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Fundraising and Advancement Leadership Roles

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Diversified Search Group maintains a freestanding Fundraising and Advancement practice that works across the firm’s broader Nonprofit and Arts & Culture, Education, and Healthcare practices. This specialty practice was established in 2000 and is led by Gerard F. Cattie, Jr., a former development professional with the University of Pennsylvania.

Diversified Search Group is the only generalist, top-10 firm in the U.S. to maintain a practice dedicated to senior-level fundraising and advancement searches. This longstanding practice’s work is enhanced by Diversified Search Group collectively working with our specialty companies: Koya Partners, Storbeck Search, and Grant Cooper, which specialize in mission-driven search with nonprofit, higher education, and healthcare clients, respectively. We leverage one of the executive search industry’s greatest combinations of resources and expertise in fundraising and advancement, the collective strategic experience therein, and extraordinary market reach.

The Fundraising and Advancement practice has worked with many of the world’s preeminent nonprofits, including global NGOs, social service and advocacy organizations, academic institutions and educational organizations, healthcare providers, arts and cultural entities, associations and membership societies, and foundations, among others. We have developed flexible search models that allow us to work successfully with all types of organizations, small or large, as each is distinct in the coalescing of mission, paradigm, culture, and constituency.

Nearly all of our dedicated team has worked together for approximately a decade with no attrition. The leadership of the team has worked deeply in the world of philanthropy, not only through their work in executive search, but by also previously serving as frontline fundraisers and leaders for nonprofit and academic organizations, gaining valuable insight into the qualities and experience necessary to be successful as a modern fundraising and advancement professional. This experience, and our understanding of best practices and trends in the field (e.g., integration of external relations and adoption of the advancement model, use of advanced metrics and data analytics, increasing focus on expanding individual major gifts), combined with our attention to gaining the most thorough understanding of our client organizations possible, informs our recruitment strategies and enables us to be selective and discerning in evaluating candidates for the right match.

In addition to directly executing search assignments, the Fundraising and Advancement practice serves as a centralized resource for strategic counsel and search partnership to the overall Diversified Search Group.

Gerard F. Cattie, Jr.

Managing Director and Practice Leader, Fundraising and Advancement

Based in New York, Gerard is Managing Director and Leader of the Fundraising and Advancement practice.

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