My background is in art education. I have 10 years of experience teaching in museums, non-profit organizations, and schools in New York City, Austin, and Minneapolis. My passion for the creative education of youth only grows as I build more connections with students and community members.
This passion and on-the-ground insight is what brought me to join the Carnelian team. Through my face time with community members, I see social impact first-hand and understand the operational functions required to keep it running.
As a Senior Associate in Nonprofit Practice, I support organizations in establishing fundraising strategy and the relevant operational procedures. My focus is in source diversification, mapping and acquiring earned income lines, navigating private and individual giving, launching campaigns and events, and acquiring grants from public institutions, private foundations, and corporations.
Our team runs Carnelian as an ecosystem, and that means each team member brings their own bridging capabilities. I see myself as one of our in-house connections between on-the-ground realities and overarching operational strategy.
Over my career, I’ve cultivated an understanding of how connection-making is the bedrock for institutional success. When it comes to building relationships between operations and the sponsors who make it happen, “trust” is the key word. Trust is built on believing an organization’s legitimacy and effectiveness, which in turn generate both financial and non-financial support. Organizations that fail to gain public support, then, do not have the capital they need to operate, and therefore cannot continue their pursuit of public welfare
Because trust begins with awareness, impact reporting and visibility are essential to the success and sustainability of nonprofits. An organization can have real impact that just isn’t visible to key supporters. This dams relationships by blocking trust upstream.
Opening up these connections requires high-quality, transparent communication. As an instructor at Painting Pandas, a youth arts education nonprofit, I see how this organization helps children develop critical social skills. But donors won’t see that unless I effectively share the impact that Painting Pandas already has on its students and families.
Offering impactful programming is one small part of a nonprofit’s responsibility. Behind the scenes, nonprofits must develop measurable goals, and document and publish demonstrated impact. This is a complex process because it requires organizing information from multiple sources, adapting organizational approaches when necessary, and catalyzing these experiences into successful fundraising that makes impact self-sustainable. This whole line requires strong leadership, clear strategy, and team collaboration.
I enjoy engaging across this whole process, but one of my specialities is grant writing. Grant writing is cumulative, creative, and collaborative. It is, in many ways, a microcosm of an organization’s broader operational structure.
Experience, innovation, and partnership are especially critical for grant revenue in today’s current fundraising landscape. For reasons discussed more in depth in Carnelian’s recent news piece, grant makers are receiving applications in record-breaking quantity, making this revenue source highly competitive. Even long-established organizations with years of programming under their belt must be diligent with collecting data, measuring impact, gathering evidence and developing innovative grant proposals to remain competitive.
Successful applications therefore require greater levels of internal communication and impact visibility. At the same time as they enhance their grant strategy, organizations must reduce reliance on one particular revenue source. Revenue restructuring has become a key area of Carnelian’s Advisory engagements. My team and I partner with nonprofits to enhance grant application quality while diversifying the overall funding portfolio.
As long as there are people on the ground looking to make a difference, nonprofits will always be working to optimize their systems of support. The potential for sustainability is what excites me most. I see the impact worth continuing, and I see how these outputs can become self-enhancing through tactical fundraising. It is a high-effort endeavor well worth the work.