Bill Bayreuther, CFRE
Bill helps clients achieve their missions by working with nonprofit organizations, Tribes, and other governments to develop and implement comprehensive grant seeking programs that fund projects and yield increased and sustainable support, and by assisting businesses in securing capital funding. He assists with operating, project, capacity building, and capital fund raising strategy; foundation, government, and corporate relations; institutional donor prospecting, cultivation, and stewardship; grant seeking and reporting; and coalition fund raising. His clients in the United States and Europe range from all-volunteer to national nonprofits, and Tribes, municipal and state governments, and multinational corporations.
Bill holds the Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) designation, the first globally-recognized credential for fundraising professionals. His practice, registered in New Hampshire as Fund Raising Counsel, focuses on natural resource protection, restoration, management, and education; human services; outdoor recreation; historic preservation; renewable energy; and forest products technology.
Bill earned his B.A. from the University of Vermont (Anthropology and English) and completed nautical archaeology M.A. coursework at Texas A&M University. A Graduate Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, he conducted archaeological research in Northeastern North America. He was Curator and Library Director of the USS Constitution Museum in Boston and the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, and Interim Executive Director of the latter. He served as Executive Director of the Spring Point Museum in South Portland, Maine, and Grants Director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine. As the Downeast Lakes Land Trust’s Development Director, he coordinated a $3.2 million capital campaign that added 6,628 acres to the Farm Cove Community Forest.
Bill’s writing and counsel have yielded more than $100 million in grants and contracts (as high as $30 million) from 177 programs at foundations, nonprofits, corporations, and government agencies. Three fully-funded multi-million-dollar federal proposals he has written with clients have earned the nation’s highest competitive review scores. The Chronicle of Philanthropy has named a grant proposal budget a client produced based on his teaching as one of its website’s three most-read templates in its annual Reader’s Choice Top Resources. Bill has reviewed grant proposals as the Maine Arts Commission’s Museum Advisory Panel Chair and an Institute of Museum and Library Services General Operating Support Proposal Field Reviewer.
Bill is a Friend of and former SkillBuilder Trainer for the Maine Association of Nonprofits and a Maine Philanthropy Center Consulting Associate Member. He has served on the committee that creates the educational program of the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Northern New England Chapter Conference. His other volunteer activities have included, among others, service to the Land for Maine’s Future Board’s Conservation and Recreation Proposal Scoring & Selection Process Work Group, Maine Archives and Museums, the American Alliance of Museums, the Council of American Maritime Museums, and the Vermont Archaeological Society. Bill also is a former Budget Committee Chair of the Town of Readfield, Maine. When not enjoying free time with his wife and grandchildren, he is liable to be out fishing or hunting.