Sarah West and Associates provides strategic planning, fractional/interim executive leadership, campaign design and management, and organizational development services and counsel to higher education, health care and entrepreneurial clients. We work intensively and collaboratively with client leadership to design and activate customized solutions. We translate creative strategy into an actionable roadmap, inspire the support of internal and external stakeholders, and accelerate the institution’s forward momentum.
Strategic Planning and Organizational Development
We bring deep experience in reengineering organizational design to maximize growth and ROI. Program assessments and multi-year organizational plans focus on identifying and mitigating issues related to revenue performance, goal-setting, pipeline, stakeholder engagement, program investment, staff deployment, brand and messaging, and culture.
Strategic planning and organizational growth design
Program assessments or “gap analyses”
Business process design
Campaign Strategic Design and Execution
At Sarah West and Associates, we know that successful campaigns cultivate a shared enthusiasm and sense of momentum around the vision and aspirations of the institution. Most important, a campaign effort provides a platform by which organizations can transform, build a stronger base of philanthropic support, and extend longer-term fundraising capacity and constituent engagement. Whether your institution proceeds with a comprehensive campaign or a set of defined strategic initiatives, the necessary work to ensure internal and external alignment enables us to bring our key stakeholders together in a sustained conversation around the institution’s future. Together, we can help you fuel the incredible ideas and programs that will propel the institution forward.
Campaign Strategy and Design
Leadership Engagement and Alignment
Campaign Architecture and Case for Support
Campaign Management and Oversight
Campaign Communications
Constituent Engagement Strategies
Fractional/Interim Executive Leadership
Sarah West and Associates provides critical, interim leadership and management oversight, both short- and long-term, according to client needs, in the following areas:
Oversight and management of comprehensive advancement programs
Campaign management
Strategic planning and operations
Marketing, communications and donor experience programs
Design and Delivery of Skills-Building Training Curricula
Sarah West and Associates offers a robust curriculum of e-learning and onsite training programs for both fundraising teams and volunteers.
In consultation with clients, we are able to customize an integrated curriculum for fund-raising teams to support their engagement with key principles and core skills, with a primary focus on the donor cycle and fundraising within a campaign environment.
Programs for volunteers focus on their critical role as ambassadors for your institution. We work closely with clients to adapt presentations to incorporate the brand, case for support, and messaging platform for your institution.
Words of Praise for Sarah West & Associates
I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with Sarah West for over a year now. In her role as our campaign counsel at the University of Chicago. Sarah has been instrumental in both as our Campaign Architect and as well as a trusted counsel.
I cannot attest strongly enough to Sarah’s deep intellectual knowledge of higher education and comprehensive campaigns, her extensive technical background in campaign management, and her ability to design the framework that prepares the university to successfully launch and sustain a multi-year campaign. Her intellect, familiarity with academic and administrative leadership, strategic insights into philanthropy, and deep care for the team are truly appreciated.
Armin Afsahi
Vice President for Alumni Relations and Development
The University of Chicago
“Since I began working at City of Hope one year ago, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work with Sarah West. In her role as a significant consultant, Sarah serves as both our Campaign Architect and our Interim Senior Vice President for Campaign Strategic Initiatives. My position as Senior Vice President for Individual Giving requires that Sarah and I work hand-in-hand, talking and meeting daily.
I cannot attest strongly enough to Sarah’s experience (particularly with Campaigns), her intelligence, her strategic lens into philanthropy, and quite frankly, her willingness AND her ability to do whatever is required to advance the mission of the organization and the work of the Office of Philanthropy. She is, in a word, REMARKABLE.
Should any organization have the opportunity to engage Sarah to help them both dream and execute, seize it! I learn from her, and am inspired by her, each and every day.”
Susan C. Dolbert, PhD
Senior Vice President, Individual Giving (former)
Office of Philanthropy
CIty of Hope
“Sarah’s gap analyses provided deep insight into our fundraising operations, shedding light on necessary moves to dramatically build and strengthen our organization. Sarah’s extensive experience and knowledge were apparent in her thoughtful, data-driven, and analytical approach; and her respectful approach to campus partners enhanced our relationships with those partners. As a direct result of Sarah’s work, we’re seeing substantial improvements in the degree of alignment across our campus fundraising teams and increasing fundraising capacity. The blend of her data-centric approach and people skills served NC State extraordinarily well.”
Jim Broschart
Associate Vice Chancellor (former)
University Development
North Carolina State University
“Working with Sarah West is an honor and a joy. She is truly a consummate fundraising professional with exceptional experiences, energy and grace for every situation. Sarah does a beautiful job of blending her own frontline experiences with campaign management, organizational understanding and future focus thinking to provide clients a meaningful engagement that leads to stronger culture and performance.
I have partnered along Sarah on a handful of clients and there truly is no other consultant who brings the depth of understanding and awareness to every discussion. She is an excellent communicator. A talented trainer. A committed partner who adopts your outcomes as her own. Sarah is a brilliant strategist.
Partnering with Sarah is a true experience and I leave every conversation a better practitioner. Her commitment and passion for our work is contagious. That combination allows all who work with her the opportunity to grow and thrive in their work.”
Kathy Drucquer Duff
Consultant, Coach and Optimizer
KDD Philanthropy, Inc
About Sarah West
Sarah West is a nationally recognized senior institutional and external relations advancement professional with 40 years of experience in research-intensive higher education and biomedical research and healthcare environments.
As principal of Sarah West & Associates, Sarah has provided philanthropic management consulting services and counsel to a select number of higher education, healthcare and entrepreneurial clients since 2000, largely in tandem with a concurrent career as an executive with five public and private research universities. Since 2018, Sarah has focused full-time on her consulting practice.
From 2008 – 2018, Sarah served as Associate Vice President of Strategic Planning and the Campaign at Duke University, where she was responsible for the strategic development, oversight and management of Duke’s successful $3.85 billion-dollar campaign, Duke Forward, from inception to close. She was the primary architect of this campaign, working with academic leadership, colleagues, and volunteers across all schools and areas at Duke to drive both the conceptual design and successful execution of the campaign. As one of three members of the Vice President for Alumni Relations and Development’s leadership team, she concurrently played a key role in the strategic direction of the overall advancement program, developing and executing initiatives to increase the fund-raising capacity of the organization.
Prior to her tenure at Duke, Sarah served in the advancement programs at the University of Virginia, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Claremont Colleges, the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) and Georgetown University. At UC San Diego, she was the associate vice chancellor for University Development with oversight of the University’s successful $1 billion campaign and with management responsibilities for 150 staff members. At Georgetown University, she acted as associate vice president for development, overseeing the initial strategic plan and implementation of a $1.5 billion+ campaign. She subsequently was engaged for two years as counsel to the vice president and associate vice president for advancement at Georgetown. Ms. West also has served in leadership roles in two online learning companies.
In 2021, Sarah was appointed to North Carolina’s State Board of Community Colleges.
Sarah holds an MBA degree from the Anderson School at UCLA and a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.