Online Event Archive Recorded July 9, 2026
During this webinar you will learn how to apply for a conference proposal and content areas that are important priorities for the upcoming year.
What conversations do you want to lead? What new ideas can you bring to the table to help us imagine and create a just economy? Whose voices do you want to include and showcase? Have an idea for a session, panel or discussion? Submit your idea by July 30.
Speakers
Catie Rountree, Director of Membership & Events
Chloe Sabharwal, Conference & Events Manager
Haley Schneider, Conference & Events Specialist
Transcript:
NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.
Sabharwal 0:06
Thank you so much for joining us today while we discuss NCRC’s 2027 Just Economy Conference call for sessions. To introduce myself, I’m Chloe Sabharwal, NCRC’s conference and events manager, and I’m joined by Catie Rountree, our director of membership and Events, and Haley Schneider, our conference and events specialist.
Just real quick, NCRC’s code of conduct applies to all gatherings, including this webinar. You can read the full code of conduct at ncrc.org/conduct. If you have any questions, please put them in the Q&A module, which you can find by clicking that Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. You may need to click three dots to find the Q&A button. We do not permit AI chatbots on our calls, and this call will be recorded and will be distributing it as well as the slides afterwards.
So to start with, we’re going to go over just a little bit about NCRC, what the Just Economy Conference is, and then we’ll move into who attends Just Economy Conference, our content priorities, talk about the different types of sessions that we do. And, then, logistics related to the breakout sessions, how to submit your content ideas, and then we’ll leave time for questions as well. So, just a little bit about us, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition is a nationwide network of over 700 organizations and champions working for a just economy where all Americans can build wealth and provide for their families with stability and integrity. Our members include grassroots advocates, community developers, faith-based institutions, and local nonprofits that represent urban, suburban, and rural communities across the country. The Just Economy Conference is our flagship event for the year. It’s where we all come together. Our biggest gathering for the year. We had 43 states represented at last year’s conference, and the conference often draws over 1,200 attendees.
It is the national event for everyone who’s committed to creating a just economy. And, throughout the conference, we have 35 breakout sessions, which is what we’re going to be focusing on today. These are often listed as one of the most important things that our attendees take away from the conference. It’s where they can learn, what they can take back to their work and their communities. It’s also where they can find really important connections and learn how to build connections that are going to fuel their work.
So, I’m going to hand it off to Catie to talk about who attends.
Rountree 2:34
Yeah, thank you, Chloe. So, there’s a rather long list. This is actually two slides of different type of institutions, organizations, and leaders that attend our conference. I want to just kind of group those a little bit to help you think about who you’re designing for and how they relate to one another. Think about what it takes to build a just economy. We need folks that are changing the way resources move directly in our community. We need folks who have the resources to deploy. We need folks who can provide insights into what’s actually happening in communities – the good, the bad, the weird, what’s changing, what levers produce, what results. So, kind of that knowledge industry researchers, and we need the folks who are setting the rules and figuring out how to apply the rules that oversee how capital moves, how resources move in communities at the local, state, and federal level, and so that when you look at all these different types of organizations and leaders who attend the Just Economy Conference, that’s one way to kind of understand who those folks are, and one of the really, I think, special things about the Just Economy Conference is the way that those folks get to come together in one room.
And so, as you’re designing your content, as you’re thinking about what conversations you uniquely want to have about your work that you’re in day in and day out, what conversation makes sense for this particular event? I actually would encourage you to think about how those different kinds of groups of people and how those different functions in an ecosystem need to work together and to talk to each other in order for the work to happen and to flourish because our most successful content at the Just Economy conference speaks to more than one of those different groups of people and helps equip them to collaborate together for community flourishing. Yeah, that’s it. When you’re thinking about who you want in the room and why they want to be there, I think that’s a really helpful.
To think about, and again, you can see just the the intersections and how folks relate. I do want to specifically call out that our conference is both a place for leaders, those who are making the really hard decisions for their institutions, and it is also a place for young professionals to be learning what that work looks like, and we want to space it both ends of that. And then, I’m going to talk about how we’re bringing what the priorities are for the those conversations for those people. Which, I think, even just talking about who those people are and how they relate to each other gives some guidance.
But, we are looking for models of work that changes how capital moves in communities. That are replicable, scalable, or solves problems that are persistent across multiple communities or multiple fields. We’re looking for observations, for insights into how economy, how the economy is or is not serving communities, that can inform practitioners in how they do their work. We’re looking for thoughtful analysis of the the rules and regulations that impact how capital moves and how others can engage in that and how and what the impacts are on the ground and so you can see that across a variety of spaces that intersect with economic justice. But, that lens is really what we’re looking for across a broad variety of different types of conversations, and then I think I’m turning it over to Haley to get a little bit more granular about the format and how to do your submission proposal. So, Haley, I’ll turn it over to you.
