Amy Eisenstein, MPA, CFRE

Author of:
50 A$KS in 50 Weeks: A Guide to Better Fundraising for Your Small Development Shop

Amy M. Eisenstein, the author of 50 Asks in 50 Weeks: A Guide to Better Fundraising for Your Small Development Shop, published by CharityChannel Press, is the principal and owner of Tri Point Fundraising, a full-service consulting firm for nonprofit organizations and foundations. Her firm serves a wide variety of social service, educational and healthcare organizations.

Before creating Tri Point Resources, Amy served for more than ten years in the nonprofit sector as a director of development for large and small nonprofit organizations. These include the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, the Associate Alumnae of Douglass College at Rutgers University, and Shelter Our Sisters, a battered-women’s shelter. For these organizations she raised millions of dollars through event planning, grant writing, capital campaigns, direct mail as well as major and planned gift solicitations.

Amy is a frequent speaker at conferences and a facilitator of board retreats. She currently serves on the board of the Association of Fundraising Professionals – New Jersey Chapter and is chair of the 2010 New Jersey Conference on Philanthropy. She received her Master’s Degree in Public Administration and Nonprofit Management from the Wagner Graduate School at New York University and her Bachelor’s Degree from Douglass College at Rutgers University.

About the Interviewer

Ms. Eisenstein is interviewed by Stephen C. Nill, J.D., CEO of CharityChannel. Mr. Nill founded CharityChannel in 1992 as a means of connecting his nonprofit hospital chain's fund development staff over the Internet to their colleagues at other organizations. That first discussion community grew into what is today the oldest and largest community of third-sector professionals in the world, comprised of well over 150,000 participants worldwide.

He has been working in the US and international third sector for more than 30 years. He has served as the Chief Development Officer at a major Southern California university, the CEO of a large health care foundation, a vice-president of fund development of a U.S. west-coast nonprofit hospital chain, as a founder and acting director of development of a parochial school in his community, and as a founder of an organization dedicated to providing food and clothing for homeless persons in Southern California.

Mr. Nill is an attorney admitted to practice in California in 1981. His clients include some of the 100 wealthiest families in the United States as well as nonprofit organizations and educational institutions throughout the United States, Canada, and the UK. He has conducted continuing education classes for lawyers on advanced topics in estate planning and taxation (including gift planning), tax-exempt organization law, and Internet law, for such organizations as the State Bar of California, the Western Conference on Tax Exempt Organizations, CEB, and others.

He received his Juris Doctor degree from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles (1981), and his Bachelor of Arts degree in two majors, Communications and Political Science, from California State University, Fullerton (1978). He was selected as Executive Editor of the Daily Titan, the university's daily newspaper.

Over the past nearly three decades, he has been a keynote or plenary speaker at most of the third-sector's professional organization international, national and regional conferences.

Mr. Nill is a frequent media source on nonprofit-organization issues, appearing on numerous broadcast news programs such as Fox News and CNN. He has been quoted in numerous print publications such as Fortune Magazine, London Times, New York Times, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Chronicle of Higher Education, Nonprofit Times, etc.

Mr. Nill formerly served on the board of the Giving USA Foundation (also known as the AAFRC Trust for Philanthropy), which publishes the annual Giving USA report. He is a member of the advisory board of the National Philanthropic Trust. In 2005 he received the President's Award of the American Association of Grant Professionals.

Mr. Nill, an amateur computer scientist, he has a particular interest in the application of quantum mechanics to computing. He is also a composer of symphonic music.

He has been happily married to his first wife continuously since 1978, has two beautiful grown daughters, and has a golden retriever who thinks she's daughter numbers three — and she is.