Finding Joy and Ease in Mission Work
Staiger | Vitelli and Associates (SVA) is a strategy, fundraising, communications, and advocacy firm with a track record of successful campaigns, research initiatives, and multi-year planning blueprints. Partners Sarah Staiger and Laura Vitelli are committed to helping mission-driven folks build power by organizing people and money. We’re relational, strategic, systems-thinkers who find joy and ease in mission-driven work. We began working together as staff colleagues more than 10 years ago. We’re now consulting and business partners since 2021. Our home base is on Dakota land in what is known as Minnesota, and we work with clients and students from across North America.
Our Values
Laura Vitelli
Laura knows the joys and challenges of working to create change in our homes, institutions, and communities. With 30 years as a nonprofit leader, she’s experienced the days when everything seems to be coming together and the days when all you can ask is ‘why does it have to be so hard?’.
Laura draws energy from consulting projects that provide opportunities to advance bold goals, create organizational change, grapple with challenging issues, and learn with diverse colleagues. She applies her experience shaping strategy, leading teams, making decisions, and guiding organizational change to projects like strategic planning, needs assessments, feasibility studies, fund development and communications planning, community engagement, and power analyses. Nonprofit leaders with big visions count on her to help crystalize and communicate their mission and strategy and to secure the sustainable resources to make it happen.
As a senior leader in human service and arts organizations, Laura was known for her strategic thinking, planful approach, strong communications, and ability to raise funds. Her work experience is supported by her MBA in Nonprofit Management and years of working and learning alongside brilliant colleagues. Laura served on the Association of Fundraising Professionals Minnesota Chapter Board and has contributed to AFP MN’s educational programming. Laura is an avid reader and podcast listener, most often on social sciences, history, politics, business, and economics. Lately, she’s been diving into books and podcasts about reinventing how we work, how we connect with each other, and how we give and raise money for the causes we care about.
Sarah Staiger
Skill in asking the right questions has set Sarah apart in her career. Her inquisitiveness and relational skill create space for people and organizations to become deeply curious, laying the groundwork for change. Curiosity can begin to break away at outdated systems that cause harm, it can allow for vulnerability and growth, and it can help us imagine our very best future and determine what it will take to get there.
Sarah’s two decades as a nonprofit fundraiser, coach and communicator and her passion for building power through organized people and organized money, makes her uniquely suited to helping organizations get clear and act on what it will take to achieve their vision. Her consulting and professional roles have moved over $50 million in private donations to nonprofit missions.
Sarah's master’s degree in advocacy and political leadership (MAPL) connected her fundraising work to policies and systems and deepened her inquiry into the impacts of privilege and power --her own and others'.
Initially known as a Donor-Centric Fundraising expert, Sarah has been activating practices rooted in Community-Centric Fundraising principles since 2017 when Vu Le started sharing a better way to do fundraising. Sarah eagerly collaborates to learn, implement, and grow in the CCF movement and volunteers with the Minnesota Association of Fundraising Professionals.