About

Kelly Kleiman, a lawyer educated at the University of Chicago, has spent more than 20 years in the nonprofit sector. She founded NFP Consulting after serving as Executive Director of the Chicago Children’s Choir and Assistant Dean of IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.  

These experiences prepared  her to become a serial Interim Executive Director. First she served a long stint as the turnaround Interim Executive Director of Open Communities, the fair-housing agency serving Chicago's northern suburbs, where she reestablished the agency's program and financial strengths. She has also been Interim Executive Director of Care for Real, which provides food and other basic needs to clients on the North Side of Chicago, and of Reading Between the Lines, which engages incarcerated people in active discussions of literature to foster critical thinking skills.

As a consultant, Kelly builds programs for using high-skills volunteers, conducts Board recruitment and training, and guides staff and Board through strategic planning.  She also helps raise money from individuals, using expertise she gained while serving as a major gifts officer in higher education and at human services agencies. Kelly writes powerful promotional pieces for nonprofits specializing in advocacy, arts, law and government, philanthropy, social justice and women and girls.

She also teaches workshops on using high-skills volunteers, creating a fundraising Board of Directors, and constructing a strategic planning process which actually works, on-site for individual clients and for agencies including the Association of Volunteer Administrators, Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management, Chicago Foundation for Women and United Way, among many others.