Marc Smiley

Every experience is an opportunity to learn. For Marc, those experiences include more than 20 years as a consultant to nonprofit organizations nationwide.  It includes key staff leadership roles helping to grow and strengthen organizations.  It includes key stints as a volunteer leader with organizations that make a difference. Together these experiences have provided perspective, understanding, and passion for effective community service.  They also provide stories that can inform, inspire, and a offer a certain lightness to a learning situation.

Marc’s consulting experience has taken him to nearly every state in the U.S., working in the areas of board governance, strategic planning, board-staff relations, organizational structure, and fundraising planning and training.  Marc has worked extensively with  groups focused on conservation, historic preservation, energy and sustainability, affordable housing, and health and human services.  Marc has also published books on board governance, strategic planning, and fundraising, as well as dozens of articles in journals and periodicals.

Marc has served in staff leadership roles with the Oregon Natural Resource Council, River Network, the Yakima Greenway Foundation and the Land Trust Alliance.  Marc has also served on the boards of the Columbia Land Trust, Online Networking for the Environment (ONE-NW), REACH Community Development.  College includes a degree from the University of Oregon with education that spans the spectrum of the communications arts – from journalism to classical rhetoric.

Marc is a native Oregonian whose efforts to migrate elsewhere can’t overcome a homing instinct. Marc’s head is full of music that spans an eclectic mix, and he can find the perfect lyric from an obscure rock song if the circumstances warrant it. Sadly, it seldom does. Family is important and with his wife Amy, raising two boys to become great men may be their most important role.  At twelve and sixteen, the jury is still out.