Fundraising

For nonprofits and foundations, built on strategic communications

Fenton Fundraising pairs seasoned fundraisers with narrative, digital, and earned media strength to move donors from first gift to lasting commitment.

Nonprofits have long faced a choice: a fundraising consultancy that raises money, or a communications agency that tells the story. Fenton Fundraising ends the tradeoff. We are nonprofit fundraising consultants and strategic communicators on one team, uniting issue expertise, messaging, earned media, and donor engagement in a single surround-sound approach that moves people from awareness to action to lasting commitment.

Our fundraisers have led development programs inside legacy nonprofits, managed complex donor portfolios, and built the strategy and stewardship behind multi-million-dollar campaigns. We treat the first gift as an entry point and design everything after it to grow support. Our services span the full development lifecycle: annual fundraising planning, major gifts strategy, institutional and foundation giving, digital fundraising campaigns, and signature events, plus a capability few others offer, rapid-response fundraising that captures momentum when breaking news puts your issue at the center of public attention.

Our Clients

Our Services

Digital & Email Fundraising

We build online fundraising programs, email appeal campaigns, and giving day activations that grow small-dollar giving and convert digital engagement into sustained support.

Donor Communications & Stewardship

We create the reports, newsletters, acknowledgment materials, and segmentation strategies that keep donors connected and inspired between gifts.

Campaign Fundraising

We support capital campaigns, year-end pushes, and multi-year giving initiatives with the strategy, materials, and messaging that carry them to goal.

Institutional & Corporate Giving

We help organizations identify, pitch, and steward corporate partners and institutional funders, diversifying revenue beyond individual donors.

Fundraising Events

We design and support fundraising events across every scale, from intimate donor cultivation gatherings to signature galas and large-scale community activations.

Rapid-Response Fundraising

We build and deploy emergency fundraising campaigns when a crisis or news moment puts your issue at the center of public attention, pairing appeals with the media strategy to match.

Development Assessments & Planning

We audit development programs to surface strengths, gaps, and opportunities, then build annual plans and goal frameworks that give fundraising teams a clear path forward.

Cases for Support & Donor Messaging

We develop the narrative arc, campaign case, and audience-specific language that give donors, board members, and institutional funders a compelling reason to invest.

Major Gifts & Donor Cultivation Strategy

We design cultivation, solicitation, and moves management strategies that deepen relationships with major and mid-level donors.

Case Studies

See our impact...

View All

IRC: Building a Master Plan for Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Growth

CMCB: Building the Case for a $15 Million Reimagining of Music Education

BVM: Turning Grassroots Organizing into Small-Dollar Fundraising Power

Fundraising Advisors

Michael Johnston Fenton Fundraising Senior Counsel View Bio
Michael Johnston Fenton Fundraising Senior Counsel

Michael Johnston has been a fundraiser since 1988 and is one of the nonprofit sector’s most enduring innovators in digital, integrated and technology-enabled fundraising. He has helped hundreds of nonprofits bring technology, data, donor behaviour and fundraising strategy together to produce breakthrough results. He authored and edited some of the sector’s first books on internet and integrated fundraising and helped pioneer early credit-card donation forms for Amnesty International and Greenpeace, SMS fundraising for the American Red Cross following Hurricane Katrina, the first global peer-to-peer fundraising technology and campaign, and Wi-Fi lead generation now used by hospital foundations across North America.

Michael has raised billions of dollars working with organizations including the American Red Cross, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the International Rescue Committee, Planned Parenthood, Doctors Without Borders USA, PBS, PETA Foundation, Rady Children’s Hospital, Riley Children’s Health and Humane Society of the USA (now Humane World for Animals)and many others. He has helped more than 1,000 charities use donor journey mapping and design thinking, while continuing to introduce new approaches to monthly giving, mid-level fundraising, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and digital transformation. Michael’s distinctive strength is his ability to see what is coming next, and turn it into a practical fundraising solution that organizations can implement.
Dr. Karen Sievewright Fenton Fundraising Senior Technology Counsel View Bio
Dr. Karen Sievewright Fenton Fundraising Senior Technology Counsel

Dr. Karen Sievewright brings the deeply expert “rocket scientist’s” approach the fundraising sector has needed for a long time. Over the last decade at HJC, she has helped nonprofits—large and small—find practical solutions and innovations that bring their data, people, technology, business rules and fundraising plans together. With an engineer’s eye, she can see how all the moving parts connect, where they are getting in one another’s way and what must change to produce breakthrough fundraising results.

Dr. Karen has worked at the forefront of fundraising technology with established companies such as Blackbaud and Fundraise Up, while helping to nurture emerging solutions including Givevery, MatchNice and TipTap Pay. She has advised organizations as varied as the Red Cross, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the International Rescue Committee, UNICEF and UNHCR. Her rare combination of engineering, applied research, entrepreneurship and nonprofit leadership allows her to move beyond the excitement surrounding innovation and build practical, integrated solutions that organizations can actually implement, sustain and use to raise more money.

