Strategy · Funding · Systems · Story
I help nonprofits, foundations, and cities turn scattered evidence into fundable narratives, sound decisions, and systems their teams can keep using.
Recent work·Nevada Clean Energy Fund·City of Worcester
Selected work · 2026
Different sectors, same operating pattern: get inside the records, model what is true, build the thing that carries it, and leave the team able to run it without me.
Recentlythe NCEF spotlights page and contractor directory went live·the 611 Main Street case study joined the desk
Nevada Clean Energy Fund · Fellowship
“Daniel turned our project records into a public story we’re proud of, and left us systems our own team runs.”Kirsten Stasio, CEO
City of Worcester · Rappaport Fellowship
Selected builds
Fellowship build · 2026
A sourced map of the national funders most likely to meet a statewide green bank where it is, distilled to near-term options with decision points and timing. Every fact carries its source; where a figure is not disclosed, it says so.
Fellowship build · 2026
A single-file tool that turns dockets, registers, and court filings into a weekly digest and board-ready summaries a lean team can keep up with.
Practice background
I’ve worked on both sides of the grantmaking table. Before advising mission-driven institutions, I worked inside them, learning how money is raised, how grants move, and what it takes to keep relationships and systems working after the strategy meeting ends.
I supported the operations behind scholarship and fellowship programs designed to widen access to the legal profession: application processes, grant payments and reporting, events, records, and the day-to-day coordination that made the programs work for students and fellows.
In alumni relations, I coordinated communications, events, and relationship-building across a broad professional community. It was an early education in advancement as long-term stewardship: sustaining trust and a connection to the institution, not simply making an ask.
At Stupski I moved to the funder side, managing the grantmaking practice across education, food, and health portfolios in the Bay Area and Hawai‘i through the foundation’s planned spend-down. I helped carry grants from due diligence and agreement through payment, reporting, amendment, and close-out, and built the dashboards and workflows that gave staff and leadership a live view of the practice. I also helped turn grantee feedback into changes in how the foundation worked: clearer processes, more flexible grantmaking, less burdensome reporting.
I know what a proposal asks of nonprofit staff, what a funder needs to document a decision, and what the operating system has to do after the grant is approved.
For nonprofits & foundations
The flagship studies above are the Nevada Clean Energy Fund and the City of Worcester, but the practice was built inside California philanthropy, on both sides of the grant. I'm based in San Francisco and work with teams anywhere. If one of these sounds like your Tuesday, we should talk.
If you raise
"The LOI is due, and the story is scattered."
We pull the evidence out of your drives and your staff's memory, then ship a narrative a program officer can understand and carry forward. I have written these for a living and read them for a living. I know how they actually land.
"We won the grant. Now someone has to run it."
Post-award is where good fundraising quietly comes apart: restricted funds tracked in one person's head, report deadlines found late, subrecipients chased by email. We set up the calendar, the tracker, and the reporting rhythm, so compliance stops being a scramble every quarter.
"The funder asked for outcomes. Our data lives in nine spreadsheets."
We build the record once, then the public proof: a page where every claim links to its source, refreshed from a spreadsheet your team already knows how to use. No developer on call, no CMS to learn.
"There's a capital decision on the table and nobody has modeled it."
A building, a lease, a program at a new scale. We model the scenarios, stress the assumptions, and put the trade-offs where your board can see them. The same discipline a city gets, sized for you.
If you grant
"Our grants process grew by accretion. Every cycle hurts more."
After running the grantmaking practice at a spend-down foundation, I know where process debt hides: intake, docketing, review, payments, reporting, and the spreadsheet nobody admits is load-bearing. We redesign the cycle and right-size the technology around it: Salesforce, Fluxx, or whatever the cycle already runs on. The usual door in is a Cycle Audit: two or three weeks through the cycle, intake to payment, ending in a findings memo. And when a cycle needs hands rather than advice, I can run it.
"We're a spend-down. Every system we build has an end date."
Sunsetting is an operations problem disguised as a mission statement. I ran grantmaking operations inside a foundation on a clock: processes sized to their lifespan, records built for the archive from day one, close-out as a first-class function.
When appropriate, I can help explore whether capacity-building or technical-assistance support may be available for work like this, and shape the ask so a funder can say yes to it.
Services
Most engagements draw on at least two. I can carry the work from proposal to model to the system that keeps it current.
i.
Money in, managed well, and the math underneath it. Strategy and materials for organizations that raise; operational discipline for the ones that grant.
ii.
The plumbing that determines whether strategy reaches people. Built no-code where possible, documented always, handed off properly.
iii.
Operating records turned into claims that are accurate, sourced, and persuasive, in that order.
Ways to work together
Clarify the decision, review the record, and leave with findings and a practical path forward.
A proposal, model, board deck, funding strategy, workflow, or public-facing tool.
Grants management, fundraising, grantmaking operations, or a special project that needs an experienced owner.
