Helping advancement leaders create clarity, alignment, and momentum

Advancement leaders often find themselves balancing multiple institutional priorities: strengthening fundraising programs, navigating leadership transitions, preparing for future growth, or aligning teams around what comes next.

In those moments, it helps to have a trusted partner who understands both the strategic and operational sides of advancement.

I work with advancement leaders and their teams to translate complex priorities into clear decisions and coordinated action, often staying engaged as priorities evolve — moving immediate priorities forward and keeping longer-term direction clear.

Forest landscape in Vermont representing perspective on both immediate detail and distant horizon

How I Work with Leadership Teams

Teams often reach out when they need space to think through complex challenges and move from ideas to action. My role is to help leaders and teams:

  • Clarify Priorities: Identify what matters most right now and what will matter next.

  • Align People and Expectations: Bring leadership, boards, and advancement teams together around shared goals and a realistic path forward.

  • Translate Strategy into Practical Action: Clarify decisions, define priorities, and build the structures and reporting needed to move the work forward.

This work often continues as priorities evolve and leaders work through what comes next.

How I Help

  • Helping institutions assess readiness, clarify priorities, and develop practical strategies for campaigns.

  • Working with leadership teams to clarify direction, align resources, and shape advancement strategies that reflect institutional priorities.

  • Helping advancement teams evaluate structures, clarify roles, and align people and processes around shared goals.

  • Advising advancement leaders and institutions during periods of leadership transition, growth, or organizational change, including interim or fractional leadership when appropriate.

  • Strengthening annual giving programs through thoughtful strategy, program design, and data-informed decision-making.

  • Designing reporting frameworks and analytical approaches that help leadership teams focus on what matters most.

Each engagement is shaped by an institution’s context and priorities, but this work most often begins in one of these areas.

Distinctive Perspective

  • My work combines strategic thinking with analytical depth. I help institutions use data and analysis not simply to measure performance, but to clarify choices and inform direction.

  • Advancement is complex and deeply interconnected. Campaigns, annual giving, major gifts, engagement, communications, operations, and analytics all influence one another. My work applies a systems perspective, helping institutions align these elements so strategy and execution reinforce each other.

  • My work spans public and private universities, cultural organizations, and complex nonprofits. Each operates within its own leadership structures, ambitions, and constraints. That breadth of experience shapes the perspective I bring to each engagement.

  • My work is collaborative and tailored to each institution’s culture and aspirations. I aim not only to solve immediate challenges, but also to strengthen internal capacity so advancement teams are better positioned for the future.

What Leaders Have Said About Working Together

  • "We wouldn’t be where we are with our Capital Campaign without Kathy. Our Board unanimously approved the campaign launch in large part because of Kathy’s guidance. Kathy has been invaluable to me as Board Chair in setting a clear course for a transformative effort to secure a bright and sustainable future for Canterbury Shaker Village. In every conversation, I wholeheartedly rely on her remarkable blend of intellectual and emotional intelligence."

    Jean McClung Nye, Chair of the Board of Trustees at Canterbury Shaker Village

  • "Kathy and first met when we served on a CASE conference committee years ago, and then in 2019 we hired her as the lead for our feasibility and assessment study. She delivered on what she promised and added tremendous value by lending her expertise to shape an exceptional CASE conference and provide guidance for the groundwork of Salem State’s largest campaign. Her analytical approach and tactical recommendations have aided in a successful launch of the quiet phase of our campaign; we surpassed the 40% mark to our goal in under two years."

    Cheryl Crounse, Vice President, Advancement and Executive Director, Salem State University Foundation, Inc.

  • "More than a consultant, Kathy was truly a partner over the many years that she worked with Tulane’s Office of Advancement. Kathy helped guide our team through a complicated process that resulted in the development of the Tulane Fund for Undergraduate Education. This was a massive undertaking that streamlined and centralized our direct marketing and involved countless hours of analysis, as well as making the case to all levels of internal stakeholders. Kathy worked hand in hand with us from the conception of this project through its successful integration into our operation."

    Christine Hoffman, Vice President for Advancement at Tulane University

  • "As a new executive director of annual giving, I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Kathy Howrigan. In addition to hours of data analysis, she taught me the most important question that should guide every conversation: what problem are you solving for? Years later, her guidance is still helping center my decisions around strategic priorities."

    Jenny Nathan Simoneaux, Executive Director of Annual and Leadership Giving at Tulane University

  • "Kathy and I worked together at the University of Vermont Foundation in 2021 and 2022. As VP for Strategic Engagement, Kathy brought a wealth of experience and new ideas to the organization that advanced our intensity, approach, and level of engagement with many constituents. Even during the trying times of covid and lockdown she developed key relationships with our on-campus partners. Our alumni engagement scores improved even in a virtual world. If you want new, bold and creative approaches, Kathy is someone who brings this to the table."

    Jim Keller, Interim President and CEO and Emeriti Board Chair of the UVM Foundation

  • "In the very best way, when I engaged Kathy to help with a specific project as I came on board at Berklee, I got way more than I thought I would! Kathy brought her industry depth and breadth to our work, understood our unique complexities immediately, and helped both with deep data analysis as well as by being a key partner in a new org design. I even asked her to interview my new leadership role candidates as she had come to know us well and knew what I was seeking. She is a partner, advocate, analyst, coach, and confidante. I recommend her unequivocally. "

    Erin Tunnicliffe, Senior Vice President for Institutional Advancement, Berklee College of Music