Dates and location
Pricing
Hours
Dates and location
Pricing
Hours
Description
Join us for our gathering for accountants and financial professionals in the not-for-profit sector. This full-day virtual event is designed to equip you with the knowledge, tools, and connections needed to navigate today’s challenges. Build strength. Embrace change. Lead with confidence.
Early Bird Sale: Save $50 off this conference by registering before September 17, 2026. Promotion cannot be combined with other offers or Passport. Access the Early Bird Sale by logging into your account.
Agenda
Agenda
Topic: Systemic Sector-Level Issues (Policy & Structure): Policy Reform for Canada's Nonprofit Sector
Key Takeaways:
- A greater understanding of the economic impact and importance of the charitable and nonprofit sector. The sector's contribution of approximately 8.3% of Canada's GDP, about $211 billion which helps make the case that nonprofits must be treated as a core part of Canada's economic and community infrastructure, not as an afterthought.
- That the workforce providing community based services is foundational to Canada's economic success. Canada's nonprofit sector is essential infractructure, yet it is too often excluded from policy, workforce, and funding decisions that shape the country's economic and social resilience.
- How the potential of the sector can be further unlocked at a time of social and economic change. The keynote will also be a chance to highlight the structural gaps holding the sector back, including the lack of a national workforce strategy, the need for coordinated funding reform, and the importance of including nonprofits in major economic policy discussions.
Topic: Contributions Exposure Draft and Reporting of Related and Controlled Entities: Consultation Paper and Emerging Issues for Not-for-Profit Organizations
Moderator: Ninette Bishay, CPA, CA, Partner at Adams & Miles LLP
Speakers: Bruce MacDonald. President & CEO at Imagine Canada
Topic: Financial Instability & Unsustainable Funding Models
(60 min) Lunch & Networking
Topic: The AI-Powered NPO: Practical Workflows for Grant Reporting & Compliance
Grant reporting and compliance consume a disproportionate share of NPO finance capacity: chasing spreadsheet versions, reconciling program spend against multiple funder templates, and manually assembling reports that could largely run themselves. This session moves past AI hype to show CPAs and finance professionals serving the NPO sector exactly where AI can be applied safely and practically to grant reporting workflows today. Naveen Kumar brings a dual vantage point: three years auditing non-profits, and government experience administering grants and contributions from the funder's side — combined with current hands-on work applying AI and automation to finance processes. Using realistic workflow examples grounded in this experience, he'll walk through how a manual, multi-day reporting cycle can be restructured with tools finance teams likely already have access to, without weakening the controls and audit trail funders require. Attendees will leave with a practical way to assess where their own organization's biggest reporting bottlenecks sit, and concrete first steps they can take without new software budget or a technical team.
Key Takeaways:
- A practical framework for identifying which parts of grant reporting are safe to automate with AI, which parts still need a human, and why.
- A realistic before-and-after workflow example showing where a typical grant reporting cycle can be compressed with AI, and where the time actually goes today.
- Concrete first steps attendees can take in their own organization this quarter, with no new software spend and no dedicated technical resource required.
Topic: Financial Fraud and Cyber Risk in Not-for-Profit Organizations
Not-for-profit organizations (NPOs) face a growing and increasingly sophisticated landscape of financial fraud and cyber risk. Limited resources, reliance on volunteers, decentralized financial processes, and increasing use of digital systems can create vulnerabilities that fraudsters and cybercriminals exploit.
This session will examine key risks affecting NPOs, including payment and wire fraud, business email compromise, phishing and donor scams, ransomware, data breaches, and insider fraud. Through practical examples and real-world scenarios, participants will learn how cyber incidents can lead directly to financial loss and how weaknesses in internal controls can increase an organization’s exposure.
The session will also explore practical strategies for strengthening financial controls, cybersecurity practices, governance, and incident response. Participants will leave with actionable ideas to help protect organizational funds, sensitive information, donor trust, and reputation.
