By Lauren Woodman


Last month’s NetHope Member Global Summit was fantastic! Many, many thanks to all of our sponsors for their support, and a special thank you to Cisco for being such a generous and accommodating host.

The Summit was a great event for NetHope – the largest yet in terms of attendance and sponsors – and we are deeply grateful for the ideas, energy, and spirit of collaboration that attendees brought to make the week a memorable one. 

And it was a busy week! 30+ breakouts, 8 member showcases, 15 plenary sessions, and 5 workshops kept us engaged and helped us learn from one another, while the birds-of-a-feather dinners, opening reception, and our plenary dinner kept us entertained and provided great opportunities for rich networking and collaboration. A couple of highlights:

David Yarnold, President of The National Audubon Society, gave a great keynote outlining how Audubon has put technology at the center of their work, using GIS to support program operations, marketing, and constituent engagement. Yarnold noted, “we’ve put technology at the heart of our reinvention… Our investment in technology [has directly impacted] our core mission.”

Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, was entertaining and insightful as he shared his perspectives on a wide variety of topics in a fireside chat. He confirmed Box’s commitment to the nonprofit space and highlighted the partnership between NetHope and Box, noting that cloud services could potentially hold strong value for NGOs.

Randy Pond, EVP of Cisco, always able to share more ideas and energy in 30 minutes than one would think possible, reiterated Cisco’s longstanding support of NetHope and its members. With a focus on solutions deployment, supporting sector transformation, and ongoing technology leadership, Cisco is committed to remaining a leader in corporate social responsibility.

Lori Harnick of Microsoft reiterated Microsoft’s longstanding commitment to enabling NGOs and partnership with NetHope. Lori highlighted YouthSpark, support for Emergency Response, and making Office365 available to NGOs around the world as evidence of Microsoft’s strong commitment to the sector.

Of course, we spent a good amount of time focused on NetHope, too. We paused to look at the progress we’ve made through the strategic direction discussions. After several months of reflection and conversation, we’re ready to write our next chapter. As I said in my keynote, NetHope remains committed to serving our members’ respective missions while simultaneously helping our member organizations recognize, understand, and thrive in the face of the rapid changes happening throughout our sector. To do so, we’ll both refine our current program offerings and add new ones. We’ll share more in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned for details.

As we wrap up this year’s Summit, I want to thank all Summit attendees again for making my first Summit such a fabulous experience. NetHope is what we make it, and if the energy and commitment we observed at the Summit is any indication, we’re in great shape to make our next chapter the best yetr 

NetHope Member Global Summit 2014 Flickr Gallery

Filed Under: Global Summits, Uncategorized