Development directors and staff, executive directors, board members, volunteers, and anyone interested in the current philanthropic landscape.

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Laura MacDonald (she/her)
Founder and Principal, Benefactor Group

Laura MacDonald has worked professionally in fundraising and philanthropy for more than 40 years, although her interest in serving the common good may be traced to childhood experiences in church, clubs, and a large active family. When she joined a fundraising consulting firm in the early 1980s, she drew on skills learned in television production and corporate communications to tell the stories of hundreds of nonprofit clients. Her fundraising acumen was sharpened in the late 1990s when she served alongside a remarkable corps of dedicated professionals during The Ohio State University’s first billion-dollar fundraising campaign.

Building on these experiences, she established Benefactor Group in 2000; a firm that has applied its founding principle of “serving those who serve the common good” by helping hundreds of organizations fuel their cause with powerful fundraising, people, and systems. As founder and principal of the firm, her counsel is sought by leaders in arts and culture, higher education, healthcare, human services, and other nonprofit causes.

Laura is constantly curious about trends in fundraising and philanthropy and an astute storyteller. She is a frequent speaker at local, regional, and national conferences (AFP, AAM, AMDA, Charitable Giving Coalition, etc.) and has addressed hundreds of nonprofit boards. Her articles related to advancement and philanthropy have appeared in Advancing Philanthropy, Nonprofit Quarterly, Forbes.com, and other professional publications, and is consulted widely by publications such as The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, Penta Barron’s, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and was named her chapter’s “Fundraising Professional of the Year” in 2007. Laura is the author of The Endowment Handbook (Wiley, 2024).

She has served the sector through involvement in the Association of Fundraising Professionals, American Alliance of Museums, The Generosity Commission, and especially her service on the boards of the Giving Institute and the Giving USA Foundation. She chaired the latter from 2020 to 2022, helping to steer the organization through a period of extraordinary disruption, while advancing the understanding of philanthropy’s role in society. She is frequently called upon as a strategist, speaker, writer, panelist, commentator, and facilitator.