We help mission-driven organizations and independent schools raise more money with less stress—through thoughtful, tailored fundraising strategies that support long-term growth and mission alignment.
Explore What We Offer
Strategic Fundraising Planning
We help you align your fundraising goals to objectives, strategies, and tasks that will ensure you not only reach but exceed them. Our planning process will build your fundraising calendar to help you move away from scattershot guesswork towards a more focused and strategic approach that secures more major gifts and respects your donor base with thoughtful, segmented outreach.
Data Optimization and Analysis
We know that clean data is the foundation of an effective fundraising strategy. We ensure that your data is optimized to inform your longer-term planning and allow you to answer any question that you, your trustees, or your donors might have with actionable insight. We also help you build clear reports and can create customized dashboards to help you track progress of your annual fund or other campaigns.
Fractional Development Operations
We specialize in helping development teams--particular small ones--operate more efficiently with process documents and training materials based on industry best practices and our deep knowledge of fundraising CRMs. We can help onboard new team members, train your trustees or volunteer fundraisers, or just ensure your team is running like the well-oiled machine it could be.
Our Partners
About Kiptum Consulting
Meet Our Founder
Mike Smith has spent over 20 years in the field of K-12 education with the bulk of the last decade as a consultant for school and district leadership on a variety of subjects. His experience in research, data analysis, and strategic planning introduced him to the world of fundraising for independent schools, in which he gradually developed his expertise and the services he currently offers. Prior to his work as a consultant, Mike worked as a senior data analyst in the Chicago Public Schools supporting a region of elementary schools and guiding their leadership in responsible use of data and data-driven instructional practices.
Mike also spent six years as a Strategy Officer with Modern Teacher, consulting with superintendents and their cabinets in nearly 30 districts around the country as they designed and implemented multi-year strategic plans to spread innovative, learner-centered instructional models to all of their classrooms. To help execute those plans, Mike engaged with all levels of his client districts, training cohorts of teachers in learner-centered strategies, coaching school leaders on effective classroom observation practices, and holding regular full-day planning sessions with leadership cabinets.
Mike has not only trained over a thousand teachers on learner-centered practices, he also trained hundreds of district and school leaders on effective classroom observation and is an expert in Elmore, City, et al’s Instructional Rounds process. In one three-year engagement, Mike trained every principal and assistant principal in nine Delaware school districts–over 250 school leaders in total–over five full-day sessions. Mike is an avid runner and officially incorporated as Kiptum Consulting LLC in 2023 in honor of Kelvin Kiptum’s world record-breaking finish in the Chicago Marathon that year. He and his wife live just outside of Chicago with their six-year-old daughter and a whole bunch of pets.