About
The Russell Center’s driving philosophy is to focus expertise in grant writing, fund development, and technical writing, so nonprofit and governmental agencies can focus on delivering essential services to their clientele.
The Russell Center's History
Starting in 2001, The Russell Center successfully conducted a capital campaign for the Madeline Island Public Library in La Pointe, Wisconsin, assembling a mix of family, corporate and government grants to gain the full $315,000 needed for the library’s addition. In 2004, a NASA Space Grant Fellowship led to contracts to write and evaluate NASA grants for the NASA Nebraska Space Grant Consortium, Georgia Space Grant Consortium and Albany State University.
From 2004-2007, The Russell Center provided executive director services for the La Vista Community Foundation, where the discovery of the high need for professional grant writing services shifted the company’s service model away from administrative services. While on the funder’s side of the desk, Russell developed several RFP processes for the foundation, including a Spring and Fall Grant Award Cycle, a Neighborhood Revitalization application process, and an application process for the La Vista Paint the Town program (see also Past Experience with RFP Process).
For nearly a decade, the Russell Center prepared an annual Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Continuum of Care proposal for the Metro Area Continuum of Care for the Homeless (MACCH). The Russell Center has contributed to gaining the metro-Omaha community nearly $25 million for over two dozen homeless shelter programs.
The experience of uniting 20+ proposals into a single, cohesive submission for MACCH allowed Russell to utilize the writing, data collection, evaluation, event coordination, and volunteer management skills she’d gained over the past three decades and revealed what has become The Russell Center’s niche market: convening multi-partner collaborations to hone their sometimes competing visions into a unified understanding that stands up to the scrutiny of funders. Guided by this purpose, The Russell Center has since secured millions for such collaborations, including a Douglas County/Live Well Omaha proposal bringing together the efforts of 17 partners to win a $5.7 million CDC Communities Putting Prevention to Work award. Most recently, The Russell Center was honored by Project Achieve for producing a winning Student Support Services Department of Education proposal responsible for that University of Nebraska-Omaha program’s five-year budget – first in 2010, again in 2015, and most recently in 2020.
About Valerie Russell, Founder
Valerie Russell is a writer, artist, healer, and punctuation activist. She has a Masters in Public Administration and a Certificate in Fund-Raising Management from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Mayville State University. She is also a Healing Touch Practitioner and co-owns The Soul Creates Art Studio, LLC. Valerie dreams of the day she will complete her goals in NaNoWriMo. She has two daughters, who are the luckiest ladies alive.
She wishes to thank her family, dogs and cats (especially the cats) for their support and (sometimes) extreme patience in living with the left-brain grant writer who loves spreadsheets and the right-brain creator who sometimes forgets to ground herself.