2026 Friends & Allies Fall Summit
Story & Strategy Circles
It’s time to learn from each other’s experience - we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for! Tune into a story from a local organization about their approach to the topic. Then discuss the issue with peers, problem solve, and dream up new approaches for your own work. Know a lot about this topic? Know a little? All experience levels are welcome so we can share in each other’s growth. Each session has one or two core facilitators, but you are invited to come prepared to be both expert and learner.
Attendees will select one Story & Strategy Circle to attend during registration.
Collaborative Resource Navigation
Partners:Jerika Ferguson, Executive Director, Portland Community Football Club
We can't do it all, but we can do it together. Let's learn how wraparound services can connect families and youth to trusted organizations with the right expertise. Explore strategies for building stronger partnership referrals, community support networks and be a resource to one another, lifting each other up so we aren't doing it alone.
Audience: programs and engagement staff, volunteers, and community organizers
Jerika Ferguson brings more than a decade of nonprofit and public-sector experience to her role as Interim Executive Director of Portland Community Football Club (PCFC). A lifelong soccer player and former college club athlete, Jerika is passionate about creating access, belonging, and opportunity for youth through sport. She has extensive experience in fundraising, partnership development, and mission-driven initiatives. Jerika holds an MBA in Supply Chain and Logistics Management from Oregon State University and serves on its Supply Chain and Logistics Management Advisory Council. She brings a community-centered perspective to conversations about access, leadership, and the power of collective action. Outside of her roles, Jerika is dedicated to land-stewardship, woodcarving, gardening, and volunteering on her neighborhood council and emergency team.
Building up from the Outside (Affinity Space)
Partner: Ahmed Yusuf, Stewardship Coordinator, City Nature Division, Portland Parks & Recreation
This space with is a gathering for those who face exclusion or discrimination in parks and outdoor recreation and programming. We will be bridging experiences that may be felt across communities of color, of disability, and other lived experiences. We will connect, reflect, and strengthen our shared commitment to equity in our communities. Together, we’ll explore what it means to create belonging in spaces that haven’t always welcomed us, and how we can support one another in shaping a more equitable industry. We will also share the positive impacts that are being made to have a more equitable community. Come to share, listen, and build community with others who are walking this path. You are welcome here.
Audience: any/all, we ask that you identify with a community facing historic exclusion or discrimination
Ahmed Yusuf works and leads volunteer events on soft surface trails around Portland parks. Ahmed started working with Parks and Recreation (PP&R) in 2011 as a youth employee. Ahmed has grown up in Portland and wants to continue building a healthy and welcoming community. As a person of color and someone who grew up in a low-income household, Ahmed brings his lived and professional experience as a parks user and an employee. When Ahmed is not out building and maintaining trails, he’s looking for new trails to hike with his dog (Misty). Ahmed also enjoys the mountain for snowboarding and taking photos.
Amplify Your Reach: Alternative Board Models
Partners: Mavia Haight & Elizabeth Lott, Girls on the Run
Amplify your reach by engaging skilled volunteers on governing and non-governing board. Members of the Girls on the Run team will briefly share how they recruit and retain governing board and associate board members and how bringing them "behind the curtain" allows these skilled volunteers to meaningfully contribute to the organization’s impact. They will then facilitate a conversation between participants on shared learnings in this area and troubleshoot challenges that those in the room are currently facing.
Audience: executive leadership, board members, volunteer managers, program staff
Mavia Haight joined the Girls on the Run as Executive Director in 2018 and led a merger of the four councils in Oregon to form Girls on the Run Greater Oregon in 2021. She is passionate about experiential learning and has played leadership roles for such programs for more than 18 years – at the Oregon Zoo Foundation, Outward Bound USA, and the New York Botanical Garden. She loves exploring the Pacific Northwest with her husband and eleven-year-old twins.
Elizabeth Lott has been fundraising for nonprofits for 15 years. In that time, she served as the Development Director at Store to Door of Oregon, designed online fundraising trainings for international grassroots leaders, and currently serves as the Development Director at Girls on the Run. When she’s not inviting people to invest in Girls on the Run, Elizabeth is managing her two kids’ busy lives and planning her next dinner party.
What the Fund? Navigating the Development Landscape Together
Partners:
The “funding landscape” is used to describe the various relationships, endeavors, and processes that community groups and nonprofit organizations must navigate in order to get the financial resources they need. With changes in local and national leadership, cultural values, and economic precarity, funding your programs and projects can feel scary. But, you’re not alone. And, funders are looking to see collaboration more and more. Come hear from peers and share from your own successes, challenges and failures finding a way forward in contemporary fundraising. We hope that you’ll leave feeling a greater sense of being seen, getting to share what’s worked (or not!) from your own experience, and getting inspired by strategies your neighbors have utilized.
Audience: development staff, fundraisers, board members
More info on our facilitators coming soon!
Heather Keisler Fornes
Heather Keisler Fornes (she/her) is the Executive Director of the Portland Fruit Tree Project and has a couple of decades of experience in using gleaning to reduce food waste and build community. Prior to her time with PFTP, she spent ten years with the Rose City Rollers, Portland's roller derby league. In her day to day life she loves growing, cooking, sharing, and preserving food grown at home and trying to convince her kid that homemade fruit leather is better than the stuff at the store.
Heather Nelson Kent
Heather Nelson Kent (she/her) leads community outreach, engagement and grantmaking at the East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District. She has more than 20 years of experience in conservation, community engagement, and communications and is passionate about building partnerships and creating programs that reflect community priorities.
At EMSWCD, Heather works to connect people with resources to care for land and water, while supporting community-led conservation, equitable access to nature, and sustainable agriculture. Before joining EMSWCD, she worked at Metro Parks and Nature and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Call her about EMSWCD’s grants or if you are interested in serving on her Grant Review Committee. Outside of work, Heather loves to read, swim, hike, and take long walks in Portland Parks with her husband and yellow lab, Luna.
Josh Rentschler
Josh Rentschler (he/him) is the Development Director at Forest Park Conservancy, where he has spent the past two-plus years helping grow support for the forests, trails, and people that make Portland such a special place. He has more than 12 years of nonprofit experience, beginning his career at the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC, where he worked in marketing and corporate partnerships.
After moving to Portland, Josh helped write grants for Portland Fruit Tree Project before joining Willamette Week, where he helped run three Give!Guide campaigns and managed fundraising efforts for Friends of Willamette Week. Josh loves Portland, trees, bikes, and a delicious breakfast burrito.