Kelly Ciotti

Kelly Ciotti is passionate about philanthropy and connecting people with opportunities to invest in their own life-changing passions. Over the last 15 years, Kelly has led campaigns and major gift initiatives raising hundreds of millions of dollars for a cross-section of nonprofits, including healthcare, human services, secondary and higher education, and cultural organizations.

Kelly helps nonprofits grow revenues and philanthropic gifts, reduce costs, and operate at high efficiency to maximize donors’ return on investment. She is pleased to have conducted successful comprehensive and capital campaigns to help Medical Teams International triple the number of natural and humanitarian disasters they respond to; to double the size of UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center; to establish a breast care center and a cardiovascular institute at Yavapai Regional Medical Center; to build a new home for Cristo Rey High School Sacramento; and to create a pain clinic, a memory care unit, and a retreat center at Dignity Health.

Over the course of Kelly’s career in philanthropy, she has served as a major gifts officer (soliciting and closing more than a hundred 6-, 7-, and 8-figure gifts, as well as dozens of planned gifts), a chief development officer (recruiting, training, and leading high-impact teams), and a fundraising consultant (primarily designing, planning, and directing the largest fundraising initiatives in partner organizations’ histories). Kelly brings to each client engagement a solid grounding in best practices coupled with the capacity and desire to think strategically and out-of-the-box.

Kelly received a B.A. in Germanic Language and Literature from the University of Kansas, an M.P.A. in Nonprofit Management from the University of Washington, and is a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE). She has lived and worked for three years in Germany (one as an exchange student and two as a research assistant for a member of the German Parliament), two years in Guatemala (teaching at the German School) and 6 months in Costa Rica (working for an education nonprofit). She lives in Seattle, WA, is fluent in German and Spanish, and loves to travel.

select client partners