Donna M. Finley, CFRE - Senior Manager

Donna M. Finley, CFRE brings 20 years of fundraising and communications experience to Graham-Pelton Consulting, Inc. Her career includes service to institutions of higher education, grass-roots organizations, faith-based and social service agencies as well as arts and cultural organizations throughout the country. Ms. Finley’s areas of expertise include strategic marketing and communications, video and print production; establishing new development operations; annual, major, capital campaign and endowment gift programs; gift acceptance policies and guidelines; donor identification, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship; volunteer and board recruitment, training and management as well as staff training and development.

Prior to joining Graham-Pelton, Ms. Finley worked for a national fundraising and management consulting firm, focusing on communication and development audits, feasibility studies, strategic and campaign planning as well as major gifts and endowment programs. Clients included a national healthcare foundation, a conservancy, several universities, a foundation focusing on women’s issues and multiple university-affiliated public television stations.

Ms Finley previously served as the Vice President for Development and Communications at Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Washington DC. While there, she reorganized the department, expanded the annual campaign, restructured the organization’s signature gala to become a cultivation opportunity for a large volunteer corps raising more than $1 million annually, and coordinated a 75th anniversary series of activities and events.

Ms Finley has served as the chief development officer for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Goodwill Industries and the Historical Society in western Pennsylvania, at Rutgers University’s Zimmerli Art Museum and at Pace University where she helped the $55 million campaign go over goal by $7.1 million. The Benedictine Sisters of Pittsburgh also have benefited from Ms. Finley’s consulting and fundraising expertise.

A certified fundraising executive, Ms. Finley graduated from Duquesne University with a BS in Education, is listed in Manchester’s 2004 Registry of Executives, several editions of “Who’s Who” and is a presenter at regional and national fundraising conferences. Her most recently published article “Do You Hear Us Now? Communications, Fundraising and Donors” appeared in the March 7, 2006 edition of FS Advisor, the weekly e-strategy companion to Fundraising Success Magazine.