Building LightEd's fundraising engine

An early-stage nonprofit competing for global climate money against organizations with full development teams. No proposal calendar, no shared materials, and every application written from a blank page.

• Built the proposal calendar and submissions pipeline: deadlines tracked, owners assigned, inputs collected from program and finance leads on time.
• Created a living library of core materials, so each new application reused tested language instead of starting over.
• Ran clean energy policy and funding landscape research to find funders whose priorities matched LightEd's work.
• Wrote 70+ applications across grants, prizes, fellowships, accelerators and event selections.

Together, over $500,000 secured for programs that have reached more than 32,000 people, including Light House Station, a solar-powered community hub built from recycled plastic serving 3,000+ people, and Light For Peace, which has brought clean energy to over 10,000 refugees.

A small team does not need more applications. It needs a system that makes each one faster and better than the last.

The same setup (calendar, pipeline, materials library, funder research) is what I now build for clients, alongside the writing itself.