Renner Consulting was founded by Sandra Renner, CFRE, in order to provide tailored and specialized fundraising services, organizational development and leadership training to nonprofit organizations. Its clients are local and national organizations and associations.

Renner Consulting bases its work on the belief that while nonprofit organizations have many commonalities, each organization is unique and therefore requires a creative and strategic approach. It also believes that the basic principles of fundraising and organizational development must be modified to fit within the framework of each organization, its culture, staff, board, and circumstances. Therefore, the strategies and techniques that work for one nonprofit may not work for another nonprofit. Services are designed with built-in flexibility in order to meet the client’s needs.

The firm believes that nonprofit consulting is most effective when the consultants, staff, and volunteer leadership work as a team; each bringing their strengths, ideas, and experiences to the process. Consulting is done with the client, not to the client. As a result, the client learns from the process and the organization has the skills to move forward.

Renner Consulting brings more than twenty years of consulting experience, its knowledge of current fundraising and organizational best practices, and its ability to tailor this knowledge and experience to each organization. Led by Sandra Renner, CFRE, who has consulted with more than 90 nonprofit organizations, it utilizes other seasoned professionals with years of experience to build the best team for each organization and situation.

Services include development and organizational assessments, feasibility studies, campaign consultation, fundraising counsel, training, leadership development, major gift development, strategic planning, and other specialized services.

About Sandra Renner

Sandra Renner, MSW, CFRE
Principal, Renner Consulting

Sandra has more than twenty-five years experience in the not for profit sector, most of it in fundraising. She has focused much of her work on developing creative campaign strategies and helping a variety of organizations develop their fundraising infrastructure. Her expertise includes major gifts, development assessments, training, board development, and fundraising planning. In 2005, Sandra formed Renner Consulting in order to provide more specialized and hands-on services to nonprofit organizations.

Prior to forming Renner Consulting, Sandra spent almost seventeen years with the Alford Group, a nationally recognized consulting firm, at its Chicago and Washington DC offices where she became regional manager. Before joining the Alford Group, she was the Director of The DuPage Community Foundation, the suburban affiliate of The Chicago Community Trust. As its first director, she was responsible for its overall administration, endowment and operating funds development, and grant making.

Her previous experience includes serving as the Development Director for two mental health agencies and as a school social worker and special education administrator where she published a curriculum guide and conducted a variety of workshops throughout the Midwest. She also worked as a sales representative for Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals and Baxter, winning numerous sales awards.

She has worked with more than 90 local and national organizations at Renner Consulting and the Alford Group, directing numerous successful campaigns and helping clients raise millions of dollars, attract new donors, and significantly enhance their infrastructure and volunteer leadership. She has served as lead counsel on campaigns ranging from one million to over eighty million dollars. Her most recent clients include the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, ANERA, William S. Abell Foundation and its grantees, CFED (Corporation for Enterprise Development,) Jubilee Housing, Montgomery County Collaboration Council for Children, Youth and Families, the Higher Achievement Program, Child Life Council, and the United States Eventing Association.

She is a board member of the Association Foundation Group and is a member of the Consultants Consortium and the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Greater Washington, DC where she was a member of the board of directors. She is a member of the International Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Committee on Diversity where she chairs a task force and a board member of the United Church of Christ Home. She recently co-chaired National Capital Philanthropy Day which honors individuals, organizations, and foundations that have made a difference in the greater Washington DC region.

Sandra has been an adjunct faculty member on fundraising since 1999 at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University and served the Grant Advisory Committee for the Montgomery County Council. She is a consultant for the Kellogg Foundation’s KAL program and a peer reviewer for the Standards of Excellence program of the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations. As a recognized leader in the fundraising community, Sandra has been a speaker at many conferences and meetings, including numerous presentations at the International Conference of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

In 2003, Sandra was awarded the Eugene A. Scanlan Outstanding Service Award by the Alford Group to recognize her exceptional leadership, commitment and service to the company, and to the profession of nonprofit consulting.

She has a bachelors degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a Masters of Social Work from Wayne State University in Detroit and has been a CFRE since 1995.