Keynote for Annual Summer Symposium focused on Major Gifts
AFP Santa Barbara & Ventura Counties
A full day devoted entirely to major gifts. Engaging, interactive, and honest, where advancement professionals shared real challenges, asked tough questions, and walked away with actionable solutions.
Three Hours of Intense Major Gift Discussion
The day kicked off with three solid hours of deep, unscripted major gift discussion. Lots of Q&A, lots of open dialogue, and no generic slides.
Mary’s facilitation style is purposefully engaging and interactive. Fundraisers felt completely comfortable sharing their actual organizational bottlenecks, fears about the ask, and portfolio challenges, and worked collectively toward real, field-tested solutions.
What Mary Petersen Taught Me About the Courage to Ask-and the Courage to Be Human
By Elena Nicklasson, MA · Chair, AFP Santa Barbara-Ventura Symposium
“What Mary brought was not another keynote. It was relief.”
There is a strange superstition in fundraising that the more experienced you become, the less vulnerable you're allowed to be.
We buy the designer blazer. We polish the case statement. We rehearse the ask until every sentence lands exactly where it should. Then we walk into a donor meeting hoping nobody notices that our stomach is doing somersaults.
After more than twenty years in this profession, I can assure you that the butterflies never entirely leave.
As chair of this year's AFP Santa Barbara-Ventura Symposium, I had the privilege of helping organize a day devoted entirely to major gifts-a vision that belongs to Kathy Wertheim of Werth-It Consulting, who challenged us to focus our professional development on deeper fundraising practice and introduced us to keynote speaker Mary Petersen.
She didn't pretend to have discovered a magical formula. She didn't arrive with the polished certainty that often accompanies conference stages. Instead, she showed up as someone who has spent years in the same trenches the rest of us know so well: wondering whether to make the call, worrying about saying the wrong thing, and learning from the inevitable no.
Even better, she clearly had no interest in delivering the same speech she could have given anywhere else.
Within minutes, our audience had interrupted her with questions. People laughed. They shared stories and questions from their own organizations. Mary welcomed every detour and somehow managed to weave them back into the conversation without ever losing the thread. The presentation felt less like a lecture and more like sitting across from an exceptionally wise colleague over coffee.
That, in itself, was a lesson. I left with three ideas that have stayed with me:
Go Deeper, Not Wider
A bigger portfolio doesn’t mean a stronger program. Mary dismantled that illusion: focus on the donors who care most deeply.
Courage Over Perfection
You don't need a script that eliminates every mistake. You need genuine presence, active listening, and the nerve to ask clearly.
Be Human in the Room
Donors don’t connect with bulletproof corporate personas; they give to honest partners who share their passion for the mission.
Elena Nicklasson, MA
Chair, AFP Santa Barbara-Ventura Symposium
Inside the Santa Barbara / Ventura Retreat
Real moments from the day - small group breakouts, Q&A rounds, and hands-on major gift work.
Deep engagement, real discussions, and practical major gift problem solving.
Interactive exercises giving fundraisers the exact words and frameworks.
Hands-on roleplay and working through live donor challenges.
A room full of dedicated advancement professionals sharing candid realities.
No generic keynote: tactical strategy rooted in 25 years of practice.
Welcoming every question and weaving them back into concrete steps.
Actionable takeaways to take back to executive directors and boards on Monday.
Explore Ways to Work With Mary
Whether you need Mary for your conference or want to master solicitation with your team, here’s where to begin.
Book Mary to Speak
Keynotes, chapter workshops, and leadership retreats tailored specifically to your fundraising audience.
The Ask Workshop
A high-impact, four-hour intensive dedicated entirely to the exact words and pacing of the direct solicitation.
Major Gift Intensive
A 2.5-day deep dive in six US cities (plus virtual) to build a sustainable, high-return major gift program.
2027 Calendar
Every 2027 training date: workshops, three-day intensives, and retreats across the country.