This workshop with John Robbins and Julia Berman will give you concrete steps for how to make a fundraising ask for your venture from High Net Worth Individuals or Foundations. What does an in person ask look like? How do you actually come out and ask? Do you include the amount or wait for them to suggest something? How do you set the terms of the gift? And how do you formalize it?

About the Leader:

John Robbins, Ph.D. is the Founding Executive Director of the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the United States. Since its inception, he has raised over $2.5 million for the organization, which was named CAIR Chapter of the Year in 2017. He is regularly invited to appear on media outlets throughout New England and nationally. Prior to founding CAIR-MA, he obtained a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University and held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania and Tufts University.

Julia Berman is Chief Partnerships Officer at Muso, where she leads resource mobilization for the organization. Muso’s first dedicated fundraising hire, she joined Muso in 2015 as Director of Development & Communications. She has built a team that has raised $65M for Muso to date, with a compound annual growth rate of 30%.

Julia was previously a Major Gifts Officer at the Center for Investigative Reporting in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has worked for the Office of Resource Development at Harvard Medical School, with Physicians for Human Rights, and on political campaigns in her native Oregon. She holds a master’s degree in International Affairs from Boston University, where she focused on human rights and democratization in Francophone Africa.