President & Founder
(she/her/hers)
Moira Kavanagh has spent her entire professional career as an agency direct marketer working with nonprofit organizations. Over her thirty years in donor development, she has designed and implemented successful direct response programs for nonprofits of all sizes.
She began her fundraising career in Cambridge, Massachusetts managing strategic, creative, and fulfillment elements of telemarketing campaigns for national membership, advocacy, and environmental organizations. Prior to founding MKDM in 1999, Moira worked in New York developing direct mail donor and membership programs for numerous national and regional advocacy and social service organizations.
In addition to engaging donors and inspiring philanthropy for nonprofits, Moira is passionate about advancing knowledge and professionalism in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. She served as Co-Chair of the 2015 Bridge Conference (DC), the nation’s largest direct response fundraising conference which brings together over 2,000 fundraising professionals and is sponsored by the AFP-DC and the Direct Marketing Association of Washington. Moira is a past Board member and president of the Direct Marketing Fundraisers Association, and in 2013 she served as Co-Chair of the DMA Nonprofit Federation’s Washington Nonprofit Conference. She is a regular speaker at industry conferences and is the co-author of The Art and Science of Multichannel Fundraising. She also volunteers in her own community in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is a current Board member of Tandem Friends School and a past Board member of the Virginia Discovery Museum.
Moira graduated cum laude from Tufts University with a B.A. in English. As an undergraduate, she served as President of Tufts Student Resources, the largest nonprofit, student-run business in the country which employed over 200 students in 10 divisions.