Addie Nelson Backlund, MBA, has worked as a not-for-profit professional for over 30 years. Her experiences at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Columbia University, The New York Botanical Garden, the EastWest Institute, and the American-Italian Cancer Foundation include strategic planning, program and staff management, board development, development/fundraising, public relations, publications, website development, and systems implementation.
Addie was part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s capital and endowment campaign in the early 1980s. She organized the grand opening of the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing for Contemporary Art in 1986 and implemented the first database system for development and membership before entering the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in 1989.
Upon receiving her MBA, Addie was employed by The Charles Webb Company as consultant to US-based cultural institutions. She was recruited back to the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in 1992 to work on a $100 million capital and endowment campaign in the areas of major individual gifts and corporate and foundation relations. She later became Associate Dean for Development and External Relations at the Columbia University School of Nursing, establishing a full-scope, multi-million dollar development and communications program in several years from a base of only $100,000 annually.
Addie served as Associate Vice President for Development at The New York Botanical Garden, orchestrating the individual giving strategy for the initial years of a major multi-year campaign, and became Vice President for Development at the EastWest Institute as part of a new senior management team charged with de-centralizing and institutionalizing the programs, policies, and procedures of the international think tank/action network with offices in New York, Prague, Moscow, Kyiv, Brussels, and Belgrade. She established Addie Nelson Backlund Consulting, LLC in 2001.
Addie is co-author of the March 2008 BoardSource booklet, “Moving Beyond Founder’s Syndrome to Nonprofit Success.” She has been a member of The Foundation Center’s Fundraising Consultants Network and the Association of Fundraising Professionals in New York, as well as an independent contractor in fundraising with Partnership in Philanthropy in New Jersey. She holds a Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University and has performed as a classically-trained professional singer in opera, concert, and recital in the U.S. and abroad.
Addie Nelson Backlund Consulting, LLC 