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Kevin Johnson, principal of Retriever Development Counsel LLC, coaches nonprofit leaders on how to be more effective in choosing strategy, charting new directions, and building sustainable funding models for their organizations. His book, The Power of Legacy and Planned Gifts: How Donors and Nonprofits Can Change the World, was recently published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley. Examples of recent projects include:

• Developing a strategic plan by powerfully and effectively involving key donors, staff, and community allies
• Providing ongoing capital campaign coaching for several executive directors, a college advancement vice president, and director of development as they lead multiple campaigns
• Facilitating board retreats to create the next "big, audacious goal" for an international group
• Analyze and re-conceptualize development work and help create culture of philanthropy for a private school
• Review a college's approach to planned gifts by focusing on the fact that most planned gifts come in the form of bequests from loyal annual fund donors and not major-gift oriented trusts or complex gifts
• Start a children's group on the path to fundraising diversity by developing a fundraising board and expanded donor base.
• Crafting expansion and fundraising strategy for a regional group gaining national prominence
• Create a plan to re-organize development functions by spreading responsibility among volunteer board members and professional program staff

Since founding Retriever Development Counsel, LLC in 1998, Kevin Johnson's consulting practice evolved from jump-starting major and legacy gifts projects (86 in the last 11 years) to focus on strategic planning, facilitating board retreats and trainings, and capital campaign coaching.

About his work, Kevin says, "I look for patterns, people, and connections and how best to influence and connect them in order to accomplish larger objectives. It has been my experience -- and perhaps this is major donor fundraising experience speaking -- that to empower others to take big strides gets larger, more lasting results in the long run."

Kevin helped nonprofit groups secure more than 500 legacy and major gifts valued at $89+ million and helped grow 86 major, legacy, and capital campaigns. His new book on legacy gifts and financial sustainability for small and mid-sized groups published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley is now available on Amazon and Kindle.

Nonprofit leaders often seek out Kevin when other consultants have not lived up to expectations or have been unable to produce the needed results: "My practice began focusing on legacy and estate gifts. Over time more executive directors and board presidents asked me to coach them in capital campaigns, new strategic initiatives and facilitating leadership retreats and planning processes; more often now I am asked to function as a leadership coach for executives and leaders."

A coaching client recently said of him, "Kevin is a great 'booster'. Not only does he make me feel like I can tackle what I need to do, he gives me to tools to do it and lets me know we can check in along the way if I need extra support." Another coaching client, an executive director, rated the last six months of monthly coaching sessions as a "9 of 10" saying "they helped me reflect using a different lens, looking at different ways to resolve situations; there are things I refer to constantly."

Kevin is professionally active regionally and nationally. He also lends his expertise to the Oregon Community Foundation as a volunteer grant reviewer (since 2002). Kevin is a regularly invited speaker at regional and national conferences. In a workshop presented at a national conference, the editor of a national Canadian publication described his presentation on measuring success and linking out-comes to strategic objectives and fundraising as "the best he had heard on the topic in his 17 years as an editor."

He established his financial acumen early, receiving a BA in Banking and Economics from Goddard College that included a thesis focused on the groundbreaking work of ShoreBank in Chicago. He later earned designations as a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) and Certified Specialist in Planned Giving (CSPG) at the Institute for Philanthropic Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Recently, he completed the nationally recognized Coaches Training Institute "Coaching Training" series, a six-month long professional training program. Kevin has lived and traveled all over the West. Prior to living in Portland, he lived in northern California, Arizona, and rural Washington, where he built an all-solar, self-sufficient homestead complete with orchard, horses, dogs, cats, and chickens. While living in the woods he built a 2,000 person environmental citizens action group that was acknowledged nationally for its work.

Additional background:

In the role of executive director, he helped a large children's service organization get back on track, serving 12,000 children; as the acting deputy director of a federal center for management training, he helped it make the shift to a manager-centered training program annually serving more than 6,000 managers in residential and on-site programs and an additional 18,000 managers through distance learning programs; as a consultant, he helped create strategic plans, and raise venture capital starting three high tech companies.

Projects he organized have been featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine, in a full-length story in Time magazine, several times on the front page of USA Today, on CNN, and on NBC's Today Show.