People in Fundraising, season 3, ep. 10: Jessica Balsam, University of Washington

Artist, longtime Apra volunteer, and prospect management leader Jessica Balsam joins "People in Fundraising" to talk about all of these topics and more! One of the topics I was really interested in hearing from Jessica about was the Inclusive Design Framework and centering marginalized people in feedback loops in her development work.

* Her background in a variety of art forms (glass blowing, etc.) and working in the food service industry before serendipitously working in the development shop at an arts office. She oversaw data management work, "which is funny, considering I was an arts major who avoided any class that wasn't in the Humanities!"

* Why prospect management "calls to" Jessica due to its opportunities for analysis and data-wrangling.

* Why Jessica's involvement with Apra has kept her in prospect development, instead of other interesting areas such as institutional research. Among initiatives Jessica has helped to compile and share is Apra's Advocacy Toolkit.

* Outside of work, Jessica's interests in art and music, including karaoke (paging season 1 guest James Cheng!), mentioned around the 29-minute mark. She sang karaoke with a bunch of friends at the Apra PD conference in New Orleans!