2026 Conference : Conference Details : North Dakota Association of Nonprofit Organizations

NDANO is excited to host the 2026 Nonprofit Leadership Conference June 3-4 at the Grand Hotel in Minot. Join us for two days of presentations, learning and networking with fellow nonprofit leaders from across North Dakota.

Keynote Speakers!

Michele Girard

Michele has been working with nonprofits for the past fifteen years, funding, designing, and evaluating programs, training program staff, and supporting Senior Leadership teams in Minnesota, Colorado, D.C., Haiti, and Bolivia. Her passion for this work began at 20, when she was a Davis Projects for Peace Grantee, co-managing water provision programming in Haiti. She then worked for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Legislative Aide and for the U.S. State Department as a contractor designing educational programming for foreign delegations. She also served as the Development Director for Little Earth, the only indigenous-preference Section 8 housing community in the Urban United States.

In 2022, Michele founded Ivanhoe Development, a philanthropic finance firm that specializes in securing, designing, and stewarding major investments, grants, Mission-Related Investments, Program-Related Investments, Venture Capital, etc. The firm currently serves large nonprofits in 4 U.S. states, specializing broadly in health, housing, and human services. Ivanhoe Development provides culturally relevant financial services to the Latinx, Hmong, Indigenous, and other like communities.

Christy Miller

Christy Miller is the Executive Director of Souris Valley United Way, where she partners with nonprofit organizations across a seven-county region in North Dakota to strengthen communities and improve lives. Blending her background in wellness coaching with years of nonprofit experience, she brings an impact-focused, holistic approach to community work.

Christy is actively engaged in statewide and local service, serving on the boards of The Alliance of Nonprofits and North Dakota Coalition for Homeless People, as a commissioner for the Minot Housing Authority, and Vice President of the Magic City Lions. She is deeply committed to collaboration, community impact, and helping others thrive.

Jill McDonald

Jill McDonald is the Executive Director of the Domestic Violence Crisis Center in Minot, North Dakota, where she leads a team of 23 staff serving over 5,000 people annually. She's spent nearly a decade building innovative programs in the state while quietly waging a personal campaign against burnout culture in the nonprofit sector. That campaign has a name: First Lead Yourself. A trauma-informed leadership philosophy around a simple but radical idea: healed people heal people. It turns out you can't pour from an empty cup, and Jill has made it her mission to prove that sustainability and impact aren't opposites.

A psychology and public administration nerd, award-winning nonprofit leader, and proud North Dakotan, Jill shows up to this conversation with hard-won wisdom, humor, and zero interest in pretending this work is easy.

Diane Yentel

Diane Yentel is president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, the largest network of nonprofit organizations in North America, where she leads an exceptional team of 18 NCN staff. Since joining in January 2025, Diane has been a leading national voice, thought leaders, and advocate for the nonprofit sector. Under Diane’s leadership, NCN has filed and won two landmark lawsuits to ensure over $1 trillion dollars in federal funding continues to support nonprofits in their crucial work to meet community needs, and launched a major national narrative campaign to build public support for the vital work of nonprofits throughout the country.