Moderated Conversation: So you want to change the world? Careers in Service

Developed by VolunteerNow in partnership with SMU, The Impact Grid is an affective, immersive learning tool designed to build empathy, reveal the real-world constraints nonprofits face, and highlight the power of multi-sector collaboration.

Participants will experience The Impact Grid firsthand—stepping into the perspectives of Opportunity Youth and the organizations that serve them. Together, corporate and nonprofit participants will navigate the complex systems surrounding social challenges, gaining a deeper understanding of how strategic volunteerism and cross-sector partnerships can drive sustainable impact.

Co-created with 50 nonprofits, Fortune 500 companies, B Corps, philanthropic foundations, and more than 100 community members, The Impact Grid tells authentic stories that inspire action and fuel volunteers who change the world for good.

Those who lead volunteers and serve communities carry deep compassion — and often, deep exhaustion. Constant giving, emotional labor, and limited capacity can quietly erode both personal wellness and workplace culture.

This 60-minute session invites mission-driven professionals to reclaim self-care as a leadership practice, not a luxury. Grounded in a practical framework, participants will explore key dimensions of well-being and reflect on where they most want to grow — leaving with one meaningful, personal goal and a small but intentional step toward more sustainable habits.

Space for honest reflection. Something actionable to take home.

The full workshop, featuring an in-depth self-care assessment and personalized self-care planning, is available for organizations and teams looking to go deeper.

Most volunteers are leaders in disguise. They rally teams, raise money, hold missions together, and they do it all without a title, a paycheck, or a playbook. So when friction hits, they don’t pivot. They quietly step back. And the organization loses one more good one.

The SOAR Mindset™ changes that. It is a leadership framework built for people who lead through influence, not authority; exactly the conditions every volunteer operates in. Four pillars: Storytelling, Ownership, Abundance, and Resilience, give volunteer leaders the language and the muscle to lead on purpose.

In this hands-on workshop, attendees take a live assessment, uncover their dominant SOAR™ pillar, and apply the framework to real volunteer challenges: recruiting, conflict, burnout, restarts. They leave with a personal SOAR™ profile, a one-page leadership plan, and a new way to show up the very next time they serve.

The opening session showed students that nonprofit work is a real career path. Session 3 is the proof-of-work moment — students will work through a 5-step framework for building a volunteer activation and the tools to accomplish their goal. Students leave the conference with a plan for a project with their name on it and a toolkit that working nonprofit leaders use.