Craig Shelley

Craig Shelley is a senior director at Orr Associates, Inc. (OAI), a premier consulting firm to the nonprofit industry with offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. He specializes in serving as an embedded fundraising, leadership and strategy partner to leading nonprofits. Prior to joining OAI, Craig served in a variety of positions with the Boy Scouts of America, most recently as National Director of Development and Corporate Alliances. He serves on the board of directors of the Association of Fundraising Professionals' New York City Chapter.

Articles by Craig Shelley

• The orchestra of philanthropic culture

  Tuesday, December 15, 2015

  ​Today's philanthropists evaluate every investment they make for its strategic and transformational impact. Nonprofits need to commit to a philanthropic culture in order to attract and retain these investors.

• Performance metrics that matter in major gifts

  Tuesday, September 15, 2015

  Fundraisers, and particularly major gift fundraisers, do the impossible every day. I recently tried to describe to my 6-year-old son what I did for a living, and the best I could come up with was, "I convince people to give their money away to help people they don't know and in most cases will never meet."

• Today’s major gift donors: Strategic philanthropists

  Wednesday, August 05, 2015

  ​Sean Parker's recent ​call to transform philanthropy in The Wall Street Journal has rightly drawn a lot of attention. There is great opportunity and need to accelerate giving beyond the 2 percent of gross domestic product it has maintained for generations, and to focus on solutions rather than treating symptoms. However, what was most striking was that I'm already seeing donors adopting many of the behaviors and actions he calls for.

• Defining a culture of philanthropy

  Wednesday, June 17, 2015

  As I've worked to build this culture either within or in partnership to various organizations, I've come to believe there are seven common elements of a philanthropic culture. By focusing efforts on these items, we can build this culture in organizations where it currently doesn't exist. By holding ourselves accountable to these qualitative metrics we can track our progress.

• Building a case that attracts transformational philanthropy

  Wednesday, April 01, 2015

  ​Donors are narrowing their focus and increasing the size of their individual gifts to concentrate and increase the impact of their philanthropic investments. For those organizations attracting these investments, the impact is transformational.