Our Story

Elevate was founded by CEO Alayna Buckner in January 2013. As an experienced grants consultant, she saw the need for an improved contract grant writing experience that was more affordable.

At the time, she was mentoring enthusiastic, intelligent, early-career writers who wanted to use their skills to help nonprofits and wanted to figure out a way to serve organizations of all sizes—who desperately needed hard working, talented grant writers.

Building and maintaining an effective grant writing program requires strategy and deep knowledge about nonprofits, program design, funders, and the sector—as well as massive attention to detail and lots of administrative work: tracking deadlines, and creating, compiling, and updating attachments.

The solution: a team of people.  Segmented and shared responsibilities.  Talented, but less experienced, professionals being mentored by experts—making the grant writing product more affordable and more effective—with more people thinking about strategy, more people identifying opportunities, and a lot more capacity.

Now ten years in to this experiment, Elevate has grown from a single desk in a shared workspace, to a team of over 80 staff — including exceptional institutional fundraising strategists, talented grant writers, project coordinators, and training professionals.

Across our entire team, you’ll find a deep, authentic passion for the success of our clients.  We are excited to help them grow and committed to them achieving their missions.