Not only does this support people emerging from poverty, turning empty housing into furnished homes, diverted materials representing nearly 26,000 tonnes of CO2. Collaborating with companies like IKEA Canada and Furniture Link on circular economy corporate pilots, Kershaw has continuously demonstrated that there are both significant social and environmental impacts associated with reuse and refurbishment charities like Furniture Bank. Kershaw is currently scaling the organization’s Toronto cloud platform to become available nationally, aiming to support a more vibrant impactful and sustainable network of independent Canadian furniture banks.

• Aaron Sanderson, Group Head and Executive Vice President, Advancement and Donor Experience, Kids Help Phone. Aaron Sanderson leads Kids Help Phone’s fundraising efforts and is the senior liaison to the organization’s community of generous supporters. Aaron joined Kids Help Phone in 2020. Aaron is an international award-winning fundraiser with over 17 years of experience at leading non-profit organizations, including BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, Plan International Canada, SickKids Foundation and War Child. Aaron also holds a Master of Arts in Philanthropy and Development, an Associates Certificate in Non-Profit Management and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and International Relations. He is the 11th Canadian to be awarded the Advanced Certified Fundraising Executive (ACFRE) designation, the top credential of the fundraising profession, and was inducted as a Fellow of the Association of Healthcare Philanthropy (FAHP). He was named a Top 40 Under 40 in North America by AHP in 2018, and was named “Difference Maker” by the Rick Hansen Foundation.

Elena Yunusov is a Founder and Executive Director for the Human Feedback Foundation, fostering a more open, human-centred and transparent future for AI. Human Feedback Foundation team also runs a popular the LLM Reading Group on Discord with 1,200+ members hosting AI researchers from OpenAI, Cohere, Google DeepMind & various universities. Elena’s innovation-driven career spans emerging technology, the public sector, and journalism. Elena has led marketing at Borealis AI, an AI research institute founded by RBC, and Highline Beta, collaborating with AB InBev, Aviva, and Intuit, and working with startups to help drive corporate innovation. She also led marketing and brand at Shyft Network, a blockchain credentials verification protocol, and founded CryptoCamp, an unconference focused on showcasing enterprises and startups building blockchain products. Through her firm, Communicable Inc., Elena has served a wide range of startups and corporate clients, including Ritual, Deloitte, MaRS, DMZ, Wealthsimple, Influitive, City of Toronto, Design Exchange, TWG, and others. In her journalism days, she covered innovation and tech as a senior editor for BetaKit, a leading startup and technology news publication. In addition to this work, Elena played a pivotal role in growing Maker Festival, a showcase of science, 3D printing, tech, and hardware innovation, into one of the largest annual events held at the Toronto Public Library. And as a co-founder for #hohoto, she helped raise over $350,000 for Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank by creating a hyper-connected social media movement that demonstrated the power of self-organizing online groups. She has been nominated for RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards and named among ‘Top Women in Canadian Tech’ by BetaKit.

SESSION: Building Capacity for AI Adoption and Upskilling in the Nonprofit Sector: This participatory session aims to introduce Responsible AI Adoption for Social Impact (RAISE)—a national pilot designed to close the AI skills gap and support responsible adoption across Canada’s nonprofit sector. The session will include collaborative discussions to inform the next phase of the RAISE framework and identify shared challenges and opportunities in AI readiness across the sector. Ideal for nonprofit leaders, funders, and ecosystem partners focused on AI adoption, change management, governance, and upskilling/digital transformation.

• Mark Blumberg, Partner, Blumbergs Professional Corporation & Canadian Charity Law. Mark Blumberg is a lawyer at the law firm Blumbergs Professional Corporation (Blumbergs) in Toronto and works almost exclusively advising non-profits and registered charities on their work in Canada and abroad. Mark has written numerous articles, is a frequent speaker on legal issues involving charity and not-for-profit law and is the editor of www.CanadianCharityLaw.ca – a Canadian website dedicated to news about the Canadian charitable sector as well as legal and ethical issues for Canadian charities operating in Canada or overseas. He also has established the websites www.CharityData.ca, the largest portal of data on the Canadian charity sector, and www.SmartGiving.ca, a website encouraging informed charitable giving. Mark is particularly interested in the regulation of non-profits and charities in Canada, philanthropy, transparency requirements for the voluntary sector, providing accessible information on regulatory issues, and the use of data to make more informed decisions on the charity sector.

• Norman Valdez, CEO & Founder, BrainTrainr Ai. BrainTrAIinr, a nonprofit organization with the mission to democratize AI education, empowering social impact organizations from all types to harness the transformative power of artificial intelligence. We are dedicated to providing accessible, practical, and high-quality learning experiences that foster innovation, enhance productivity, and drive sustainable growth. We aim to bridge the knowledge gap and ensure everyone has the opportunity to thrive in an AI-driven world.

