June 4th meeting of the WNY ED Network

We have our first guest speaker for our first program meeting of the WNY Executive Director's Network! The topic, as identified by all of you who filled out the survey, is Fund Development, something everyone wants to talk about!

Our guest will be Neil Melbroad. For nearly 30 years, Neil has worked in nonprofit fundraising. Beginning his career in 1979 as the director of planned giving at Canisius College, he worked on a successful $8 million capital campaign and helped set up a strong planned giving program that continues to generate many planned gifts for the College to this day. He went on to spend 8 years at the Buffalo Museum of Science where he led the Museum in its successful $3 million capital campaign. During his leadership, the Museum’s membership base grew from 1200 to over 14,000 members and its annual fund saw a five-fold increase. For the past 15 years, Neil has been the Assistant Executive Director of the Greater Buffalo Chapter of the American Red Cross where he built a major gifts program that has helped increase the chapter’s unrestricted individual and corporate annual giving from $140,000 to $1.1 million and oversaw a successful $3 million campaign. He also created the Chapter’s successful annual event the M*A*S*H BASH, which generates nearly $500,000 per year. Neil has done a great deal of consulting for other non profits in the area including being campaign counsel for both the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy’s $13 million capital campaign and WNED’s $15 million capital campaign, helping structure a major gifts program at the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens, and working on feasibility studies for both Gilda’s Club and Hilbert College. For the past four years, Neil has been working with a local arts collaboration made up of CEPA Gallery, Just Buffalo Literary Center and Big Orbit Gallery to help strengthen their development programs. Neil is an Adjunct Professor at Canisius College teaching in the Non Profit Management concentration in the Graduate Communication and Leadership Program.

Hope to see you there!

WHEN: Wednesday, June 4th

TIME: 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. (remember to be on time or even come a little early since the first half hour will be networking)

WHERE: Buffalo Museum of Science