Shoshana Grossman-Crist
About
I was raised on the value of tikkun olam (Hebrew for “heal the world”) and right out of university I was hired by a Harvard Fellow who was running an award-winning Mexican NGO. Within a year, I was doing project management, fundraising and communications. From this NGO, I learned what powerful programs look like. And the project management was my jam. But I didn’t know how to raise money.
I was lost writing grants, and books, blogs and webinars pointed me in a million directions I didn’t fully understand. I was exhausted. And it seemed there was a secret formula to secure grant funding or a secret door to knock on in DC— I just didn’t know what it was. Nor did my colleagues.
So I got my Master’s in Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University and then worked on the grants team at the largest USAID contractor, as well as for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approving projects, at Danone (the world’s largest B Corp) and at a fundraising consulting firm. And that’s when everything began to change.
I knew what funders were looking for, I knew how to write a winning proposal and I understood why certain proposals were the right fit for certain funders. I had also lived across a total of 5 continents– from a rural town in Costa Rica, the rainforest of Ecuador and the birthplace of the Argentine flag to the metropolis of Mexico City, the edge of Kenya’s largest slum and southern India. And I knew that organizations around the world needed, and deserved, access to this know-how– and to the money that was out there.
For the last 7 years, I have been sharing this know-how globally with incredible social impact organizations that are doing powerful work, making it possible for them to exceed their fundraising goals. I offer you my 15 years of experience— working within funders, companies and on-the-ground projects— together with my superpowers of strategy, storytelling and connections, sprinkled with ample amounts of passion, structure and follow-through, to help your grants team kick butt at fundraising today and for years to come.
With ease–
Shoshana
