Practitioner-first fundraising expertise

THE RD PRO COACH

Meet the Founder

Amy Sexton Stanislavski, CFRE, 20 years in the development chair, $750M raised, and one platform built to share what actually works.

Amy Sexton Stanislavski, founder of The RD Pro Coach

Why this matters to you

If you're reading this, you're probably running a development program with more expectations than infrastructure.

Your board wants a major gifts program. Your ED/CEO wants a planned giving strategy. Your campaign is due in six weeks and you built the template yourself at 9pm last Tuesday.

That's not a gap in your skill. That's a gap in what the field makes available to practitioners who aren't at $50M organizations with four-person development teams.

I spent years inside that gap — as a development leader, as a consultant, and as someone who watched talented fundraisers burn out because they were solving problems from scratch that someone else had already solved. I built TRPC because the tools, frameworks, and coaching I had access to at Boys & Girls Clubs of America shouldn't require a seven-figure consulting budget to reach a development director at a $3M community org.

The $27M result didn't happen because I handed someone a framework. It happened because I knew exactly where major gift relationships break down at the practitioner level, and I could name the specific move that was missing. That's what 20 years in the development chair produces. That's what this platform is built on.

Practitioner credentials

Built in the field

Amy spent years as a senior development leader at Boys & Girls Clubs of America and a number of other organizations, supporting fundraising strategies across more than 2,000 organizations. She has led annual funds, major gift programs, and planned giving campaigns, and coached one development professional from a $1,000 gift to a $27M blended commitment over three years.

She built TRPC because talented development professionals were reinventing the wheel alone — often in small shops, without mentors, without models, without time. She had the models. She built the platform.

Her approach: skip the 80-page report no one reads and give practitioners what they can use Monday morning — without the corporate consulting theater. Her clients call it a relief.

  • Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE); CFRE credential requires demonstrated professional practice, not just coursework
  • 20+ years of development leadership including senior roles at Boys & Girls Clubs of America
  • $750M+ raised across annual funds, major gifts, planned giving, and capital campaigns
  • AFP Immediate Past President, Northwest Indiana Chapter
  • Speaker: BGCA National Conference, AFP LEAD, San Diego Fundraising Conference, National Mentoring Summit, CAUSE Camp
  • Philanthropic Leadership Institute Certificate, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
Amy Sexton Stanislavski at work

Career highlights

Context for the tools

Amy started her development career when "moves management" was still written on index cards and your major gift portfolio lived in a binder. She built annual funds, managed major gift programs, and ran planned giving campaigns before most fundraising software had a mobile app. That's not a nostalgia point — it's context for why the tools in this library are built around how development actually works, not how a software company thinks it should.

The years she spent supporting fundraising strategy across more than 1,400 Boys & Girls Clubs of America affiliates shaped how she thinks about development at scale. When your job is to help hundreds of organizations raise money simultaneously — organizations with different budgets, different boards, and different communities — you stop believing in one-size-fits-all frameworks. You build things that practitioners can actually use, in the office they actually have, with the team they actually have. That's the design principle behind every resource in the TRPC library.

The result she's most proud of didn't come from a campaign. It came from a coaching engagement — a development professional she worked with over three years who moved a single donor relationship from a $1,000 annual gift to a $27M blended commitment. That shift required understanding exactly where major gift relationships stall at the practitioner level, and knowing the specific move that breaks the stall. Twenty years of sitting in the development chair produces that kind of judgment.

She founded The RD Pro Coach in 2024 because the gap she kept seeing wasn't a talent gap. Talented development professionals were everywhere. The gap was access — to practitioner-tested tools, to senior-level coaching, to the kind of expertise that used to require a seven-figure consulting budget or a very lucky mentorship. TRPC is the answer to that gap.

Speaking

Topics Amy presents on

"Stop the Churn"

Donor retention strategy and the Retention Jumpstart Framework for development teams (Upcoming Feature at the San Diego Fundraising Conference)

"Building a Strong RD Team Through Emotional Intelligence"

Featured at the BGCA National Conference

"Building Your Endowment from Scratch in 90 Days"

Featured at the BGCA National Conference

"The Ask Is the Easy Part"

Major and planned gift solicitation for practitioners

"From Burned Out to Built Different"

Development professional sustainability and leadership

AES Consulting

Senior consulting for larger organizations

AES Consulting is Amy's senior consulting practice reserved for larger organizations, complex multi-year engagements, and situations that require embedded, high-level development leadership. If you're a $5M+ organization facing a transition, campaign, or capacity rebuild, AES may be the right fit.

Next step

Three ways to work with Amy

Consulting

Strategic engagements for organizations that need Amy in the room

Explore consulting

Speaking

Conference keynotes and training sessions for nonprofit organizations and development teams

View speaking topics