My journey to being a fundraising consultant

I believe that sharing my journey on becoming a fundraising consultant and trainer might resonate with (and even help!) you and the organizations you work with. So here goes:

The early days

I was raised on the value of tikkun olam (Hebrew for “heal the world”) and right out of university I was hired by a Harvard Fellow who was running an award-winning Mexican NGO. Within a year, I was doing project management, fundraising and communications. From this NGO, I learned what powerful programs look like. And the project management was my jam. But I didn’t know how to raise money.

I was lost writing grants, and books, blogs and webinars pointed me in a million directions I didn’t fully understand. I was exhausted. And it seemed there was a secret formula to secure grant funding or a secret door to knock on in DC— I just didn’t know what it was. Nor did my colleagues. And we didn’t know any “fundraising coaches”, “fundraising consultants” or “fundraising trainers”.

So I got my Master’s in Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University and then worked on the grants team at the largest USAID contractor, as well as for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approving projects, at Danone (the world’s largest B Corp) and at a fundraising consulting firm as a fundraising consultant. And that’s when everything began to change.

Leaning into my calling to become a fundraising coach

I knew what funders were looking for, I knew how to write a winning proposal and I understood why certain proposals were the right fit for certain funders. I had also lived across a total of 5 continents– from a rural town in Costa Rica, the rainforest of Ecuador and the birthplace of the Argentine flag to the metropolis of Mexico City, the edge of Kenya’s largest slum and southern India. And I knew that organizations around the world needed, and deserved, access to this know-how– and to the money that was out there. In short, I now had clarity on which direction in which to head and how to get there. So I became a fundraising coach and trainer.

(I also knew how to align profit and purpose for companies to design powerful social impact programming. But that’s a story for another day as I want to focus on NGOs in this particular post.)

I tell this journey because as a fundraising coach and trainer, I work with numerous organizations and I see that many NGOs are struggling with the same challenges I did a decade ago. And now I have the answers. 

In each blog post, I will share some of these answers. So stay tuned!

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