After years in fundraising, finance, and communications, I keep returning to one lesson:
Connection is what sustains the work.
Build community that holds when the work gets hard.
I help nonprofits build lasting support by aligning storytelling, community, and fundraising strategy.
Even strong missions lose momentum when engagement weakens. The organizations that endure are the ones that build communities capable of holding together through uncertainty, disagreement, and change.
Turning connection into sustained support
Many nonprofit challenges appear as technical or structural problems. Those problems do exist, but underneath them are often more fundamental questions of connection, trust, clarity, and engagement.
What’s needed is a durable model.
My extended experiences in Phil Campbell, Alabama reshaped the way I think about fundraising, communications, and organizational sustainability. With the help of my fellow Phil Campbells, I helped create a community of stakeholders where none had previously existed. We then worked with an independent filmmaker to expand that community far beyond what any of us originally imagined.
But it didn’t end there. We spent years sustaining our relationship with the town because helping Phil Campbell recover became more than just rewarding. It became one of the most meaningful experiences of our lives.
That’s the kind of passion and commitment that keeps good nonprofits going.
I’ve been applying these same lessons in my consulting work ever since.
My Services and Background
I’m a strategic fundraiser and communications professional with experience spanning nonprofit development, media, advocacy, and corporate finance. To date, I’ve helped raise more than $1.4 million for nonprofits and related projects through donor engagement, sponsorship development, communications strategy, and partnership cultivation.
My work has included grant writing, corporate partnerships, and individual giving, while also contributing to broader initiatives tied to disaster recovery, social justice, civic engagement, community organizing, and independent filmmaking.
Following the 2011 tornado in Phil Campbell, Alabama, I helped organize a grassroots campaign that drew international media attention and ultimately inspired the documentary I'm with Phil.
My background includes communications and storytelling published in The New Yorker, Columbia Journalism Review, and Harvard Review, alongside corporate finance and operational leadership experience at Yahoo, AOL, and Verizon Media.
My work focuses on the intersection of fundraising, narrative strategy, public trust, and community-building for organizations seeking sustained engagement and long-term support.
…and I am a member of the following industry organizations…
Testimonials & Media
“I’ve seen it with my own eyes: Phil understands that successful fundraising depends on sustained relationships, not isolated asks. He combines strong communications instincts with strategic discipline and a clear understanding of how community engagement translates into long-term organizational support.”
— Eileen Loh, nonprofit communications director and former AP reporter
“I've had the privilege of working with Phil Campbell to promote better public transit in New York City with Friends of the QNS, a 501(c)4. Phil has a keen sense for what matters to the various stakeholders surrounding transit issues, can recruit partner organizations effectively, and excels at activating the community to his cause. This was evidenced by a hugely successful community activity to ride bikes along the route and produce a report, which gained us an audience with the NYC Department of Transportation.”
— Joshua Steinberg, board member of Friends of the QNS and a GTM director in the tech industry
"We miss Phil at our company! His communications skills with our clients were of the highest quality. Very few others got the sort of appreciative responses he received. We gave him some of the hardest accounts because we knew he could be counted on to clean them up. And his experience and ease with CRM (all of our software tools, really) ensured that I never had to worry whether he would meet (or exceed) monthly deadlines."
-- Rachel Pelowski, Sr. Manager at Yahoo