Navigators on the Road: NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference 2025

At Navigators, we are used to working asynchronously, since we’re spread across five time zones and two continents. But last week, we all lived in the same rented house in Baltimore so we could spend time together and attend the 2025 NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference.

We had been looking forward to this time together for months. I love the range of approaches and talents each person brings to both work and life. For example, our travel prep styles ranged from highly structured to “my airport Uber is on its way, so I guess I’ll start packing.” One of us likes to keep the kitchen spotless, another enjoys cooking shared meals—but we all love laughing and eating together. (And ship tours. So many ship tours. Because you can take a person out of the Navy, but you can’t take the Navy out of a person.)

Right to left: Karen, Dustin, Miki, Trent, Hayley, Katilyn, and Captain Tom, our guide

We set aside time before the conference for internal team discussions. Everyone had a chance to propose topics about company operations. One conversation led us to revise both the timing and format of our weekly standup—it’s now a shorter daily meeting that pulls from data already recorded elsewhere. Another discussion on delivery strategy helped each of us clarify opportunities for both personal growth and broader company goals. Sometimes, being together in person makes collaboration easier and ensures that every voice is heard.

The conference opened with an inspiring keynote from Alissa V. Richardson. She spoke about her book Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones, and the New Protest, and about her Second Draft Project at USC Annenberg’s Charlotta Bass Journalism and Justice Lab. The project helps individuals and communities preserve stories on their own terms, using technology to amplify those stories. Her reminder—that your mission should be your anchor, and technology your tool—really resonated with me, especially thinking back to my time at the State Historical Society of Iowa, where many stories remain untold simply because of the format in which they’re stored.

There were plenty of other engaging and thought-provoking sessions in the days that followed. Some ideas felt immediately actionable, like combining data with your mission statement to build confidence and increase clarity of purpose. I mentally added the goal of reporting on outcomes and outputs—using tools from Thrive Lights—to my list of recommendations for current and future clients. A session on how “data is the new hub” (replacing the CRM as the center of your ecosystem) got all of us recommitting to learning how to use Data Cloud for better data management. Another session, focused on adding context to charts and graphs in presentations, brought me back to the thoughtful coaching I received early in my career as a financial analyst at FileMaker—some advice truly stands the test of time.

The last session on my schedule was the one Hayley and I presented, on using technology to support equitable training, pay, and promotion. I proposed the topic based on Hayley’s Ally-of-the-Year talk at WITness Success 2024 in Louisville. It’s meaningful to me because I believe the way Navigators is structured—transparent, fair, and focused on rewarding both effort and learning—is a huge reason I felt so welcomed and secure as a new employee. We wanted to offer a real-life example of how these systems can be built and adjusted. I was excited to have so many people attend our session, and even more excited by the follow-up questions and requests for the slide deck.

After our session, we squeezed in one last boat tour of the Baltimore harbor. We’ve already made plans for next year’s retreat in Jacksonville, Florida—and I expect it will bring more collaboration, fresh ideas, and, of course, more time together on the water.

From Camden Yards and Baltimore’s mid-week win vs Cleveland. Go Orioles!