The principals of Gardner & Associates share a century of fundraising experience with over $450,000,000 raised for our clients.
Paul M. Gardner, Ph.D., CFRE
Paul brings over fifty years of “in the trenches” fundraising experience to Gardner & Associates clients. He has served a full spectrum of organizations, including libraries, schools, colleges and universities, retirement and long term care organizations, international development agencies, health care, youth agencies, social service, arts organizations, and churches. He has been a part of capital campaigns whose combined goals exceed $400 million. Having lived and worked in Arkansas for over thirty years, Paul is well known and respected in Arkansas’ not-for-profit community.
Paul has served in the Development Office of Harding University working with major gifts, alumni development, and annual giving. He also served as Vice-President for Institutional Advancement at Ohio Valley University and Director of Resource Development at Heifer Project International. He served as associate Vice Chancellor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and as the Executive Director of the Arkansas Cancer Research Center Foundation at UAMS.
He is active at the national level in the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) and is the past treasurer of that national body. He is past president of the Arkansas Chapter of AFP and has the distinction of being named by colleagues in 1994 as Arkansas’ Outstanding Fund Raising Executive. He recently completed service on the national board of the AFP Foundation.
Paul is a graduate of Harding University and West Virginia University. His doctorate is from Ohio University. Paul and his wife Mary live in Searcy, Arkansas. He applies his skills by serving on the board of Vera Lloyd Presbyterian Home and Family Services.
Walt Eilers
Walt Eilers is Gardner & Associates Senior Associate. Walt brings fourteen years of marketing and sixteen years of fundraising experience to the firm. He specializes in communications and branding strategies, grants research and writing, feasibility and needs assessment research, non-profit board development, team development and strategic planning.
He provides full-service fundraising, communications and development consulting services to a range of clients - libraries, food banks, universities and social service groups.
Walt is actively supervising fundraising projects with Northeastern State University, West Texas A&M University, and serves as a Senior Fellow to the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation coaching nonprofits around the state.
He has been a teacher, not for profit executive, marketing research specialist, corporation executive specializing in marketing research in wireless and broadband communications.
He is applying his organizational skills as the President of the Botanical Gardens of the Ozarks in Fayetteville where he lives with his wife Linda.
Frederick R. Hueston, Ph.D., CFRE
Dr. Hueston has served the nonprofit sector since 1984. 2012 marks his twenty-eighth year as a professional fundraising executive. He recently joined Gardner & Associates as Senior Associate, specializing in planned giving.
Fred holds a doctorate in Educational Management and Development, and initially began his career as Assistant Vice President, followed by Executive Director of Development, at New Mexico State University. During that tenure, NMSU completed a highly successful $20,000,000 comprehensive capital campaign in celebration of its centennial in 1988.
Dr. Hueston has taught in the graduate school at the University of Arkansas/Little Rock as an Adjunct Professor in the Nonprofit Management Program. He has served as President of the National Committee on Planned Giving (NCPG) for Arkansas and on numerous committees for the Arkansas Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP). He has also served as the Founding State Program Chair for Leave A Legacy-Arkansas, a statewide planned giving education program to benefit all nonprofit organizations and churches in Arkansas.
In 2001, Fred’s peers recognized him as the Outstanding Fundraising Executive of the Year for the Arkansas Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP).
Dr. Hueston is a graduate of Grove City College in western Pennsylvania, and holds advanced degrees from the graduate school at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. He has been married for thirty-two years to the former Pamela Ann Schlater and they have two sons, Cameron and Devin. The Huestons live in Conway.
Why Gardner?
You may ask, “Why Gardner?” Why, because, we specialize in “Growing philanthropy.”
G&A encourages its clients to consider four innovations:
1. Serve as “a community change agent.” Collaborate with “natural partner” agencies outside your NPO in new relationships to generate transformational change and to enhance your mission and outreach.
2. Use technology to improve engagement and outreach, segment communications, enhance productivity, ensure accuracy and streamline operations.
3. Encourage innovation in your projects and daily operational structures to differentiate your NPO.
4. Assess your NPO’s leadership and operations annually to encourage flexibility, to seek creative solutions, to address the challenges of the New Economy and to continue to grow the capacity of your NPO.
When Paul Gardner, Fred Hueston and Walt Eilers assist you and your NPO, we provide a strategy and solution customized for your philanthropic need.
With a century of fundraising experience among its consults G&A brings experience, success and innovation to your campaign and philanthropic needs.
We can help in many ways:
- Cultivate awareness of your NPO’s mission
- Prune overhead expenses
- Eliminate bad habits
- Harvest accomplished goals
- Grow your organization and leadership
- Nurture prospects
- Foster board members and volunteers
- Dig yourself out of a hole
- Swell your planned giving
- Breed new grants
- Plow new ground
- Strengthen your database
Gardner & Associates (G&A) was founded in 2008 by Dr. Paul Gardner to provide a single source for fundraising consulting to a variety of organizations, including schools, colleges and universities, retirement and long term care organizations, international development agencies, health care, youth agencies, social service and arts organizations.
G&A specialties include community and NPO needs assessment, strategic planning, campaign research, planned giving and technology applications to enhance campaign results and to define donor motivations.
In the current economic environment, G&A recommends that its clients collaborate among like kind not-for-profit organizations to maximize your opportunities, and G&A has success in this arena.
