By Invitation · Bend, Oregon
VIP Intensive
A 2.5 Day Retreat for Senior Leaders
This is not another fundraising workshop. It is a private retreat for the people who carry the revenue: solo executive directors and the leaders running development shops, who need to understand philanthropy at a strategic level, manage it well, and engage high-capacity donors with real sophistication.
Twenty senior leaders, four times a year, at Mary's home. You bring your portfolio. You leave with the strategic clarity to lead major gifts the way your organization actually needs.
$3,950
In-Person · Limited Availability
Only 20 seats available per intensive. These fill quickly.
A different room for a different job.
The Major Gift Intensive is a powerful two and a half days, and it is built for fundraisers across every career stage - from someone learning to ask for the first time to a veteran sharpening their approach. Thirty people, six cities, a shared curriculum.
The VIP Intensive is something else. It is twenty senior leaders who already own the revenue: solo executive directors and the people running development shops, sitting at a table where everyone has your job. The conversation moves faster. It goes deeper. It assumes you already know how to fundraise and need to know how to lead philanthropy.
If you are responsible for the number, for the strategy, and for the people your strategy depends on. This is the room built for you.
What We Cover
For the Person Who Carries the Revenue
This is the conversation senior leaders usually cannot have anywhere else, not with a board that wants a quick fix, not with a team that reports to you, and not in a room of thirty fundraisers at different career stages. Here, everyone at the table has your job.
Philanthropy at the Leadership Level
Understand how major donors actually think, decide, and give: not the theory, the practice. Learn to read a donor's philanthropic capacity and position your organization where their capital naturally flows.
Managing a Development Shop
How to structure your program, your time, and your team (even if the team is you) so major gifts get built instead of squeezed in between the gala and the appeal.
Sophisticated Donor Engagement
Move beyond stewardship-as-thank-you-notes. Build an engagement strategy that treats each major donor as a distinct relationship with their own rhythm, their own capacity, and their own definition of impact.
Reading Your Portfolio Like a Strategist
Where the real capacity sits, who is ready to move up, who is quietly lapsing, and how to triage a portfolio so your scarcest resource, your attention, goes where it matters most.
The Architecture of a Major Gift Ask
Not scripts for a junior fundraiser. The strategic framing a senior leader uses to position a transformative ask, choose the right number, and hold the room when the donor pauses.
Leading the Board Through Major Gifts
How to bring a board along when they want more events and more donors. The language, the numbers, and the confidence to redirect the conversation toward strategy that actually grows revenue.
Building the Systems That Survive You
A major gift program that runs on rhythm, not heroics. Cadences, moves, and accountability that keep working after the retreat and after you eventually hand the portfolio to someone else.
Your Money Map, Built in the Room
We do not talk about your portfolio in the abstract. We build the map, prioritize the donors, and pressure-test the plan against your real numbers before you leave Mary's table.
Role-Playing the Real Ask
Bring your hardest donor. We will work the actual conversation - the framing, the number, the objection, the silence - until you would rather have it than avoid it.
Leaders Who Came to the Table
What Senior Leaders Say After
"Mary's ability to ask all the right questions to understand your starting point and overall goals for supporting your organization is one of her strengths. She has definitely instilled in me to think and plan bigger."
Maren
Executive Director
"Book the VIP Intensive! It was the best decision I've ever made! I left feeling like 'I can do this.'"
Rachel
President
"After the first day with Mary, I had more clarity than I'd had in months. She helped me see exactly where the opportunity was, how to approach the donor, and what to say next. I walked away with a strategy I felt confident with, and within weeks, we closed a major gift."
Melissa
Director of Development
"I attended the VIP Intensive because I knew there were potential donors, but I didn't know how to get from 'great relationship' to 'major gift conversation.' Mary helped me map it out step-by-step. The call gave me the confidence and language I needed, and we ended up closing a 6-figure gift!"
RuthAnne
Executive Director
"I left the VIP Intensive thinking, 'Oh, this is actually possible.' She took the fear and confusion out of asking for a major gift and helped me build a strategy that felt respectful, donor-centered, and bold. The results have revolutionized my organization."
Laurie
Executive Director
In Their Own Words
August 2026
Inside the VIP Intensive
Twenty senior leaders, one table, 2.5 days of real work. A look back at the August 2026 retreat in Bend, Oregon.
Built Before You Arrive
Your Portfolio, Mapped and Pressure-Tested
A senior leader does not walk into a strategy retreat guessing at the numbers. Before you arrive at Mary's home, we build your Money Map and run a full analytics sweep of your portfolio, so the 2.5 days are spent making decisions, not assembling data. You walk in knowing where the capacity sits, which donors are ready to move, and which relationships have been quietly slipping.
The Money Map
An algorithm Mary has been honing for 10 years. It isolates your current major donors for renewal, identifies who is ready to move up, flags those who have lapsed and could be recovered, and shows you exactly where the next gift is hiding. For a leader managing limited time, this is how you decide who gets it.
360° Analytics
A complete sweep of your philanthropic landscape: how it is shifting over time, where the gaps are, and where your energy will actually move revenue. It is the strategic context surrounding the Money Map, so you see both the forest and the trees before you make a single decision.
Your 200-Page Workbook
Two weeks before the retreat, you'll receive a 200-page workbook in the mail. It includes all the pre-work and pre-reading so that when you arrive at Mary's table, we get straight to strategy, not catching up.
No wasted time. No orientation. You walk in prepared, and we spend every hour on the decisions that actually move your program.
Who Belongs in This Room
This Is For Senior Leaders
The VIP Intensive is built for the people who own the revenue and cannot offload the hard conversations. If you see yourself below, this room was designed for you.
The Solo Executive Director
You are the development department. Fundraising is one of the nine jobs you carry, and major gifts keeps getting pushed to the bottom because nobody showed you how to lead it alongside everything else. You need the strategic framework, not more tactics to squeeze into your week.
The Development Leader
You run the development shop, managing a team, a portfolio, and a board that does not always understand philanthropy. You need to think like a strategist, engage donors with sophistication, and build a major gift program that holds up under scrutiny and outlasts you.
Before You Come
Travel & Experience FAQ
About Mary
Mary Petersen spent 25 years as a working major gift officer before she started coaching. She's raised millions from living rooms, boardroom lunches, and farmhouse tables.
She is the author of What to Say (International Impact Award Winner) and Small Table Big Philanthropy, and the founder of Hey Fundraiser. This is someone who did the work, not someone who studied it.
The Implementation Promise
Most training ends when the room empties. This one ends when the work is done.
Be here for the whole retreat, bring your donor list, and come to your coaching calls afterward. If your prospect list, your money map, your scripts, or your ninety-day plan are not finished when those calls run out, I keep going until they are.
No extra fee. No cap on the number of calls. There will be twenty of us, so I will know if you are stuck before you have to tell me.
I am not promising you an outcome I do not control. I am promising to stay until you are holding the thing you paid for.