Area Experts

Our team of fundraisers, strategists, writers, and digital specialists brings decades of experience from inside legacy nonprofits and alongside them, combining practitioner-level development expertise with the storytelling and media strength that moves donors to give, and to keep giving.

Valarie De La Garza Chief Executive Officer
Valarie De La Garza Chief Executive Officer

As Fenton’s CEO, Valarie brings energy, leadership and passion for social change to both her work in strategic marketing communications and her commitment to the community. Prior to joining Fenton, Valarie led the communications and marketing for the California Community Foundation (CCF), one of the largest and most prestigious community foundations in the country.

Valarie is a highly skilled strategist, writer and team builder. She has expertise in marketing, media relations, community outreach and public affairs. While her nonprofit and public sector experience run deep, including her representation of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America’s Latino marketing efforts, she has also had an extensive career with major consumer brands. Valarie earned her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from UCLA, where she was honored to serve as the first Latina editor-in-chief of The Daily Bruin.

Fundraising
Erik Olvera Chief Of Issue Advocacy
Erik Olvera Chief Of Issue Advocacy

Erik Olvera is an accomplished communications strategist with more than 20 years of experience working with several of the nation’s leading environmental, LGBTQ, racial justice and voting rights organizations.

He currently serves as Fenton’s Chief of Issue Advocacy, providing organizations focused on advocacy, politics and social justice with communications strategy and support to achieve their goals through campaigns that increase awareness, shape public discourse and build loyalty with new audiences.

Prior to joining Fenton, he served as the Chief Communications Officer at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), where he oversaw all aspects of the racial justice organization’s legal and public policy communications. While there, he provided strategic guidance as the organization looked toward its future and led several projects to deepen the legacy organization’s work with the communities that it serves.

Before SPLC, he was the head of communications for environmentalist Tom Steyer’s GOTV and political organizations, where he helped develop the Need to Impeach movement. He previously served as the Senior Director of Communications for Earthjustice, where he was responsible for shaping discourse for the organization’s legal and public policy work.

The Regis University alumnus also spent several years leading communications for the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), where he worked on a wide range of LGBTQ legislation and legal cases. Some of his work at NCLR includes designing the Born Perfect public education campaign to end conversion therapy on minors nationwide and developing the communications plan that helped lead to the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court marriage equality victory.

Fundraising

Issue Advocacy
Paul Hernandez Principal, Chief Strategy Officer
Paul Hernandez Principal, Chief Strategy Officer

Paul is best known as a communications and public affairs strategist. He has over 20 years of experience working to engage and influence policymakers and other decision-makers on key issues ranging from health care to racial equity to homelessness to early childhood education.

From strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, campaign management to message development, Paul has acted as a consigliere to several prominent funders throughout the country.

He has been a senior consultant to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in its efforts to improve the health, living conditions and economic security for children and families living in New Mexico, and to improving public schools in Michigan. He acted as a lead communications strategist for a collaborative of the nation’s most prominent foundations, Executives’ Alliance to Expand Opportunities for Boys and Men of Color, including coordination with President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative. He partnered with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to plan a campaign to engage California’s gubernatorial candidates to support early childhood development. And was a longtime senior policy advisor to the Blue Shield of California Foundation in its efforts to support the successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act in California.

He has also served as a trusted advisor to public and nonprofit sector organizations such as the Advancement Project, Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office, and Oakland Unified School District.

Prior to joining Fenton, Paul spent more than eight years with The California Endowment, the state’s largest private health foundation. He led efforts to build alliances and generate support for the foundation’s health priorities and was a key strategist in crafting and implementing a multi-million-dollar campaign to advance statewide health reform in 2007.

He is also a veteran of local government and politics, having served as a legislative deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, where he acted as the Supervisor’s chief advisor on law enforcement, public safety and transportation issues.

Outside of the office, Paul serves on the Boards of the Liberty Hill Foundation and Community Health Councils and is a proud alumnus of U.C. Berkeley and Coro Southern California. And he can also point you to the best restaurants and cocktail bars in Los Angeles.

Fundraising

Government

Philanthropy
Shakirah Hill Taylor Head of Innovation
Shakirah Hill Taylor Head of Innovation

Shakirah Hill Taylor is Head of Innovation. Serving as senior strategic counsel to internal stakeholders as well as clients, she provides leadership and strategy for the firm’s digital practice on a wide range of interactive strategies and execution to drive innovative and award-winning digital work. She brings extensive expertise in digital strategy, online advocacy building, social impact and client service to help organizations reach intended audiences to create positive, impactful and sustainable change.

