Shelly Casto

Fractional Fundraising and Consulting Services

About Me

I am an experienced nonprofit leader and fundraising professional with deep content expertise in the ecology, agriculture, food justice, child well-being and arts sectors. Through 2019 my career focused on education programming in art museums including the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. At the Wexner Center for the Arts, I developed and taught a long-running course on environmentalism and contemporary art, and curated a series of artist projects focused on ecology and food justice. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I made a career change to focus directly on these areas. I spent the following six years as the first Executive Director of a small urban farm focused on children's health and well-being in a low income community. During this time at Highland Youth Garden I built an effective fundraising infrastructure, tripled the organization's revenue, raised a total of $1.6, substantially expanded its physical facilities, and dramatically grew its programmatic impact.I hold a BA from Oberlin College and MA from the Ohio State University. I’ve completed the Columbus Foundation’s Fundraising Leadership Academy.

Areas of Service

  • Grant prospecting and writing (private foundation, corporate, government)

  • Individual giving strategy design and implementation

  • Fledgling development department strategy design and implementation

  • Community arts programming design

  • Small nonprofit leadership

  • Interim nonprofit leadership

  • CRM (customer resource management) system implementation

Content Knowledge

  • Ecology

  • Agriculture

  • Education

  • Nutrition

  • Child Development

  • Arts

© Shelly Casto