She is also associated with McNellis Compression Planning®, a 7-step visual planning process used extensively in the non-profit and community college sector, as well as in business and industry. In that capacity she assists in facilitation of Compression Planning Institutes, marketing, web content, and public relations. She conducts planning sessions for both the profit and nonprofit sectors in strategic planning, project planning, grant development, and opportunity and/or challenge solutions.

Her career began at Cecil [Community] College in 1990 where over the course of 14 years she led the Foundation and College in all aspects of resource development. There she revitalized a dormant foundation board, developed the Alumni Association, and initiated the college’s first employee giving campaign, and conducted numerous targeted campaigns. From 2003 to 2013, Polly served as Executive Director for the Council for Resource Development (CRD), the national association of community college resource development officers, representing over 1600 members across the country. She helped bring CRD to national prominence and the organization became the go – to source for information on community college advancement and grant development for their own members, members of Congress, the media and other associations.

Polly has extensive experience in strategic, tactical and project planning; project management; fundraising campaigns including annual fund, capital and employee campaigns; major gift/planned giving programs; grant development; alumni development; and public relations, marketing and freelance writing.  Binns has taught at community colleges and in higher education doctoral programs since 1995. She has degrees in theater arts and writing, and holds certification as a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE).

Diane H. Leonard, GPC is an experienced and respected grant professional who has provided grant development counsel to nonprofit organizations of varying size and scope for more than a decade. Clients she serves include health care providers, advocacy organizations, social services agencies, elementary and secondary schools, and municipal corporations. In addition, Diane is an in-demand speaker and trainer on the topics of grant readiness, grant writing and grants management and regularly provides her expertise to audiences ranging from national conferences to boards of directors for small, nonprofit organizations.

Diane founded DH Leonard Consulting & Grant Writing Services, LLC in 2006 and has secured more than $34 million to date in competitive grant funds for its clients from the federal government, state and local governments, and private foundations. Diane founded the firm in order to focus on increasing nonprofit capacity related to grant seeking and grant management. Her passion for providing customized technical assistance and capacity building support to nonprofits was supported in her role as a program officer at the Michigan Women’s Foundation, a statewide public foundation, early in her career.  That passion is what fuels Diane’s approach to customizing each client’s scope and service arrangement to best meet and support their current internal grant seeking and grant management capacity.

Diane’s focus on nonprofit capacity has also led to a strong focus on increasing individual grant professional capacity within grant seeking organizations as well as within the freelance field. As a result, she co-founded #grantchat, a weekly Twitter chat for grant professionals, with her co-moderator Jo Miller, GPC, CSMS of JM Grants in April of 2013.

She is an active member of the Grant Professionals Association serving on both their Social Media Committee and Grant News Committee. Diane also became an “Approved Trainer” through the Grant Professionals Association in the fall of 2014. She is a graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with a Bachelor’s of Science in Industrial and Labor Relations. Diane became a Grant Professional Certified through the Grant Professionals Certification Institute in April 2013.