John Kivimaki / Senior Counsel
John Kivimaki, CFRE, has over 30 years of fund raising and non-profit management experience. His career in the non profit sector followed a successful career in electoral politics.
As a resident of Weld County, John was elected to the Weld County Council in 2006 and served through 2012. The Council is charged with reviewing all aspects of County government and to make periodic written reports to the people.
John started his development career at Augsburg College, a private college in Minnesota where he was, Capital Campaign Director and spearheaded a successful drive to raise over $30,000,000. He then was Director of College Relations overseeing all Development and Alumni activities at another private college in Minnesota. He then established the development program at Dakota State University.
John directed the annual giving program at Colorado State University where he achieved double digit annual growth, both in dollars and donors in the annual fund. He developed a new system for direct mail to alumni that nearly doubled direct mail income. At the Denver Public Library, John successfully completed a Capital Campaign for $6,000,000 on time and more than 10% over goal. Additionally, he raised more than $3,500,000 for a state of the art photo digitization project that has provided access to nearly 100,000 historical photos on the internet.
John served as Vice President for Major Gifts for the National Office of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. In this position John took the major gifts line from $2,000,000 to over $15,000,000 annually. While at the MS Society John was authorized to teach the curriculum of the Fund Raising School to MS Society staff.
In 2000 John Kivimaki founded Third Sector Consulting and provided fund raising and capital campaign counsel to organizations along the Front Range of Colorado. In 2005 he co founded the Stonehill Consulting Group.
John coauthored a definitive monograph on Transition Management presented to the /ARNOVA annual conference in 2004. In 2005 John along with Scott Smith presented at the Association of Fundraising Professionals International Conference on Transitions. John has taught sections on major gifts, planned giving and capital campaigns to the Regis University Masters in Non-profit Management Program.
John holds the Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) designation, this recognizes the achievement of an advanced standard of performance, education, knowledge and service to the profession.