Nancy Burd

For over two decades, Nancy Burd has been a leader, practitioner and advisor in the nonprofit and philanthropic communities. Prior to founding The Burd Group, she was recruited to The Philadelphia Foundation to reinvent its philanthropic strategy. As Foundation Vice President, Burd developed and implemented that region's only general operating support and capacity building grantmaking program, establishing the Foundation as a leader and convener on critical sector issues.

Previously, she was the founding Director of Philadelphia's Nonprofit Finance Fund, where she guided its explosive growth and geographic expansion and invested nearly $50 million in loans and grants to area nonprofits. She advised foundations on strategic and effective philanthropy, and guided nonprofits through growth and change in visual and performing arts, community development, capacity building, leadership development, social entrepreneurship, nonprofit finance and management, governance and operations.

Nancy Burd has presented at seminars on effective grantmaking for philanthropists and foundations, capital planning, business planning, endowment and governance issues. Burd has been a featured speaker at the Yale School of Management Philanthropy Conference, Harvard Business School's Social Enterprise Initiative, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and Fels Institute of Government. She is an Adjunct Professor at the Fels Institute, a graduate program in government and public policy of the University of Pennsylvania, teaching Nonprofit and Foundation Management.

Burd has authored or co-authored several papers on general operating support, and capacity building, and led studies on arts policy and development. Her strategic planning accomplishments have been featured in publications of the Center for Effective Philanthropy and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. Burd holds a Master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Nancy brings her knowledge of the funding environment and her understanding of the technology and technical assistance needs specific to nonprofits.