For leaders and teams where major relationships carry significant responsibility.

Some organisations have reached a moment where a small number of donor relationships hold extraordinary potential — and where the strategy, the stewardship, and the leadership required to honour that potential need careful, experienced attention.

This is the work Giardino is most often invited into. Not to implement a system or deliver a report, but to come alongside — to think with leaders, to help discern the right next step, and to bring clarity to relationships that carry weight.

We work with executive directors, development directors, and senior fundraising leaders at moments of growth, transition, or sustained pressure. The engagement looks different for every organisation, but it is always rooted in the same posture: relational, honest, and oriented toward generosity that endures.

What this engagement can include:

Major and principal donor strategy — clarifying priorities, pathways, and the conversations worth having with your highest-capacity partners.

Donor cultivation, stewardship, and solicitation support — thoughtful guidance for the moments that matter most, approached with confidence and care.

Campaign and case for support development — not just a compelling document, but a case that is true to who you are and worthy of the relationships it will enter.

Leadership accompaniment — a trusted, confidential space to reflect, recalibrate, and lead with intention through seasons that ask a great deal of you.

Who this is for

Leaders and teams for whom major giving is central to the mission — and who sense there is more possible in those relationships than current strategy or capacity has yet reached.

For organisations that need experienced leadership capacity — without a full-time hire.

Some organisations reach a point where the work has outgrown the team, but a full-time executive or development director isn't yet the right step — financially, structurally, or simply in timing. What's needed instead is steady, senior leadership: someone who can set strategy, guide the team, and carry real accountability, on a fraction of the time and cost of a permanent hire.

This is the work of fractional leadership at Giardino.

We step into the role — not as an outside advisor offering occasional input, but as embedded leadership with the authority and presence to move things forward. The engagement is ongoing and ratified by relationship, not a one-off project, and it ends when your organisation no longer needs it, or is ready to hire permanently.

What this engagement can include:

Fractional Executive Director or Development Director leadership — setting strategy, leading the team, and representing the organisation in donor and board relationships

Interim leadership during transition — providing continuity and steady hands while you search for a permanent hire

Embedded strategic oversight — ongoing senior counsel woven into your team's regular rhythm, not a quarterly check-in

Who this is for

Organisations that need sustained, senior fundraising or development leadership but aren't ready — or don't need — to bring that role on full-time.

Intentional space for fundraising teams to pause, reflect, and move forward.

Fundraising teams carry a weight that is rarely named. The pressure of targets, the complexity of relationships, the responsibility of asking people to give — these things accumulate. Over time, without space to surface and address them, they erode clarity, alignment, and trust.

Giardino Team Retreats are not performance workshops or motivational offsites. They are carefully facilitated gatherings that create the conditions for honest conversation, genuine recalibration, and a shared sense of what comes next.

Drawing on years of leading dispersed and cross-cultural fundraising teams — across time zones, across languages, across significant differences in context and expectation — we bring a steady, thoughtful presence that allows teams to speak honestly, think clearly, and reconnect with the generosity at the heart of their work.

This is not about fixing people. It is about restoring the conditions in which teams, leadership, and generosity can flourish.

One-Day Retreat (in-person or online)

For teams needing clarity and realignment without stepping away for an extended period.

Teams leave with renewed clarity around purpose and shared direction, greater alignment across roles and responsibilities, practical next steps that feel achievable and owned, and restored confidence to lead and fundraise with integrity.

Two-Day Retreat (in-person only)

For teams who need deeper connection, trust-building, and space.

Teams leave with strengthened trust and cohesion, honest alignment around strategy and culture, clarity on what needs pruning or reimagining, and a shared pathway forward that can be sustained over time.

Who this is for

Fundraising teams navigating change, pressure, or misalignment — and leaders who know their team needs space they have not yet been given.

Giardino is boutique by design.

We work closely with a small number of leaders and organisations at a time. This means every engagement receives genuine attention — not a delegated process or a templated response, but sustained partnership from someone who is fully present to your context.

If something here resonates, we would love to hear from you.