Western Canada Fundraising Conference 2025

Sooner or later “shift happens” to all of us. You may have seen it coming. Or maybe it took you by surprise.

Sometimes it happens to your team, to your organization. And it can happen to your community and your country.

And when it does, what do you do? How do you cope? How do you respond, personally, emotionally, professionally, pragmatically. Do we fold under pressure or rise to the challenge.

Sana Mahboob and Tony Myers have a combined 55 years of experience in working with individuals, teams, organizations and communities where shift happens.

Join Tony and Sana, for a dynamic, interactive session on how we can survive and thrive and turn “shift” into opportunity.

Learning outcomes
Who should attend

This dynamic half-day workshop led by two accomplished leaders will explore the critical balance between thanking donors meaningfully and strategically guiding them toward deeper engagement.

With a mix of strategy, storytelling, and a touch of humor, Angel and Mary make donor stewardship and cultivation exciting, effective, and actionable. Their engaging approach ensures that every nonprofit professional they work with walks away with fresh ideas and practical tools to elevate their donor relationships.

Attendees will learn practical, impactful ways to express gratitude, build trust, and move donors from one-time gifts to lasting relationships.

Participants will leave with a ready-to-implement action plan, ensuring they can put their new strategies into practice immediately.


About this powerful presenting partnership
Angel Benedict, CFRE, and Mary Saretski, CFRE, are dynamic, creative thinkers and problem solvers who have spent their careers transforming donor engagement.
Starting their journey together at the University of Alberta’s central advancement team, they quickly discovered a shared passion for building meaningful relationships and making philanthropy both impactful and fun. Since those early days, they’ve remained close colleagues—constantly bouncing ideas off each other, tackling challenges together, and pushing each other to think bigger and bolder. Simply put, they’re better together.

Angel, now the Executive Director of 880 CHED Santas Anonymous, leads with innovation and heart. Mary, as the Director of Donor & Stakeholder Relations at the Edmonton Humane Society, brings energy and strategy to connecting people with causes that matter.

From Frazzled to Focused: Streamlining Systems for Maximum Impact, The Productivity Reset Workshop

Is this you?
You are a fundraiser and a manager. But you can’t fully focus on the important task of engaging and inspiring donors because you are stuck working through inefficient or nonexistent systems.

You want the team to meet the goals of the organization but getting there is time consuming and exhausting.

Everyone is frazzled and frustrated from constantly being in a reactive state. There doesn’t seem to be any time to pause, reflect and plan.

Everything takes longer to complete than it should.

There is a better way.
In this workshop intensive, participants will take a #tinyains approach to begin optimizing their operations to increase productivity and performance for sustainability and scale. We take a deep dive into workflows, process documentation and meeting efficiency to identify three areas where you can be efficient and productive – moving from reactive to proactive, from chaotic to calm.
At the end of the session, participants will have fundamental tools to optimize process and productivity for profit.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze: Participants will be able to analyze their existing workflows and identify at least three areas where process documentation can improve productivity and reduce chaos.
• Create: By the conclusion of the workshop, participants will be able to design and propose a plan to implement efficient processes that enhance organizational sustainability and scalability, using tools learned during the session.
• Apply: By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to apply the #tinyains approach to optimize workflows and meeting efficiency in their current organizational settings, moving from reactive to proactive operations.

More info soon

Sooner or later “shift happens” to all of us. You may have seen it coming. Or maybe it took you by surprise.

Sometimes it happens to your team, to your organization. And it can happen to your community and your country.

And when it does, what do you do? How do you cope? How do you respond, personally, emotionally, professionally, pragmatically. Do we fold under pressure or rise to the challenge.

Sana Mahboob and Tony Myers have a combined 55 years of experience in working with individuals, teams, organizations and communities where shift happens.

Join Tony and Sana, for a dynamic, interactive session on how we can survive and thrive and turn “shift” into opportunity.

Learning outcomes
Who should attend

This  dynamic half-day workshop led by two accomplished leaders will explore the critical balance between thanking donors meaningfully and strategically guiding them toward deeper engagement.

With a mix of strategy, storytelling, and a touch of humor, Angel and Mary make donor stewardship and cultivation exciting, effective, and actionable. Their engaging approach ensures that every nonprofit professional they work with walks away with fresh ideas and practical tools to elevate their donor relationships.

Attendees will learn practical, impactful ways to express gratitude, build trust, and move donors from one-time gifts to lasting relationships.

Participants will leave with a ready-to-implement action plan, ensuring they can put their new strategies into practice immediately.


About this powerful presenting partnership
Angel Benedict, CFRE, and Mary Saretski, CFRE, are dynamic, creative thinkers and problem solvers who have spent their careers transforming donor engagement.
Starting their journey together at the University of Alberta’s central advancement team, they quickly discovered a shared passion for building meaningful relationships and making philanthropy both impactful and fun. Since those early days, they’ve remained close colleagues—constantly bouncing ideas off each other, tackling challenges together, and pushing each other to think bigger and bolder. Simply put, they’re better together.

Angel, now the Executive Director of 880 CHED Santas Anonymous, leads with innovation and heart. Mary, as the Director of Donor & Stakeholder Relations at the Edmonton Humane Society, brings energy and strategy to connecting people with causes that matter.

From Frazzled to Focused: Streamlining Systems for Maximum Impact, The Productivity Reset Workshop

Is this you?
You are a fundraiser and a manager. But you can’t fully focus on the important task of engaging and inspiring donors because you are stuck working through inefficient or nonexistent systems.

You want the team to meet the goals of the organization but getting there is time consuming and exhausting.

Everyone is frazzled and frustrated from constantly being in a reactive state. There doesn’t seem to be any time to pause, reflect and plan.

Everything takes longer to complete than it should.

There is a better way.
In this workshop intensive, participants will take a #tinyains approach to begin optimizing their operations to increase productivity and performance for sustainability and scale. We take a deep dive into workflows, process documentation and meeting efficiency to identify three areas where you can be efficient and productive – moving from reactive to proactive, from chaotic to calm.
At the end of the session, participants will have fundamental tools to optimize process and productivity for profit.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze: Participants will be able to analyze their existing workflows and identify at least three areas where process documentation can improve productivity and reduce chaos.
• Create: By the conclusion of the workshop, participants will be able to design and propose a plan to implement efficient processes that enhance organizational sustainability and scalability, using tools learned during the session.
• Apply: By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to apply the #tinyains approach to optimize workflows and meeting efficiency in their current organizational settings, moving from reactive to proactive operations.

More info soon