Schneider 7:00
Hello, everybody. Thank you for taking time out of your busy days to hang out with us for a bit and learn a little bit more about our Just Economy conference. We have been doing this for a long time, so in different formats for almost 30 years, we have brought people together annually to talk about these things that Caitie and Chloe have hit on. So, before I get too much into the session types, I have dropped the session guidelines in the chat. So, if you saw that on the previous page that Caitie was presenting on, this is first time this year. So, if you have any feedback as you’re reading through it on things that maybe could be more clear, feel feel free to send us an email at membership@ncrc.org, which I will also send in the chat. But, the purpose of these guidelines are to give you some additional context of what we’re really looking for as you’re putting together your proposal.
We want to do what we can to help you have as strong of a proposal as possible, and I’ll get into a little bit more of what that looks like. But, just as I’m going through this presentation, wanted to link that session’s guidelines in there so you can refer back to it when you actually start writing your session. As Chloe mentioned, we have 35 breakout sessions at the Just Economy conference. There’s typically six happening simultaneously at the same time throughout the day. There are two full days of breakout sessions. So, breakout sessions are the name of the game. It is our preferred way of convening to share ideas and to talk about what’s actually going on in our communities. So, this slide details the two different type of breakout sessions. We have lightning sessions, and then we have a standard session. And, the main difference between those is both length and purpose. So, with our lightning sessions, those are shorter. They’re going to be only 30 minutes long. It’s your one punchy idea that you can get across.
So, we encourage only one speaker to be able to communicate that, and we still ask for 10 to 15 minutes of Q and A. So, if you want to write that type of session, make sure as you’re doing your session description, you are not trying to overdo it with too many ideas. Keep it simple. What is the one point you want your audience to take away? Then, we have our standard sessions, and so those are going to be an hour and 15 minutes in length. We have more of these types of sessions. There’s going to be two to three speakers with one moderator, and we hope that those speakers and moderators can represent a very diverse perspective, show collaboration. We do not want to say, for example, have four fair housing organizations on a session, or four bankers on a session. We want to see that you have a different audience type represented in each of those speakers and moderator.
And, in this centered session, you also should plan time for Q and A. This is always sought after in our conference, just a time for the audience to engage and get to really interact with you guys. So, those are the two breakout session types. Okay, so our 2027 Just Economy Conference is happening May 6 through 7th of 2027. So, I know that seems far away, but is going to be here faster than you understand. And, the reason that we do all of this in advance is because we want to have plenty of time to allow y’all to put together session descriptions. Really do the research on what’s actually going back to your communities. Talk to the people in your communities. This is supposed to be a process that involves what’s really going on the resident level and the location of the event is the Grand Hyatt in Washington D.C. So that’s about 15 minutes from Capitol Hill. It is we’re really excited to be at this new location. If you’ve been with us in previous years, we’ve been at a different hotel, so we are really excited to be at the Grand Hyatt this year. We think that you guys are really going to enjoy it.
So, a little bit more on session development timeline. All of the proposals are due by July 30th, and that gives us time not only as our team reviewing these proposals, but we also have a team of about 20 experts in the field. They’re called our program committee, and we really seek out their just expertise. So this allows us enough time to thoroughly review the applications. You will hear back from us around October about the actual selections. We are going to do a voting period as well. So basically, if you see an email from us in the meantime, we could be asking you for clarification on something in your session. We could potentially be putting your session up for vote so expect to hear from us. Please respond as quickly as possible. A little bit.
We’ve talked about how what’s going on at the conference, what we care about, what are our priorities. So, now from here on is going to be very logistics heavy. So, this is how to actually apply for a session of the conference. So, you can see under Step One there is a link (ncrc.org/conference). So, if you go to that link, you will be able to see button that says “Submit a Session Proposal.” So, you’re gonna click on that link, and it’s gonna take you to this page listed here. So, the first step after clicking that link is going to be logging in, and what’s really important is that if you have submitted proposals in the past year, you are going to need to create a new account. They, our system, wipes the username and passwords every year. So, say you applied last year, make sure this year that you submit a new email address and password. All right, so we’re logged in. You have access to our portal. Yay! Now, what you’re going to do is actually get into the meat of what you’re going to talk about.
