About Us
Our diverse backgrounds and decades of experience enable us to provide the customized strategic vision and targeted tools needed to build organizational capacity and sustainability in nonprofits.
We may be consultants by definition, but we work with the dedication of committed staffers to help nonprofits meet their unique challenges effectively and efficiently. Individually, we are knowledgeable, resourceful and adaptive. As a team, we offer a broad spectrum of skills and experience that would be difficult to find in one person.
Our Approach
We are deeply committed to helping organizations develop a more integrated and holistic approach to serving their missions, and accomplish this by listening carefully, rolling up our sleeves and working collaboratively.
Because we work with a limited number of clients, we are able to be highly adaptive and deliver uniquely tailored services. We typically begin a relationship with interviews, research and analysis to assess an organization’s strengths, weaknesses and potential. From there, we mobilize our resources to develop and deliver an achievable plan — whether it be overarching, as in a new fundraising strategy, or more tactical, as in grant writing, government relations, communications or creating a website.
In all our work with you, we will strive to build upon the strengths of your organization by actively engaging your community, staff, board leadership and donor base. As we work together, we will evaluate progress so that adjustments can be made. In this way your time and resources are not wasted, and you will always have a plan that addresses your organization’s real and current needs.
We will always give realistic advice — how you can do it and what you will need — not what we think you want to hear. And, if we see a need for services that we think someone else can provide more effectively, we will let you know, and give you recommendations.
Bios
Katherine DeFoyd — Founding Partner
Katherine DeFoyd
Katherine has worked as a fundraising professional for more than 20 years. She has been involved with every aspect of fundraising and has developed special expertise in government appropriations and public competitive grant sources. She has led clients successfully through board development, strategic planning processes, capital campaigns and annual campaigns, and has vast experience in developing and managing public/private partnerships.
Before founding Growth for Good, Katherine worked as development director for The Armory Foundation, MOUSE Inc., The Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service (NYU), and The Bertelsmann Foundation. She began her career in the Mayor’s Office for Business Development under Mayor Koch, helped found the Mayor’s Office for Public Private Partnerships under Mayor Dinkins, and directed Constituency Affairs for Manhattan Borough President Messinger.
She is a member of the board of directors of Harlem RBI and serves on the nonprofit’s capital campaign committee. Katherine has a B.A. in Economics from San Francisco State University and a Masters of Public Administration from the Wagner School of Public Service at NYU. Katherine is the author of four cookbooks. She lives in Maplewood, NJ, with her husband and two nearly perfect teenagers – who until recently she thought were immune to hormone induced rages.
Joyce M. Isabelle — Partner
Joyce Isabelle
Joyce has more than 20 years of non-profit management, strategic planning, and development experience, with a specialty in the performing arts. She is an effective organizer of collaborations between board members, volunteers, corporate executives, foundation officers, philanthropists and celebrities that further the mission of the non-profit. She has increased and diversified contributed income, and led successful annual campaigns that included institutional and individual giving, fundraising and cultivation events, database management and board development. She has secured more than $15 million in institutional grants for general, project and capital support including foundation, corporate, municipal, state and federal funds. Her work in individual giving includes executing successful benefits and major gift acquisitions.
Her previous positions include Development Director for both Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21) and The Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST), and Director of External Affairs for the Jazz Foundation of America. She also spent many years in various development roles at Theatreworks/USA, America’s premier theatre for young and family audiences. While at EST, she served as Acting Managing Director during the leadership search after the founder’s death.
Joyce has a B.S. in Arts Management from Russell Sage College with a concentration in chemistry and music history. She continued her graduate studies in Financial Management for Nonprofit Organizations at Seton Hall University. Joyce is on the Russell Sage College Alumnae Association Board of Directors and the Advisory Boards of Theatre C and Arete Living Arts Foundation. As a keyboardist, she has performed and recorded with original blues and rock bands and is a founding member of the pop/rock cover band, The Kludge. She now resides in South Orange, NJ, having lived in Astoria, Queens for 20 years.
Eve Peterson — Partner
Eve Peterson
Eve got her start in nonprofit work as a community outreach coordinator nearly three decades ago. She worked in marketing and as a writer and editor for twenty years before returning to cause-related work. At Growth for Good, Eve focuses on grant writing and strategic, program, and business planning. She works closely with clients to help them develop a compelling case for support — from targeted annual appeal letters to capital campaign case statements — for diverse constituents. Over the past five years, she has helped secure millions of dollars in capital and expense funding for New York City nonprofits. Eve is delighted to apply her analytical strengths and years of publishing, marketing and public relations experience to helping nonprofits do their important work.
Eve is a hospice volunteer for St. Barnabas Hospital and served on the board of Main Street South Orange (MSSO), a community-based nonprofit, for ten years. She has worked as a yoga teacher and a translator. Eve holds a B.A. cum laude in French from Kalamazoo College and was a French Government Teaching Fellow. She lives in South Orange, NJ, with her husband, two daughters and designer mutt.
Claudia Zeldin — Partner
Claudia Zeldin
Claudia is an accomplished professional consultant with 25 years of marketing and management experience with a strong expertise in strategic planning, business development, market research, communications, and branding. Throughout her career, she has created integrated marketing campaigns and developed strategic alliances for more than 100 nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Claudia has served as the Interim Executive Director of the Venture Philanthropy Partnership’s Special Needs Initiative in Philadelphia and as the New York State Director for TheLEAGUE, now GenerationOn.org.
As managing trustee of her family’s small foundation, Claudia coordinates grant making, oversees operations and succession training, and manages family dynamics (with a sense of humor). Claudia is a member of Philanthropy New York and has co-chaired its Family Foundation Peer Trustee Network.
A student of and advocate for system-wide educational reform and youth engagement, for 20 years Claudia served as a devoted board member and board vice president of Harlem RBI after school programs, serving on their Strategic Planning Committee since 1991 (awarded Best Board in NYC by Volunteer Consulting Group, 2010). She is also a founding board member of their DREAM Charter School. Claudia earned a B.A. in Communications from Tulane University’s Newcomb College and continued her studies at New York University’s School of Continuing Education in Nonprofit Management. Claudia lives in Brooklyn with her husband and three children, where she leads the Berkeley Carroll School’s Parent Association’s community service committee.
Call Us: 973-762-7645