Professional Experience:
Major Giving
• Working with high-net-worth individuals to secure major gifts.
• Prospect research, evaluation of giving potential, marketing & solicitation materials, setting individual strategies, one-on-one meetings, making requests, securing pledges & gifts.
Corporate Philanthropy & Sponsorship; Foundation Grants
• Work with the staff and board members of major corporations (Dominion, Owens & Minor, SunTrust, BB&T, Wachovia Wells Fargo, Landmark Communications, others) to secure philanthropic support.
• Co-developed sponsorship marketing campaign that secured major naming-rights sponsorships from Virginia Farm Bureau, Southern States Cooperative, and Union First Market Bank.
• Grant-seeking and grant management from major national foundations (Kresge Foundation, Ford Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation) to regional and local foundations.
Departmental Planning and Management
• Manage fundraising campaigns with collective goals of over $74 million, utilizing all fundraising strategies and operations.
• Design and lead pre-campaign feasibility/planning studies for a YMCA, a botanical garden, a performing-arts center, a Girl Scouts council, and an equine museum.
• Manage staff including hiring, establishing job duties, weekly goal-setting and –achieving, performance reviews and incentive review.
Executive Team & Board Relations
• Participation on executive team to oversee operations, strategic planning, financial management.
• Key role in SFVA’s organizational budgeting process for department and organization-wide return on investment (ROI) reviews.
• Executive-team strategic and marketing work including organizational branding consultancy (led by ad agency, Siddall Inc.), naming-rights sponsorship consultancy (Sponsorship Resources), media training, and strategic-planning teams.
• Board management and reporting, including managing development committee, capital campaign leadership; extensive experience reporting to boards on fundraising planning and progress.
Philanthropy Marketing
• Identifying, screening, and hiring of outside philanthropy consultants and marketing consultants to assist with campaign planning, campaign plan development, and fundraising program assessments.
• Overseeing of use of direct-mail fundraising marketing consultants to conduct mail appeals.
• Development of donor incentives, recognition, and stewardship practices.
• Producing annual reports, case statements and brochures, PowerPoint presentations, campaign videos, newsletters, and web-site content.
International Workplace Skills, Cross-Cultural Communication
• In China: negotiated teaching policies, work responsibilities, and teaching methods between American and Chinese teachers and the administration of a major agricultural university.
• In Hyderabad, India and Ibadan, Nigeria: worked under USAID development contracts; negotiated collaborative writing assignment that led to a published training manual.
• With refug