Key Takeaways:
- Recognize the risks: Identify common and emerging fraud and cyber threats facing NPOs, as well as the warning signs and organizational vulnerabilities that can make an NPO a target.
- Strengthen prevention and detection: Apply practical financial controls and cybersecurity measures - including payment authorization, segregation of duties, access controls, employee and volunteer awareness, and verification procedures - to reduce the risk of fraud and cyber incidents.
- Build organizational resilience: Understand the roles of management, finance professionals, boards, and IT in cyber and fraud risk management, and develop an effective framework for detecting, responding to, and recovering from an incident.
Topic: TBD
Topic: Workforce Crisis in the Nonprofit Sector; Recruitment, Retention, Burnout & the Impact of AI on Nonprofit Workers
Speaker(s)
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Sheindl Belenky, CPA Sheindl Belenky is Chief Financial Officer at Kayla's Children Centre (KCC), a Vaughan, Ontario nonprofit supporting hundreds of children with disabilities and their families. Since joining KCC in 2019 in the wake of a complex merger and acquisition, she has been instrumental in the organization's growth, reach and financial sustainability, overseeing its business and financial operations and helping shape strategy and execution. Most recently, she played a key role in the acquisition and launch of Camp Lionheart, a partner organization offering children with disabilities and complex needs a fully accessible, all-season recreational facility in Muskoka, Ontario. A CPA with experience across industry and the not-for-profit sector, Sheindl was named a CPA Ontario Emerging Leader in 2023. |
| OPENING KEYNOTE SPEAKER | |
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Dan Clement, President & CEO and Secretary of the Board Dan is President & CEO and Secretary of the Board for United Way Centraide Canada. Dan engages with stakeholders through donor, government, and media relations, engaging in public policy development to drive the United Way Centraide mission forward. Dan has more than 20 years of leadership experience within the United Way Centraide Movement at the local, provincial, and national levels. He brings his expertise to United Way Centraide’s work on community impact and engagement, public policy, product development and network governance. Dan holds a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Toronto Metropolitan University and an Executive Certification from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management |
| SPEAKERS | |
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Jennifer Lynch is the President and Principal Forensic Accountant and Business Valuator of Lynch & Associates Inc. and a qualified expert witness in forensic accounting and business valuation. She has extensive experience in forensic accounting, fraud investigations, business valuations, financial analysis, and litigation support. Jennifer is an experienced educator and speaker who has taught forensic accounting, fraud prevention, and professional ethics through CPA Ontario and at York University’s Master of Financial Accountability program. She is also co-author of Financial Crimes in Canada: An Overview of Money Laundering and Fraud, published by LexisNexis Canada. |
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Naveen Kumar, CPA, CA is the founder of Xpand CFO, a fractional CFO practice focused on bringing practical AI and automation to finance teams. He brings over 15 years of finance experience spanning audit, internal controls, financial reporting, and grants and contributions, including three years auditing not-for-profit organizations and time spent on a federal government department's AI Innovation Team. Naveen combines his CPA training with hands-on AI implementation work to help finance teams move away from manual, spreadsheet-driven reporting toward faster, audit-ready workflows without sacrificing the controls their boards and funders expect. He's passionate about helping NPO and SME finance professionals build practical AI literacy grounded in real financial judgment, not hype. |
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How to Access the Conference
This CPA Ontario PD conference is hosted on the innovative RingCentral (formerly Hopin) platform. An email invitation with a link to join the event on the RingCentral platform will be sent closer to the date.
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Disclaimer
The views expressed in the course are non-authoritative and have not been formally endorsed by CPA Ontario and do not reflect the views of CPA Ontario. The information included in the course is for general information purposes only.
CPA Ontario, the presenters and the authors do not accept any responsibility or liability that might occur directly or indirectly as a consequence of the use or application of or reliance on this material.
Testimonials
The information provided was not only current, but organized to be applicable to multiple sectors.