For twenty-five years, Joanna Wasmuth helped some of the world's most consequential organizations raise the money they needed to do the work that mattered. She came to know that work from the inside: as Managing Director at Carter Global, directing campaigns from ten million to three hundred million dollars across forty-seven countries, and as chief executive of USA for IOM, the United Nations Migration Agency's partner in the United States.
Then she stepped back. Not to rest, but to ask a question she had been too busy to ask for twenty-five years: what does it look like to lead from the inside out, and to help other leaders do the same? That question became Harmony Group.
Twenty-five years in the rooms that matter
Twenty-five years of nonprofit leadership, fundraising, coaching, and philanthropy counsel stand behind every Harmony engagement. Joanna served as Managing Director at Carter Global, one of the world's leading fundraising firms, directing work across more than forty-seven countries. She architected campaigns from ten million to three hundred million dollars, and raised more than thirty million dollars a year as a global fundraising leader.
The Impact Orchestrator
Her title at Harmony, Impact Orchestrator, is not a flourish. It names two specific gifts.
The first is super-connecting. Across decades of work, Joanna has built relationships spanning the entire world of impact: funders, executives, board members, practitioners, and specialists. She connects the right people to each other, and that kind of network compounds with time in a way nothing else does.
The second is curation. Joanna holds a deep, vetted library of resources, protocols, modalities, and frameworks, built one engagement at a time over twenty-five years. She does not hand a client a playbook. She delivers the one thing they need, drawn from everything she has ever gathered, sometimes years after she first filed it away.
What she built to carry it forward
Joanna's judgment now travels through a set of named programs. Next 90 is a ninety-day mastermind cohort for leaders ready to think more clearly and lead more fully. Graceful Momentum is built for leaders in a demanding season who need to sustain what they have without burning through it. The Joy of Friendraising helps leaders and teams who stepped into fundraising responsibility without a fundraising background rebuild their relationship with the work. Strong Start is a ninety-day onboarding program for a leader's first months in a new role, designed to run alongside an executive search rather than compete with it. And the Five-Step Approach, Purpose, Mission, Involvement, Structure, Sustainability, is how she guides funders from intention to a giving strategy that holds together.
The partnership
Her rarest gift, curation, has lived in one place for twenty-five years: her own memory. That is also its limit. Greg's technology, Flourisha, is built to capture and scale exactly that kind of curated knowledge, so the right resource reaches the right person without depending on one person remembering it. His system is the accelerant for her judgment. It is the reason the two of them built this firm together rather than separately.
The record
Where the work was done
At VisionFund, World Vision's microfinance network, Joanna was Global Head of Fundraising and Marketing. Her teams raised more than thirty million dollars a year, and the network delivered a billion dollars in microloans across more than forty nations. She built World Vision's first online peer to peer giving platform, which moved more than ten million dollars in its first year, and she created a fifty million dollar Impact Investment Fund.
At Carter Global she was Managing Director and Global Strategist, advising some of the largest organizations in the world on fundraising, leadership, strategy, and board engagement.
As chief executive of USA for IOM, the United Nations Migration Agency's partner in the United States, she built the advancement function from nothing: a ten million dollar fundraising strategy, a phased path toward a five hundred million dollar multi-year campaign, a moves management program, and the governance and board structures to carry it.
Recognition and credentials
- Global Woman of Influence, Women's Business Enterprise National Council, 2009
- Excellence in Innovation Award, for World Vision's first online peer to peer giving platform
- BS in Organizational Leadership, Biola University, with diplomas in Integrated Marketing and Entrepreneurship
- Nonprofit Management Certificate, Harvard Kennedy School, in progress
- Board member, Enterprising Women magazine
- California Ambassador, National Blood Clot Alliance
Organizations Joanna has worked with
United Nations and USA for IOM, World Vision, VisionFund Microfinance, Plan International, Children International, ShelterBox, NFL Raliance, the US Center for SafeSport, the American Brain Foundation, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Urban Promise, and Afghan Rescue, among others. She has worked in more than fifty countries and travelled to more than ninety.
Joanna leads Harmony's work in nonprofit strategy and fundraising, executive coaching and leadership, and philanthropy and impact.
Explore Nonprofit Strategy and Fundraising, Executive Coaching and Leadership, or Philanthropy and Impact, or start a conversation.
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