Katie Bartelt

I've spent the past decade building fundraising infrastructure for small and mid-size nonprofits in Sheboygan County and across Wisconsin. The organizations I work with have program depth that the development function hasn't caught up to. The fundraising runs on relationships and effort. The systems aren't there yet. That's the work.

I run KB Consulting as an embedded advisory practice. I work alongside your team on the parts of the development function that don't get done when everyone is in execution mode: assessment, fundraising strategy, donor data systems, board engagement, campaign readiness, event strategy. Engagements are scoped with flat fees and named deliverables. The work produces infrastructure you can run after I'm gone, not a memo that sits on a shelf.

The practice is concentrated in Sheboygan County, with clients across Wisconsin and the Midwest. Local knowledge matters here in ways that national frameworks don't account for. I know which foundations are stretched, which donors are already at the table for three other organizations, and which board networks have relationships worth using. That context shapes the strategy.

What I Work On

• Fundraising assessment and recommendations
• Development strategy and planning
• Donor-facing narrative development
• Case for support and donor journey maps
• Data infrastructure and CRM implementation
• Neon CRM and Salesforce fluency
• Donor segmentation and RFM scoring
• Reporting and dashboard architecture
• Fundraising event strategy
• Post-event donor engagement
• Board engagement preparation
• Resource development committee structure
• Pre-campaign feasibility and architecture
• Capital campaign readiness

The work is direct and collaborative. If you want someone who will hand you a 50-page framework and disappear, I'm not your person. If you want someone who will work through the actual problem and leave you with tools you know how to use, that's what I do.