So, in that, I’ve linked the session guidelines again. If you need a refresher about what am I going to talk about, what are the audiences, you can find that there in the session guidelines. We ask that your session title be extremely clear about who should attend your session. So, if you are a CDFI and you’ve taught and you’re talking to an audience of other community lenders, I want you to make that really clear in that session title. We have the session titles outside of the breakout session rooms, so when people are walking by, imagine yourself in that position of “What session do I want to attend?” So make it clear about your purpose and audience in a couple of words, 100 characters max. I know it’s hard, but I believe in you. So, now for the session description, it’s really important in your first two sentences to explain what you want your audience to be taking away from this session. Make that purpose really clear, so as we’re reviewing, we can continue going back to that and know, okay, this is the audience that you’re targeting, and this is the purpose of your session.
That is really helpful, and it really increases the strength of your session. As I just mentioned, make sure you list the target audiences for the session as well as what sort of core idea, challenge, opportunity you are exploring, and why it’s relevant to what we’re going through now as a country, state, city, whatever your locality is. What are you? What challenge are you really trying to address? And then, lastly, how can your session or approach be applied in communities or other regions? What’s really special about our conference is that we had last year we had 40-three different states represented. So, there are people from all over the United States that are coming to this conference. And so, if you are from Colorado submitting a session, how can your session be applied, say, in Utah or in North Dakota? What are what are the scalability features of your session?
So that way, if someone from a different part of the the states is attending, how can they apply whatever you’re talking about in their locality? And that’s really important as a core part of our mission is to make a just economy a national priority and a local reality. So, those go tandem, hand in hand. So, that’s the session details phase. The last thing I want to mention about your session details is we want to see how you’re integrating collaboration in your project in your case study. We want to see that you’re prioritizing relationship building and partnerships throughout whatever project you’re working on. So, that’s just another tip of how to strengthen your session. So, next are the speaker details. As I mentioned, depending on the session that you’re applying for, has different number of speakers. If you do have speakers recommended, you have a much higher chance of being considered for a session. That shows us that this is a pretty thorough idea. That you’re pretty serious and have already talked to these people. So, just know that yes, we would like to see you submit some speaker recommendations. You can see here we’re asking for their name, their title, organization. You can see it’s optional. Submit email address, race, ethnicity, and gender identity.
But, I would like to communicate that as the program committee and we’re evaluating your session, one of the things we’re evaluating is: Are you prioritizing a diverse, diverse speaker lineup that includes race and and gender? So please keep that in mind as we want our speakers to be able to connect with all sorts of different types of audiences in the room, and so this is the best way to do that. And, the last step is submit it. So, make sure you hit that massive pink button because if you do not hit that massive pink button, then I will not get your session and I cannot read it. So please submit it. Don’t just think you’re done after that previous page [as] you need to review and submit your session. That is the last step. And, this slide is just a couple of frequently asked questions that we get every year. So, are you allowed to submit more than one session proposal? Yes. If you have four brilliant ideas, please let us hear them. And, we have that happen every year, where someone submits several sessions, and we enjoy learning all the different things that you’re doing in your community. Second question is: Can we have a virtual presenter? No, unfortunately, this is not a hybrid event. This is all in person. And lastly, what AV, audio, video, or presentations will be available? So, we will provide you with a projector screen, a microphone, as well as a table for all the presenters to sit at, so that is what is provided on us. We do not permit videos as a part of our sessions. If anyone’s been to a conference before, Wi-Fi can be spotty. To stay consistent, we do not have videos as part of our presentations. So, those are my frequently asked questions. And then the last thing that I’m going to talk about is on the last slide. That was a lot of information.
Thanks for sticking with me. As Chloe mentioned before, we are a member organization. We have over 700 members. This coalition is really empowered by y’all, empowered by the people that are on the ground doing the work. A huge part of our conference is providing a space for our members to facilitate conversations, talk about how they’re doing, just really a time of authenticity. We love our members. We are excited to see them when they come to the conference. As you’re filling out the application, there is a spot to say how you heard about us or how you [heard about] applying to the session. If you’re a staff member, a member, a nonprofit, whatever we do, prioritize lifting up the voice of our members. If you are not a member and you are applying, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be selected. But, we definitely love to hear from our members and what they have to say. So, just wanted to put that out there.
That if you are just interested in learning more about what it means to be an NCRC member, what are the benefits for you at the end of the day? I’ve linked in our website so you can contact our membership team (www.ncrc.org/membership), and I also dropped in our membership email earlier in the chat. Would love to hear from you guys and what you think. That is all I have today, and now it is question time.
Audience question 19:11
Will this slideshow and recording will be sent out?
Schneider 19:14
The answer is yes. So in Caitie’s words: “Never fear. We got you.”
Audience question 19:24
Is the person who submits the proposal required to be one of the speakers on the panel?
