Jefferson Center for Mental Health

Jefferson Center is a Colorado mental health provider. I didn't work for them directly — I worked for Ginny Bishop, the fundraising consultant they hired, which changes the design problem completely. Everything I made had to work in a room I would never be in, presented by someone who doesn't design, and adapted on the fly for whichever funder was across the table.

It started with one request: a deck for a SWOT session on Jefferson Center's fundraising plan, needed in about forty-eight hours. Over the next eight months it became five distinct pieces of work — the SWOT session, a twenty-page partnership booklet, a matching pitch deck, a fundraising plan template, and event collateral for a donor event at St. Elizabeth's.

• The deliverable wasn't a document, it was a meeting. The SWOT deck had to host a live brainstorm over Zoom — people adding thoughts in real time, in a file they'd never opened, without a facilitator who could troubleshoot software mid-session.
• Every piece had to survive being edited by a non-designer. Canva wasn't a preference, it was the requirement: the consultant needed to change copy, swap a logo, and re-color a deck for a different funder the night before a meeting.
• One booklet, many funders. The partnership guide had to work handed across a table in a face-to-face meeting and emailed as a follow-up afterward — two very different reading situations from one layout.
• Copy-heavy content, donor-facing tone. A twenty-page benefits and partnership guide is dense by nature, and it was going to people deciding whether to give money to a mental health provider. It had to be navigable without feeling like a policy document.
• Confidential client material throughout. The work ran under NDA with content shared off-platform, which shaped how files moved and how much could be shown.

1. Designed a workshop, not a deck. Built the fundraising SWOT session in Canva as a live collaborative tool — sticky notes participants could add during the call, and stars for voting on what mattered most — then wrote the consultant a plain-language explanation of how to run it, because the tool is worthless if the facilitator is nervous about it.
2. Restructured the thinking, not just the slides. Reorganized the consultant's raw notes into a sequence that built an argument, rather than laying out the order they arrived in.
3. Designed the twenty-page partnership booklet. A copy-heavy guide to partnership opportunities and benefits, structured so a prospective funder could skim it in a meeting or read it properly afterward.
4. Built the pitch deck as a re-skinnable system. Logo, brand colors and mission statement swap per prospect, so one deck became a tailored deck for every partner conversation without a designer touching it.
5. Made the fundraising plan a template. “The Power of Giving” plan delivered in Canva so the consultant could revise copy right up to the client meeting.
6. Designed the donor event collateral. Thank-you card, event menu and tri-fold for the St. Elizabeth's event, carrying the same system into the room.

• A forty-eight-hour deck request became an eight-month working relationship across five separate projects.
• The SWOT session ran as designed — a live, collaborative brainstorm rather than a slideshow someone talked over.
• The consultant could tailor the pitch deck and revise the plan herself, for each new funder, without coming back to a designer.
• The work kept being resold: a consultant whose own reputation rides on what she hands her clients brought each new Jefferson Center project back.