How I work
Operational infrastructure decides whether policy actually reaches people. I build the infrastructure.
About
I'm Daniel Oviedo, a strategist and operator for mission-driven institutions. I spent eight years in the sector, first raising money for California nonprofits, later managing the grantmaking practice at the Stupski Foundation, before completing an MPA at the Harvard Kennedy School with a concentration in public finance.
In 2026, fellowships took me inside the City of Worcester's Executive Office of Economic Development (through the Rappaport Fellowship, a competitive Harvard placement inside city government) and the Nevada Clean Energy Fund, Nevada's statewide green bank.
I work in plain language, show my sources, and build things the client can run without me. Born and raised in Costa Rica; based in San Francisco; working anywhere.
The best fit: real work already done, evidence scattered across drives and memory, and a decision that can't stay abstract much longer.
Before you write
With a few lines by email and a short call. You leave that call with a view you can use, whether or not we end up working together. From there, work takes one of four shapes: a Funding Reset (a diagnostic sprint through your pipeline), a Cycle Audit (the same sprint for a foundation's grants process and platform), Proposal Room (a defined proposal built together), or fractional support over a season.
Scope and fee depend on the problem. After an initial conversation, I'll outline the work, timing, and a clear project fee before either of us commits.
Less than you'd fear. Outside help has to be worth the coordination it costs, so I start from the materials you already have, take responsibility for a clearly bounded piece, and keep drafts, sources, and assumptions visible as I go.
You do. Files, models, documentation, credentials: everything transfers.
Sprints run two to five weeks. Something reviewable usually exists in the first week.
I keep the practice deliberately small. If the timing or the fit is wrong, I'll say so and tell you when to come back.
Contact
Send three or four lines about what has to move, what is getting in the way, and when it matters. I'll reply with a candid view of the assignment, and whether I'm the right fit.
San Francisco·Remote-first·Taking a limited number of fall engagements
Digital strategy, content systems, and fundraising support for the Nevada Clean Energy Fund, whose record was growing faster than the tools for telling it.
NCEF had impressive projects and the receipts to prove them: by July 2026, more than $7 million deployed across 115 clean energy projects statewide. Like any young institution moving quickly, the evidence of that record lived across spreadsheets, announcements, presentations, and institutional knowledge. The organization wanted a clearer way to demonstrate where its capital was going, keep public information current without a developer in the loop, and translate its operating record into stories useful to borrowers, partners, and funders.
The first map prototype found the edges of the data, which is what prototypes are for.
The early version used three project categories and interactive city-level zooms. Testing it against the source data surfaced two honest limits: funding records and unique projects are not always the same thing, and locations were tracked at the city level. The production design was simplified to match what the data could support: a cleaner taxonomy, and a statewide view that implies no more precision than exists.
The live page, captured August 14, 2026: the statewide map in production, eleven project stories below. Live at nevadacef.org/project-spotlights.
The contractor directory, captured August 18, 2026: statewide coverage map, vetting checklist, and listings the team updates from a spreadsheet. Live at nevadacef.org/contractordirectory.
The page is live, and the pathway from internal record to public claim is now a repeatable workflow. The content model accommodates future projects without a redesign, every published claim links to its source, and content decisions stayed where they belong: with the organization's leadership.
What I built · as of August 2026
project stories, each linked to its source
workbook the team edits to update the live page
public tools live on nevadacef.org
Capital and project totals are NCEF's to report; they appear in the organization's own words above.
“Daniel turned our project records into a public story we’re proud of, and left us systems our own team runs: the spotlights page, the map, the contractor directory.”
Kirsten Stasio · CEO, Nevada Clean Energy Fund
Scenario modeling and RFP support for the arts-anchored redevelopment of 611 Main Street, a city-owned site at the heart of Worcester's Theatre District.
611 Main today, and one illustrative future from the delivered study. The render is a concept, not a design.
611 Main Street is the former Registry of Motor Vehicles: granite-clad, boarded up, and sitting on one of the rare downtown parcels where a single redevelopment decision shapes a corridor's identity for a generation. The study examined which combinations of housing, arts, and ground-floor uses could deliver civic value, serve a visible affordable-housing need, and remain financially plausible. It also asked what it would take to carry that analysis from a graduate study to a redevelopment authority board and into a credible RFP.
The three modeled scenarios · shaded area shows income-restricted share of units
Program diagram, drawn from the delivered models. Shares are modeled, not proposed.
Findings, not recommendations.
The discipline throughout: model without a thumb on the scale, put the trade-offs where a board could see them, and leave the choosing to the people accountable for it.
The engagement left the City with three modeled futures, board-ready materials, and a support package proposers can answer. What gets built is the City's call.
Modeled program, per the delivered studies · figures are modeling assumptions, not commitments
gross square feet, nine stories
units modeled, depending on scenario
modeled development cost, three scenarios
Return metrics and full scenario detail sit with the City. More in conversation.