I had the pleasure to work with Lauren to both elevate the profile of StartOut and fundamentally change the involvement of the board to raise funds, and it was a resounding success. As an entrepreneur, angel investor and educator in Silicon Valley and on the East coast for the past 20 years, I can say that It is not often you come across people whose talents so cleanly straddle vision and operations as Lauren’s do. Lauren knows her “stuff” and she is so thorough in her information and context collection that when her solutions come through they are clear, authoritative and actionable to everyone from Board Members to support staff.
Andres Wydler, Executive Director | StartOut
Lauren is organized in her thinking and helps gather the appropriate information to solve problems. Her wide skillset has been essential to Junglekeepers in mediating collaborations with other organizations, securing major grants and creating sustainable operations. She is also very supportive and helps keep me grounded and energized in this work.
— Dina Tsouluhas, Co-Founder / President | Junglekeepers
Kirsten Schaffer, Executive Director
Women In Film
We brought Lauren in to work on development strategy and staff coaching for our fundraising team. Before I knew it, I was getting much needed executive coaching as well. The foundation of Lauren’s practice is metrics; she moved us from thinking about one-off asks into a comprehensive strategy and reporting system based on numbers. We have grown our budget by 25% since working with her.
Pamela Hess, Executive Director
Arcadia Center for Food & Sustainable Architecture
Lauren quickly identified the distinguishing value prospect that Arcadia brings to a crowded field of food nonprofits, and reflected back to me a fresh and fundamentally profound frame for talking about our work.
David van der Velde, Executive Director
Awakening Recovery
We retained Lauren to help create a fundraising plan to complement our 3 year strategic plan, and to meet Awakening Recovery’s unique set of challenges as a start up non-profit organization in its first 5 years of operation. Lauren used her natural authenticity and
integrity driven style to seamlessly collaborate with myself and the rest of the Board on our vision and mission and to prepare us to take our fundraising efforts to the next level. Lauren secured Board buy-in of her vision for us through a single presentation and strategic meetings with Executive officers leading up to it. She analyzed our structure and assets and gave us a roadmap that has guided us through the past 2+ years.
Stephanie Sandberg, Executive Director
LPAC
I retained Lauren's services at year-end 2018 to help develop and launch a major donor program for LPAC, the only organization that seeks to build a political voice for LGBTQ women. From the first moment, I was struck by Lauren's unusual combination of authentic connection and deep professionalism; she brought to our staff a disciplined approach to the work itself, kept us to deadlines, always circled back to ensure that our work was having its desired impact, and remained a sounding board as needed. She was recommended as 'the best' by Sarah Kate Ellis, and indeed that was my experience in our project work. That said, her holistic approach to elevating our community always made clear that her work has a through-line to the bigger picture. She is about healing marginalized communities, and her ability to bring major dollars to organizations engaged in that work is just one -- but key! - skill set that will help her bring a fresh approach to any institution.