About Cleo

After 17+ years of experience working in the nonprofit sector, Cleo Cavolo founded Reyes Partners as a development studio unique to the fundraising industry. Cleo creates a personalized approach for each of her partner organizations to amplify their mission and move to a place of high-performance fundraising that can achieve ‘outsized’ results.

Cleo gained her industry expertise leading fundraising teams at iMentor and New Classrooms, raising $75M over a 10-year period and increasing annual revenues by 700 percent. To do this, Cleo partnered with entrepreneurs to create the fundraising strategy, build the organizational infrastructure and design the operational plan that made the highly ambitious growth goals of each organization a reality. Traditional fundraising consultants may provide guidance or have a strategy or assist with operations. The most successful development professionals will bring all of these things to life.

Cleo recently described a guiding principle this way:

“Brilliant strategies are the product of true collaboration. I love partnership not just because I am energized by the passion entrepreneurs have in their vision but because I know that partnership produces the best outcomes. This is why I prefer to think of myself as a synergist as opposed to a consultant. A synergist muscle enhances the power of other muscles. I like that. That’s what I do. I enhance the power of the amazing people (and organizations) I have the privilege to work with. I make their vision possible.”

Born in Point Reyes (CA), Cleo moved to lower Manhattan in 1983 with her mother who developed in her a deep social conscience, a driving desire for justice and passion to help all people reach their highest potential. While she considers herself more of a native New Yorker, something about her birthplace always calls to her. Where the peaceful hills meet the power of the ocean. This is Point Reyes. Now, Reyes Partners, where we bring together the head and the heart. The mindful and the powerful.

Cleo graduated with high distinction from Washington University in St. Louis and received her Masters of Public Administration from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University. Cleo is on the Board of Room to Grow, an early childhood organization. Cleo lives in Brooklyn with her husband, her 5-year old daughter, and her 2-year old identical twin boys.

Photo: Alex Fradkin