Cooper Coleman is a full-service recruiting and consulting firm partnering exclusively with nonprofit organizations, foundations, and research and academic institutions to drive meaningful growth. We move organizations forward by placing the right leaders in the right roles at the right time, and we help to strengthen management and fundraising capacity to amplify their mission and impact.
We work with organizations of all sizes locally, nationally, and globally. Our practical, actionable, strategic approach helps our partner organizations achieve durable solutions and sustainable growth.
We represent our partners as if we are a member of their team—with passion, integrity, and a deep understanding of their challenges and opportunities. We intuitively know what makes the work they do unique and essential.
We are an LGBTQ+ owned business that embraces demographic, experiential, sexual, and cultural inclusion. We believe everyone is better when leadership reflects the diversity of its people and when an organization reflects the diversity of those it serves.
The Team Moving You Forward!
An ever-growing cadre of incredibly talented professionals extends the capacity and capabilities of our team. They include recruiters and organizational development experts, frontline fundraisers, planned giving experts, communicators, marketers, designers—each of whom has been hand-selected from our previous work experience and meets our rigorous expectations for performance, expertise, and continued professional development. Meet a few of them below.
We take extraordinary measures to preserve dignity in the recruiting experience. Recognizing there is a person behind each resume, we treat each candidate with humanity, clarity, and respect—as the assets they are to our sector, the third-largest driver of the U.S. economy.
The right leaders in the right roles are essential for success. The most successful organizations do not settle on their leaders, they strategically and meaningfully choose each one.
Recruiting the best candidates can be protracted and time-consuming. For that reason, we do the heavy lifting to find your ideal candidate, so you can focus on other priorities. We help organizations assess their unique needs to build a comprehensive profile of the professionals they require. We leverage our extensive network of passive and active candidates throughout the sector to place the right leaders in the roles most essential to your success.
Chicago-based Cooper Coleman LLC has been retained by the East Coast Zoological Foundation (ECZF) to lead searches for the organization’s first chief operating officer and their next chief philanthropy officer. This strategic expansion is integral to ECZF’s continued impact on conservation and community engagement, encompassing Brevard Zoo and the new Aquarium campus in Port Canaveral. “ECZF is a
Virtually every industry needs top-drawer chief development officers. CDOs play a key role in planning, coordinating, and administering capital campaigns, corporate giving, and galvanizing new donors while keeping previous funders content. Implementing funding strategies that “keep the lights on,” according to recruiters specializing in the function, is Job No. 1. Following an extensive national search,
Chicago-based Cooper Coleman LLC has expanded with the additions of Ben Bisbee and J. Michael Durnil as directors of executive search. “These new appointments come at a time of significant expansion for Cooper Coleman, reinforcing the firm’s commitment to driving meaningful growth and impact for non-profit organizations,” the search firm said. “Driven by their core values of
Chicago-based Cooper Coleman LLC has assisted in the recruitment of Kesha Larkins as the new executive director of ReVive Center for Housing and Healing in Chicago. Ms. Larkins is a seasoned non-profit leader with a track record in fundraising, operational management, and program development. With a commitment to trauma-sensitive care, she has dedicated her career to making
October 12, 2023 – LOS ANGELES, CA – Cooper Coleman LLC, a national boutique nonprofit executive search firm, welcomed John Toolan as vice president, executive search. Toolan, with his remarkable passion for the nonprofit sector and vast experience in advancement and executive search, is poised to significantly contribute to the growing firm’s continued success. For more
CHICAGO, IL – Cooper Coleman LLC has placed John Roane as Chief Operating Officer (COO) at New York City-based Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (Lambda Legal). A national search led by Johnny Cooper, Founder and Principal of the growing firm, identified Roane, an accomplished nonprofit executive specializing in building and continually improving organizational operations
(April 20, 2022) Cooper Coleman LLC has appointed veteran nonprofit operations executive, Tony Paskauskas, as COO, a new role at the firm, to scale the firm’s business operations and finance capabilities and extend its executive search and consulting capacities. Paskauskas most recently led the operations, logistics, customer service, and donor stewardship functions behind a $305
(Jan. 4, 2022) Cooper Coleman LLC has placed Kate Schroder as President and CEO of Cincinnati, OH-based Interact for Health. A national search led by Bill Coleman, Co-Founder and Principal of the growing firm, identified Schroder, a healthcare leader with more than 15 years of experience in both the public and private sectors. Among her
(Jan. 11, 2022) Cooper Coleman LLC has hired Paul Towne as Executive Search Consultant, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, to expand the firm’s executive search capacity and extend its reach to social sector organizations throughout the United States. Paul’s leadership experience spans more than 20 years in nonprofit organization management, fundraising, and technology