NNSP Annual Conference

Dates: Wednesday, January 27 – Friday, January 29, 2027 | Schools attending with a cohort of students will need to arrive on Tuesday, January 26.

Cost: The conference tuition is $1,575 and includes hotel accommodations, all sessions, presentations, and lunches.

Conference & Hotel Location: Washington, D.C. metro-area. The conference and hotel accommodations have been arranged as a campus of hotels. All hotels are conveniently located within walking distance of one another. Specific room details will be provided closer to the start of the conference.

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Interested in bringing a student cohort to the concurrent NAIS Student Civic Leadership Summit? Learn more!

There are ample opportunities during the conference to network with like-minded professionals and grow both your cross-sector understanding and your appreciation for the value of this work. The 2026 NNSP Annual Conference culminated with students from the NAIS Student Civic Leadership Summit sharing their vision and strategies for how to make a difference in their communities.

Sample Conference Sessions:

• Degrees of Impact: a 3-Part Series:  Grounded in NNSP’s signature summer programming, the series will guide educators in structuring or redesigning a comprehensive community engagement program. Each session builds on the last, offering a step-by-step approach to align mission and outcomes, repurpose existing programs, and integrate meaningful opportunities into the curriculum.
• Growing Citizens: Nurturing Civic Mindsets from Kindergarten to Cap and Gown: This session introduces a PreK–12 whole-school framework for citizenship development designed to combat declining civic engagement and better prepare students for democratic participation. Rather than a prescriptive curriculum, the model emphasizes learning outcomes rooted in inquiry-based learning, collaboration, and experiential practice; developing students’ civic identity, critical service learning, and leadership skills across disciplines. Now in its second year of a five-year pilot at Metairie Park Country Day School, the goal is to graduate active, engaged citizens ready for meaningful democratic participation.
• Developing Global Citizenship: This workshop will guide participants through the process of designing effective global citizenship programming that empowers students to take meaningful action on pressing global challenges through authentic, ethical, and sustainable community engagement at the local, national, and global scale. Facilitators will share strategies and examples for helping students critically reflect on the issues they encounter through experiential learning and how to channel that reflection into real social impact projects in their own communities.

Sample Keynotes: 

• Alice Siu, Associate Director, Deliberative Democracy Lab, Stanford University: “AI for Good: Empowering Student Changemakers in Social Impact and Community Engagement”
• Nathan Dietz, Associate Research Professor, Do Good Institute, University of Maryland: “Data-Driven Transformation: Unleashing the Potential of Social Impact Programs”
• Eleanor Daugherty, Vice President for Student Life, Georgetown University: “Hope: Unlocking the Power of Adolescence”