Bluestone Fundraising Advisors

Bluestone Fundraising Advisors LLC is a fundraising consulting firm based at 1515 Green Valley Drive in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Founded in 2025 by Leslie Bluestone, CFRE, CFRM, the practice works with community colleges and small to mid-sized nonprofit organizations that want to build, strengthen, or restructure their development programs. The firm operates primarily in the Greater Philadelphia region, including Montgomery County and the surrounding suburban communities, and can be reached at (267) 500-9551.

The consultancy was established around a specific observation: many community colleges and modestly sized nonprofits carry ambitious missions but operate with development offices of one, two, or three people. Those teams often lack the bandwidth to step back and evaluate strategy, build a major gift pipeline, or train a board to solicit gifts. Bluestone Fundraising Advisors is structured to supply that capacity on a project, interim, or advisory basis rather than requiring an organization to add permanent staff.

Background and Leadership

Leslie Bluestone brings more than 25 years of fundraising experience spanning higher education, healthcare, and the performing arts. Thirteen of those years were spent in community college advancement, a sector with distinct challenges: comparatively young alumni giving traditions, student populations facing economic pressure, and institutional budgets that depend heavily on public funding.

Most recently she served as Associate Vice President of Development at Community College of Philadelphia, where she oversaw major gifts, planned giving, and corporate and foundation relations.

Her earlier roles include Senior Director of Development at Montgomery County Community College, Director of Individual Giving at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Director of Development at Bryn Mawr Hospital, and Major Gifts Officer at Bryn Mawr College. She began her career in advancement at the Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

Academically, she holds a bachelor's degree in French and English Literature from Barnard College and a master's degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. She carries the Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) credential and a Certificate of Fundraising Management from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University. Her approach to event fundraising has been presented at regional and national conferences, including a 2024 session with the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Services

The firm offers a defined set of engagements that can be purchased individually or combined into a longer-term relationship.

• Community College Fundraising: Advancement work built specifically for the two-year college environment, covering development assessments, prospect pipeline construction, donor engagement strategy, campaign feasibility studies and management, and event fundraising connected to student success outcomes.
• Development Assessments: A structured review of an organization's current fundraising strategies, systems, donor engagement practices, and staffing structure. The assessment identifies strengths, gaps, and growth opportunities, and concludes with written recommendations intended to be actionable rather than theoretical.
• Event Fundraising: Evaluation of return on investment for existing events, restructuring events so they align with mission, expanding the sponsor prospect list, building committee structures, timelines, and gift pyramids, coaching boards and committees, and producing a custom volunteer fundraising manual.
• Volunteer and Board Fundraising Training: Tailored sessions that give trustees and key volunteers the language, confidence, and tactics to engage donors and represent the organization accurately.
• Campaign Planning and Management: Feasibility studies, board and staff preparation, and full planning and management of capital, endowment, or comprehensive campaigns from initial testing through close.
• Major Gift Program Development: Pipeline building and planning focused on identifying, qualifying, cultivating, and retaining the small percentage of donors who typically provide the majority of contributed revenue. Planned giving and donor qualification are included.
• Interim Staffing: Experienced coverage for organizations facing a vacancy in a director or vice president level fundraising role, so solicitations, grant deadlines, and donor relationships continue without interruption.
• Frontline Fundraising Coaching and Mentoring: One-on-one work with development staff on practical skills such as drafting funder outreach emails, requesting meetings and sponsorships, structuring donor site visits, and preparing briefing papers for presidents and executive directors.

Client Base

Beyond community colleges, Bluestone Fundraising Advisors works with nonprofits addressing food and housing insecurity, organizations advancing health and wellness, groups engaged in social and criminal justice reform, and performing arts institutions. That range reflects Leslie Bluestone's own career path, which moved among academic, clinical, and cultural settings.

The firm is also part of a broader network of nonprofit consultants. When a client's needs extend past the services the practice delivers directly (for example, specialized grant writing, database migration, or marketing and communications support) the firm can bring in colleagues from that network, which widens the range and depth of assistance available without requiring the client to manage multiple separate searches.

Approach

Engagements typically begin with listening and diagnosis rather than a prescribed program. The development assessment serves as a common entry point: it establishes a baseline understanding of what an organization is already doing well, where revenue is leaking, and what the realistic next step looks like given staff size and budget. Recommendations are framed around mission alignment, meaning the suggested tactics are tested against what the organization exists to do rather than imported wholesale from larger institutions with different resources.

Event work follows a similar logic. Rather than assuming every gala should continue, the firm evaluates whether an existing event earns its cost in staff hours and volunteer energy, then either restructures it for better returns or recommends redirecting that effort elsewhere.

Practical Information

Bluestone Fundraising Advisors is located in Collegeville, Montgomery County, roughly 30 miles northwest of Center City Philadelphia, which places it within reasonable travel distance of institutions throughout the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Prospective clients can arrange an initial conversation by phone at (267) 500-9551. Because engagements vary considerably in scope, from a single board training session to multi-year campaign management, timelines and pricing are determined after an initial discussion of organizational needs and goals.