She previously served as Vice President of Metropolitan Group, where she led their global digital and social marketing practice, providing strategic consultation for organizations such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, US Forest Service, World Resources Institute and the Ford Foundation. Before joining the Metropolitan group, she served in prior roles at Communities in Schools as their Director of Digital Strategy as well as at Blue State Digital as Account Director, where she led client engagements for the NAACP, the United States Olympic Committee and Nestlé.

Digital

Fundraising
Tom Blake Executive Vice President, Advertising & Digital
Tom Blake Executive Vice President, Advertising & Digital

Tom has more than a decade of experience in managing omnichannel behavior change campaigns and currently serves as the leader of Fenton’s Paid Media practice group.

Before joining Fenton, he served as Deputy Digital Director for the Reshma Saujani campaign for NYC Public Advocate in 2013. He then joined the team at Global Citizen, where he managed more than $10,000,000 in digital advertising and email outreach to grow one of the largest advocacy programs in the global development sector. Later, he also served as Digital Director at Families for Excellent Schools, where he helped design pressure campaigns to push the New York State legislature to enact key progressive education reform bills. In that role, he also managed more than $12,000,000 in media buys for the 2016 “Yes on 2” Ballot Measure campaign in Massachusetts.

Since joining Fenton, Tom has been responsible for growing our paid media practice from the ground-up. He has also played a pivotal role in many of our highest-profile election outreach efforts. Some of his key projects include: helping turn the Senate blue by leading the media buying strategy with the New Georgia Project during the 2020 Senate run-off election, leading a coordinated 2020 census advertising campaign between LA County Government and more than 100 community-based organizations, helping the NY Campaign Finance Board reach millions of voters with important election information, and acting as media lead for the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk in their ongoing efforts to inform voters and build trust in the election system as a whole.

More broadly, Tom also has a background in HIV advocacy and the queer rights movement. He is a co-chair of Prism, Fenton’s LGBTQ employee resource group. He is an alum of Act Up New York and a co-founder of the grassroots advocacy group PrEP4All, co-leading the successful communications campaign to #BreakthePatent on Truvada, the life-saving HIV prevention. He is also a member of the Victory Fund’s Campaign Board.

Advertising

Digital

Fundraising
Ana Karina Palacio Vice President
Ana Karina Palacio Vice President

Ana Karina Palacio is a Vice President, Digital and Advertising with a proven track record of spearheading advocacy, public education, and capacity-building campaigns.

Ana channels her wide-ranging experience in driving social impact through the power of digital strategy, advertising and multicultural communications. She has served as key strategist on integrated multicultural campaigns for many of Fenton’s clients, including the California Community Foundation, Los Angeles County Department Of Consumer And Business Affairs, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s Office (since 2020) and is proud to have worked alongside clients like the Moving Forward Network and Black Voters Matter.

Originally from Mexico, Ana is deeply passionate about ensuring that campaigns are culturally competent and accessible to diverse target audiences. She led the creation of Fenton’s inaugural in-house Spanish content program and plays an essential role for many of Fenton’s clients requiring Spanish language needs.

Prior to Fenton, Ana honed her skills at TNR Campaigns and Joe Trippi and Associates, creating digital fundraising programs and TV and digital ads for political candidates, unions, PACS and non-profits.

Advertising

Digital

Fundraising
Morgan Travers Account Executive
Morgan Travers Account Executive

Morgan Travers is a Digital Account Executive at Fenton, where she utilizes her previous communications skills to implement strategies that make lasting change with clients that range from education to reproductive justice. Morgan has experience in digital campaign strategy, government affairs, strategic communications and public affairs.

Morgan recently graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in Government and Politics and minors in Public Leadership and Science, Technology, Ethics and Policy.

Outside the office, Morgan spends her time going to concerts, exploring new brunch restaurants, and encouraging people to check their voter registration.

Digital

Fundraising
Chris Compton Senior Writer
Chris Compton Senior Writer

Chris Compton serves as Senior Writer at Fenton, where he uses his experience with nonprofits and philanthropy to create stories that spark empathy, engagement and action on a wide range of progressive issues. He drives narrative strategies and crafts written content that helps clients effect lasting, positive change.

Chris strives to connect to the head and the heart, telling diverse stories that create common ground. He comes to Fenton from the California College Guidance Initiative, where he helped advocate for equity-focused education policies and provide data-driven college and career tools to students. Before that, he spent nearly a decade with the California Community Foundation, where he worked to engage donors and move the needle on affordable housing, immigration, healthcare and education in Los Angeles.

Corporate Social Good

Creative

Fundraising

Government

Philanthropy

See the FUll team

News & Insights

Introducing Fenton Fundraising: Where Strategy, Story, and Dollars Finally Live Under One Roof

Fundraising

Beyond the Creative: The Behavioral Science and Leadership Truths Redefining Modern Fundraising

Fundraising

Fenton Ranked Top Nonprofit PR Firm in the Nation by O’Dwyer’s

Awards

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