SESSION: Empowering Social Impact Organizations Through Ethical AI and Emerging Technologies: Breaking Barriers and Driving Impact. The session will cover:

• Leveraging AI for Social Good: How social impact organizations—including nonprofits, philanthropic foundations, and social purpose enterprises—are using AI to improve operational efficiency, expand reach, and break down barriers for underserved communities.
• Ethical Innovation in Action: Practical examples of how AI, Web3, and blockchain can help tackle social challenges such as resource distribution, systemic inequities, and digital inclusion.
• Actionable Strategies for Social Impact: Tools and frameworks for integrating emerging technologies into organizational operations with a focus on ethical governance, community engagement, and responsible data usage.
• Shifting Power Dynamics: How social impact organizations can co-create digital infrastructures to empower marginalized communities, redistribute decision-making, and foster sustainable social change.

• Maddy Sawyer, Associate, Blumbergs Professional Corporation. Maddy Sawyer is an associate lawyer at Blumbergs Professional Corporation. Her practice focuses on non-profit and charity law. Maddy provides legal services to non-profit organizations and charities, including advising clients in their dealings with the Charities Directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency.

Jason Shim, Chief Technology Officer, Volunteer Canada and Chief Digital Officer, Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience. With over 17 years of experience spanning the nonprofit and academic sectors both as an employee and a consultant, I have consistently helped organizations stay ahead of the technology curve. In 2013, I led Pathways to Education to become the first Canadian charity to issue tax receipts for Bitcoin donations, providing access and awareness to a brand new tech-savvy audience. I love to speak and write about digital strategies, marketing and fundraising, online youth engagement, website analytics, and digital currency.

 

• Bryan Tenenhouse, EVP, Chief Creative Officer, ST and STella!. ST’s digital fundraising division. As a respected writer and creative director in the not-for-profit and commercial sectors, Bryan brings years of experience and a fresh perspective to the agency’s non-profit accounts.

Before joining ST, Bryan honed his creative and leadership skills working at global commercial agencies for over 20 years including Wunderman/Y&R, Ogilvy & Mather, and BBDO where he led countless integrated award-winning campaigns for companies like Apple, Volkswagen, American Express, and FedEx to name a few. Bryan sat on the board of directors of the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA), and was founding chair of the CMA’s Direct Marketing Council. Bryan is a sough-after speaker at conferences and has had his articles published in blogs, national newspapers and trade magazines.

Eugene Astone, Director, Digital Fundraising Innovation, STella! Fundraising. Eugene is a thought leader with 17+ years in the charitable sector helping non-profits raise more money. Now at STella! – ST’s digital fundraising division – he is helping organizations maximize their online fundraising revenue through innovative, donor-centric digital acceleration. He has collaborated with diverse non-profit organizations across North America throughout his career developing peer-to-peer campaigns, third-party platforms, online donation systems, donor-friendly websites and custom Shopify solutions. Eugene continues exploring the intersection of technology and philanthropy to help nonprofits thrive in an ever-changing digital world.

Faisal Abid, CoFounder & Head of AI, 2Humans1AI (2Humans1.ai).

SESSION: Beyond the Ask: How AI-Powered Storytelling Transforms Nonprofit Engagement. A practical blueprint for nonprofits looking to harness generative AI to deepen supporter connections and drive measurable giving. This talk moves beyond theory to provide actionable implementation strategies that organizations of any size can adopt. Discover how your nonprofit can leverage AI tools to:

• Create personalized donor journeys that resonate with your unique
audience • Craft compelling impact narratives that inspire greater generosity • Build scalable, authentic engagement without expanding your team

We’ll walk through the step-by-step process—from identifying the right AI applications for your mission to measuring success through tangible metrics like donation increases and supporter retention. Learn how these innovative approaches have consistently translated into both financial growth and strengthened “brand love” for the organizations we’ve guided through this transformation.

Michael Johnston, Founder and President, HJC Hewitt and Johnston Consultants. Mike is a Transformative Digital and Integrated Fundraiser and the Founder of hjc new media, who engineered some of the best online fundraising strategies and award-winning digital media campaigns across the globe. With over 32 years of fundraising experience, Mike has worked with clients across the nonprofit sector, from the biggest international foundations in the world to grassroots start-up charities. He’s also a pioneer of digital fundraising in North America, being one of the first to bring online transactions to the nonprofit sector. Today, Mike continues to bring the charitable sector deeper into the digital age with innovation, change management and fundraising success.

Space is limited at Canada’s Only Conference Dedicated to Examining The Power and Challenges of  AI for Philanthropic Organizations. Please ensure you book early to ensure your seat. There are individual and group rates available.

Delegate Rates include breakfast, luncheon, refreshments, handouts, special offers, discounts on books, and post-event special reports.  (Rates are plus HST/GST).

  • Single Delegate: $295.00
  • Dual Delegates: $550.00
    (Rate is for two delegates from the same organization.)
  • Group Delegate Rate: $795.00
    (Rate for 3 individual delegates from the same organization).
  • More than 3 delegates? Email Steve Lloyd for rate options.
  • QUESTION ABOUT THE CONFERENCE OR REGISTRATION? Call Jasmine Stuart at 514-668-8950 or email her at jasmine@hilborn.com 

Breakfast & Session Sponsor