Bill Bayreuther, CFRE
Bill helps clients achieve their missions by working with nonprofit organizations 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 across the country range from all-volunteer local nonprofits to national organizations, municipalities, and 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 and cultural resource protection, restoration, management, and education; human services; outdoor recreation; higher education; renewable energy; and 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 nearly $66 million in grants (as high as $30 million) from 170 programs at foundations, nonprofits, corporations, and government agencies. The $6 million proposal he wrote with The Nature Conservancy in Maine to the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program was the highest scoring of the 111 FY2017 submissions from across the nation, and the only one fully funded. 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 helps create the educational program of the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Northern New England Chapter Conference held every third year in Maine. 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 hunting or fishing.