From Impact to Action: Year-End Messaging & Marketing for Any Organization
Still Standing: Celebrating Resilience, Recognizing the Cost, and Reclaiming Our Wins
Thursday, December 3
1:00 PM to 2:30 PM
FREE
Amy Stephenson, MCAH’s Director of Communications
For Michigan’s frontline housing and homeless service providers, 2026 has been a year of unprecedented challenges, from funding uncertainty and shifting policies to growing community needs and the personal toll of doing more with less. Yet through it all, you have continued to show up, advocate, adapt, and make a difference. This interactive and reflective session offers an opportunity to unpack the challenges of the past year, celebrate our collective resilience, and acknowledge the personal and professional costs of this demanding work. Through honest conversation and a guided exercise called “One Win, One Weight,” participants will be invited to proudly share one accomplishment they may not have celebrated and acknowledge one challenge or vulnerability they have carried along the way. Together, we’ll create space for recognition, connection, and renewal, reminding ourselves that resilience isn’t about being unaffected by hardship—it’s about recognizing what we’ve accomplished, being honest about what we’ve endured, and supporting one another as we move forward into 2027.
Facilitator
Amy Stephenson, Director of Communications
Amy Stephenson is a communications and nonprofit leader whose career has spanned education, the private sector, international work, and community-based advocacy. Her professional journey includes experience with Okemos-based Radmoor Montessori, work internationally in Europe and Mexico, and time in the legal sector, giving her a diverse perspective on communications, organizational leadership, and community engagement. She later brought that experience to the nonprofit sector, including serving as a founder and executive with Helping Women Period, where she helped advance the organization’s work addressing period poverty and access to essential health and hygiene products.
Today, Amy serves as Director of Communications for the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness, where she uses marketing, messaging, public education, and storytelling to strengthen the Coalition’s statewide work. She helps translate complex issues surrounding homelessness and housing into accessible messages that engage service providers, advocates, policymakers, partners, and the public. Throughout her career, Amy’s work has centered on using communications not simply to promote organizations, but to build awareness, elevate community needs, and motivate people to take action.