About
Coaching & Consulting on Life, Leadership and Fundraising
About Margaret …
Margaret Katz Cann believes that, as fundraisers, we are way too often in apology when we ask for money. As a Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), Margaret specializes in executive fundraising coaching, board training and consulting, Margaret works with nonprofit and startup executives to stop tripping over their ask, to connect to passion and leadership – and step into the world of compelling fundraising. Margaret is an experienced and joyful fundraiser, having spent 22 years at the Community Foundation Boulder County. She is passionate about the intersection of coaching with fundraising, and the way leaders who are willing and wanting to up their game can step away from anxiety and dread can step into their leadership as fundraisers for their organizations. Her nonprofit clients include executive directors, board members, and development staff, where she works with organizations to plan and then adds coaching to make the plans become reality. Her for-profit clients include startup founders and teams needing to raise capital for their visions. She holds a special love for storytelling and relationship building in development.
Margaret’s career in development, spanning 2+ decades, included both actively fundraising and leading a 5-member team that raised $12 million a year and also oversaw donor relations for a donor-advised fund program. She has experience raising money for annual operations, initiatives, major gifts, planned gifts, and events, oversaw a 5-member team, and offered extensive donor relations and philanthropic services to existing donors and fundholders. During her tenure at the Foundation, she helped bring the organization from a two-person startup with $200,000 in the bank to a 13-member community resource that had almost $150 million in endowments and grants paid.
As a senior-team level Vice President, she also contributed to developing organizational infrastructure, budgeting, goal-setting, team building, legal, financial and investment oversight, vision work, and other organizational needs.
Margaret also has a stake around personal development (including her own), and works one-on-one with clients in and out of the nonprofit world to address their places of stuck, in work and relationship and family. Her passion is inviting people into full permission.
Prior to falling in love with fundraising, Margaret worked as a journalist. Her resume includes working at the Associated Press, as well as the Aspen Times and K-USA News. She is a skilled writer and loves to work with clients on storytelling, in both their written materials and verbal presentations. She co-authored a consumer guide for women, “The Feminist Dollar: A Wise Woman’s Buying Guide,” with her mother.
Her nonprofit clients focus on a variety of mission areas, from basic needs to adolescent mental health to offering opportunities to people with disabilities.
Margaret holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Cornell University. Margaret is a Certified Profession Co-Active Coach (CPCC) through the Co-Active Training Institute (CTI). She also is a graduate of CTI’s Leadership Program.
What People Say About Working with Margaret
“Before working with Margaret, I didn’t feel confident or organized around fundraising. Margaret taught us how to do that. She helped us introduce a year-end appeal, she worked with us to come up with a resonant message that made all the difference. And I am more confident in asking for money and in my leadership. We doubled what we brought in year end from last year. She’s really good at this.”
“I have spent the past 2 years growing into my potential and changing my relationship with the things that scare me most - believing in my worth, asking for help, and freeing myself from the scarcity mindset that has always held me back. Furthermore, I never realized how much the funding that I have been able to raise depended upon that transformation. I don’t know where I would be had I not decided to take the leap of faith and start working with Margaret.”
