It was pouring rain on my way to the venue at Evergreen Brick Works.
Not the kind of Toronto rain that politely mists and moves on. The kind that soaks through your jacket in the parking lot and makes you question every decision you’ve made that morning.
But the first person I ran into was Clinton, the CEO of Engaging Networks, walking in from the same parking lot. A long-time industry colleague and friend. We shook hands, caught up for a minute, and walked inside together.
And just like that, the day had already delivered value.
Here’s the thing about conferences.
I’ve been attending and speaking at nonprofit conferences for close to 20 years.
I’ve sat through hundreds of sessions.
Some excellent.
Some forgettable.
Some that changed how I think about a problem.
Some where I quietly checked my email under the table (we’ve all done it).
And if you asked me a week later what I remembered, it was almost never the slides.
It was always the people and the stories.
ENCC Toronto was no different.
The Engaging Networks team greeted us as we walked in. I chatted with Mike and a few others on my way to grab a coffee and sneak in a little breakfast before things got rolling.
The sessions were good. There was genuinely something for everyone.
I presented with Tiffany Ramsay (who is interesting AF and you should ask her about her time at IBM Watson if you get the chance) (it was also her birthday) on the importance of privacy and security and why or how organizations can be leveraging the tools that EN is building into the platform.
But here I am, a week and a bit out, and the sessions are already fading from my mind.
What lingers is the feeling.
The feeling of seeing friends and colleagues in real life.
Of having a conversation that isn’t scheduled in a 30-minute calendar block.
Of catching up with someone you’ve worked alongside for years but haven’t actually been in the same room with since 2023.
Connected isolation is a weird thing.
Many of us in this sector (and honestly, most knowledge workers in 2026) live in a state I’d describe as connected isolation.
We talk to people all day.
Slack. Teams. Zoom. Email. Another Zoom. A quick call. Another email.
We are constantly communicating. Yet we are almost always alone.
It’s a weird thing to think about.
And don’t get me wrong. I value the flexibility immensely.
My ability to be present with my kids and family. The fact that I’m not spending two hours in a car every day. The work-life balance that remote work gives me is real, and I would not trade it.
But something is missing. And I think most of us feel it even if we don’t talk about it.
We’re not designed to work this way forever. We need the room. The hallway. The coffee line where someone says “hey, how’s your family?” and actually waits for the answer.
Because burnout isn’t just a workload problem.
95% of nonprofit leaders are concerned about burnout. That stat comes from the Center for Effective Philanthropy. And it’s been floating around for over a year now.
Ninety-five percent.
We talk about burnout like it’s a workload problem. And it is (partly). Nonprofit teams are stretched. The execution gap I write about is real and it’s grinding people down.
But I think there’s another layer we don’t talk about enough.
Isolation compounds burnout.
When you’re drowning in operations and you think you’re the only one who can’t keep up, the weight doubles.
When you’re struggling with a platform migration and you assume every other org has it figured out, the shame creeps in.
When you haven’t had a real unscheduled conversation with a peer outside your organization in a few months, you start to lose perspective.
And then you walk into a room like ENCC.
And you realize everyone is dealing with the same things.
The same capacity constraints. The same frustrations. The same tension between what they know they should be doing and what they can actually get done. The same conversations about AI that start with excitement and end with apprehension and lack of clarity on what to do next.
That realization was worth the price of admission.
Not because misery loves company. But because seeing your challenges reflected in 200 other smart, capable, mission-driven people changes the story you’re telling yourself.
You’re not failing. You’re operating in a system that’s under-resourced for what it’s being asked to do.
That’s a very different narrative. And you can only hear it in a room full of people who get it.
What I actually took away.
The conversations between sessions covered everything.
Challenges. Opportunities. Frustrations. Human catch-up.
Everything from “how is your family?” to “how are you handling the responsibilities of the new role?”
I think that range matters.
Because when someone asks you about your kids and then pivots to asking about your CRM migration, they’re treating you like a whole person. Not a job title. Not a LinkedIn profile.
ENCC is a community conference. And that distinction is more important than it sounds.
Nobody here is selling you something (at least not aggressively). People are connecting. Sharing what’s working. Admitting what isn’t. Asking real questions and giving honest answers.
That’s rare. And I think it’s becoming rarer.
In a sector where the conference circuit can feel like a parade of vendor pitches dressed up as thought leadership, a gathering that genuinely centres community is worth protecting.
I walked in thinking the value of the conference was in the programming.
I walked out thinking the unspoken value was in the permission.
Permission to step away from your heavily scheduled day. Permission to have a conversation that isn’t optimized for productivity. Permission to admit you’re stuck and hear someone say “yeah, us too.”
Permission to be a person among other people who understand your weird little corner of the professional universe.
We undervalue this. As a sector, as leaders, as people who approve (or don’t approve) conference budgets.
The ROI of a conference isn’t just the tactical takeaways you bring back to your team.
It’s the reset.
It’s the reminder that you’re part of something bigger than your inbox. That other people are fighting the same fires (sometimes literally). That the work matters, even when the work is hard.
I’m grateful to the Engaging Networks team for building a conference that understands this. And I’m grateful to the people who showed up in the rain.
See you at the next one (which for me will be Canada’s Fundraising Conference at the end of May in Toronto)
Yours in fundraising.
Erik