I've run the operation you're trying to fix
In 2006, I joined Greenpeace USA as a canvass director, opening the Boston office for the monthly giving reboot 2.0. Over 11 years, I rose from canvass director to regional director to national operations director and national canvass director, building the largest in-house face-to-face canvass program in the U.S. (documented in our in-house canvass rebuild case study), managing multi-million dollar acquisition and retention programs, and leading 400+ staff across 17 field locations.
In April 2023, Greenpeace brought me back as a strategic consultant. Over 6 months, I analyzed 10 years of development data, redesigned all reporting across 9 programs, built the budget process from scratch, and provided 5-year forecasts used for international planning. The value was clear enough that Greenpeace invited me to join full-time as Development Operations Director—right hand to the CDO.
When the CDO departed in November 2024, I was already embedded. The systems I'd built over the prior 18 months meant the department absorbed the transition without disruption. The team was focused on year-end and executed. We retained 100% of the team and delivered +10% December income growth—this is what effective interim executive leadership looks like. I continued through December 2025, delivering 55% fully loaded ROI per monthly cohort at year 5 through retention-focused redesign.
I've been the vendor — and I know why the model is broken
After leaving Greenpeace in 2017, I became CEO of Focus Driven, then CEO of Membership Drive—a F2F vendor, then a tech-enabled hybrid trying to fix the market. I saw the economics from the other side: vendors optimize for volume and margin, not long-term donor value. I also spent 2021-2025 advising canvass vendors through pandemic recovery and enterprise launches.
That experience gave me a complete view of the market—in-house operations, vendor economics, startup challenges, and enterprise sales. I understand what works, what's broken, and how to fix it from every angle.
Why LFG Group Exists
After 20 years leading fundraising operations—in-house, as a vendor, as a consultant, and as a startup founder—I started LFG Group to offer what I wish had existed when I needed it:
Fractional COO/CDO capacity for organizations that need senior leadership but can't afford (or don't need) a full-time executive yet.
No decks full of strategy that never ships. No advisors who disappear after the presentation. Just operators who execute, deliver, and leave your organization stronger than they found it. And when the challenge is bigger than one person, the GTG Collective — nine co-founders, most of whom I built departments alongside — can deploy cross-functional teams from day one. The Grassroots to Governance newsletter is where all of us share what we've learned.
I also founded The Canvass, our face-to-face fundraising practice — a retention-first model that flips vendor incentives from volume to donor value. The same operator philosophy applies there: systems that prioritize long-term revenue over short-term metrics.