Schneider 19:29
No, you do not have to speak on the panel. There’s some people who are the mind and the brains behind the thing, or in the communications department, and have the idea or know how to communicate the words, but don’t necessarily end up as speakers, so that happens all the time. You are not required to actually be a speaker on the panel. One aspect of session management that I forgot to mention is that we have a session lead for each session. So, if you are the submitter of the proposal, then I’m going to assume that you are going to be the session lead, and that’s an administrative role where I’m going to communicate to you everything. You know, as far as like dates, things are due, important updates. Hey, schedule this meeting, your prep call. Hey, here’s your speaker graphics. So, I do request a session lead for every session, which starts out as the person who submits the proposal.
Audience question 20:27
I haven’t attended the conference before. Do you have a list of workshops, titles, and/or abstracts from the previous conferences that newcomers can use as a reference?
Schenider 20:40
So, on our website (ncrc.org/conference), you can see past speakers that have spoken from the main stage, past highlights, which kind of go[es] over topic areas.
Audience question 20:53
Is there a theme for the 2027’s conference?
Schneider 20:57
So, every year, our mission is to make a just economy a national priority and a local reality, and so that is the overall rooted theme of what we’re going to be talking about: the changemakers who care about moving our communities forward. Under that, there typically is a sub theme related to just what’s going on in our industry, so that is yet to be fully announced, but there will be a little more detail coming soon.
Audience question 21:29
If your session is selected, will registration be covered?
Schneider 21:33
Yes, all speakers a part of a panel have complimentary registration.
Audience question 21:44
What kind of some partnerships or collaborations [do you] have?
Schneider 21:49
Our membership team is the best [people] to answer that. I am on the events team, so I think that they can give you a more thorough answer. So, I would also reach out to membership@ncrc.org.
Audience question 21:56
Do the speakers have to be NCRC members?
Schneider 22:00
No, you are not required to be a member. That’s just something that we always look for, just when you’re submitting your application, just to know how you found us and what realm of the industry you’re in.
Audience question 22:12
How are travel and accommodation expenses handled for speakers?
Schneider 22:16
So, as I mentioned, all speakers receive a complimentary registration ticket, valued at about $1,200, so free a free ticket for you for all the speakers. We do not provide travel accommodations and expenses specifically. But, if you’re having some difficulties getting here when the time comes, shoot us an email, and we will see if we can work with you on anything.
Audience question 22:43
Should our proposal be specific to our involved community, or more general that can be applied to, let’s say, all urban, rural, or siloed community that we are associated with?
Schneider 22:54
Probably depends a little bit on what you’re, what exactly you’re talking about, and what you’re trying to get across. But, a general rule of thumb is if you are in a specific community and have an example of something or a partnership that’s really worked that can be applied to, say, that urban/rural community level, then I would just make that clear. Like, hey, “This is how we do it in our community, and these are some lessons or these are some aspects that can be applied at an urban and rural community questions” [in] on that email [to] membership@ncrc.org.
Audience question 23:24
Apart from Q and A, what are other audience engagement activities that are recommended or have worked well in previous sessions?
Schneider 23:33
That’s really important. I’ve seen people do like the [interactive app activities] where they have like a QR code on the projector screen and then people can answer questions from their phone or from the app. We also do have a conference app, and so I ask people to submit their presentations or any PDFs or something that they can submit ahead of time, so I can upload it to the conference app. And so, underneath your session, you can have different pamphlets of things that you potentially want readers to look at, so I’ve gotten a lot of feedback. Our planning team is still in the midst of figuring out exactly how all of that is going to look, so I can’t provide an answer at this time. But, as as times get closer to May, if you want to reach out about that same question. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that audience members really appreciate having those presentations or just something to look at on the app while you’re going through your presentation so that’s one idea of how to engage the audience.
Audience question 24:17
Do you provide parking and transportation resources?
Schneider 24:22
Our planning team is still in the midst of figuring out exactly how all of that is going to look, so I can’t provide an answer at this time. But, as as times get closer to May, if you want to reach out about that.
Audience question 24:34
Do our slides have to be PowerPoint presentations or it doesn’t matter what programs are used?
Schneider 24:41
You are correct. It does not have to be a PowerPoint. How it works is you will upload whatever method you choose, whether it’s PowerPoint or Google Slides or Canva, onto a thumb drive, and then we will provide a laptop day of so that way you can plug in your presentation.
Audience question 24:59
How do I confirm my membership status?
Schneider 25:01
Please reach out to our membership team as they are the ones who manage our membership and understands everybody who’s a current member and everything that’s going on with all of your projects that you guys might be working on together. So, please contact membership@ncrc.org and if you have any questions about your current status.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
