The Team Powering Our Voice

Viken Mikaelian has spent 26 years building the infrastructure behind planned giving. He founded PlannedGiving.com in 1998, and the company has since served more than 15,000 nonprofit organizations — healthcare systems, universities, faith-based institutions, and national charities — supplying planned giving websites, marketing systems, and content that legacy programs actually run on. Today PlannedGiving.org hosts one of the largest nonprofit web networks in the country.

He started Philanthropy.org because the sector’s best thinking had no permanent home — scattered across vendor blogs, conference hallways, and paywalled reports, most of it written to sell something. Philanthropy.org and GIVING Magazine exist to publish the ideas on their merits, from practitioners who have done the work. He has written more than 1,500 articles and spoken at over 500 conferences, usually arguing something the room didn’t want to hear. He is a University of Pennsylvania alumnus.

Patrick O’Donnell spent more than twenty years in journalism, as both writer and editor, interviewing politicians, police officers, celebrities, crooks, and CEOs. He learned to ask the uncomfortable question, sit through the silence that follows, and tell when he was being lied to — a skill that turns out to be useful well beyond the courthouse steps.

He is Executive Editor of GIVING Magazine and Senior Editor of content and storytelling across PlannedGiving.com and Philanthropy.org. The work is largely the same work: finding the person inside the institution, and getting them to say the true thing rather than the approved one. Most nonprofit writing dies in the gap between those two. Patrick’s job is to close it.

Chloe leads partnerships at Philanthropy.org, where she also reports and writes as an in-house journalist. She builds the relationships that sit behind the platform — foundation leaders, nonprofit executives, and the people whose work deserves a wider audience than it usually gets — and then helps tell those stories in print and online.

She works alongside Executive Editor Patrick F. O’Donnell on editorial direction for GIVING Magazine and with founder Viken Mikaelian on the partnerships and institutional relationships that shape where the platform goes next.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at New York University, Chloe has been writing professionally since 2022, with work spanning philanthropy, sports, and Latin America. Whether she’s interviewing athletes in Argentina or covering international tennis, she’s drawn to stories that reveal something larger about the people in them.

Reif Tauati
Technology & Data Infrastructure

Reif Tauati brings a rare combination to Philanthropy.org: the systems thinking of an engineer and the instincts of a founder who has actually run and rebuilt organizations. A two-time turnaround executive and Carnegie Mellon–trained builder, he architects the data infrastructure behind our nonprofit intelligence tools — including the platform that puts millions of IRS 990 filings within reach of any fundraiser in seconds.

He is a partner at Good Industries’ AI Lab, a fund backing the next generation of technologists solving real-world problems. That mix — hard engineering, product judgment, and venture-level instinct — is exactly what modern philanthropy needs from its technology.
At Philanthropy.org, Reif’s role is to direct the people who build: deciding what gets made, how it should scale, and how raw data becomes something a gift officer can trust. He sets the architecture and the standards, then leads the developers who execute against them. His guiding principle is the one that governs everything on our platform: transcribe and define, never characterize. The numbers are the numbers. His job is to make sure they arrive clean, sourced, and usable.

Eric Werner is a First Vice President, Wealth Management, Senior Institutional Consultant with Raymond James and a contributing advisor to 990 Scout, a platform dedicated to making nonprofit information more accessible and transparent. He is also contributing author to philanthropy.org, where he writes on endowment stewardship, donor-advised funds, and fiduciary best practices for nonprofit community. With nearly three decades of experience advising nonprofit organizations, endowments, philanthropic families, and charitable institutions, Eric is a recognized advocate for sound governance, fiduciary responsibility, and long-term organizational sustainability. Based in New Hampshire, with clients nationally, he works with nonprofit leaders and boards to strengthen financial stewardship, advance planned giving initiatives, and build enduring charitable legacies.

Beyond his professional responsibilities, Eric serves as Vice President and Board Member of the New Hampshire & Vermont Council of Charitable Gift Planners and is deeply committed to advancing the health and vitality of the nonprofit sector. He believes that transparency builds trust, trust strengthens philanthropy, and strong nonprofit organizations create lasting benefits for communities and society at large. Through his work with 990 Scout and throughout the philanthropic community, Eric seeks to empower donors, advisors, board members, and nonprofit leaders with the information and insight needed to make informed decisions and advance the public good.

Raymond James & Associates, Inc., member New York Stock Exchange/SIPC
17 1/2 Lebanon St Ste 3 , Hanover, NH, 03755, 603-427-8899
Raymond James is not affiliated with the above organizations and/or charitable causes.

Tara is a development professional who brings a multidisciplinary, cross-sector perspective to advancing social impact. Resettled to Canada as a government-sponsored refugee at a young age, she began volunteering with refugee and marginalized communities early in life — an experience that shaped a lifelong commitment to building more equitable and inclusive communities.

She holds a Master’s degree in Development Studies and a postgraduate diploma in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Her experience spans the nonprofit, public, and private sectors, where she has led research, consulting, program and project development, fundraising, capacity building, stakeholder engagement, strategic communications, and knowledge products. that strengthen organizations and drive lasting impact.

Michelle comes to the work from the other side of the desk. She spent four years as Director of Development at two Colorado nonprofits, building and running full fundraising programs — individual giving, major gifts, grants, events, and corporate partnerships — and delivering year-over-year revenue growth.

She writes the positioning and communications work: the language organizations use to explain themselves to donors, boards, and the public. Her frame is the business one. What does this cost, what does it return, and what does a donor actually hear when they read it. She knows what a development office looks like on a Tuesday afternoon — the board expectations, the thin staffing, the donor who has been on the list for six years and never been asked — and she writes for that reader.

Michelle holds an M.S. in Nonprofit Management from The New School and a B.A. in International Business from Manhattanville University.

Aidan works across MajorGifts.com and Philanthropy.org as an editorial assistant, handling advocacy-driven writing, article optimization, and the publishing side of getting work in front of readers. His interest is in what actually moves donors — the research behind the ask, not just the language around it.

He is pursuing an M.S. in Nonprofit Management at Columbia University, with a focus on innovative fundraising and asset generation, and holds bachelor’s degrees in Special Education Sciences and Business Administration from the University of Florida.

Before joining the team, Aidan worked in development and events at Special Olympics New York and as a Global Philanthropy Intern at United Way Worldwide, where he focused on donor research and building educational tools around giving vehicles. He served as president of UF Best Buddies and continues to volunteer with several New York nonprofits, most of it in prospect research and advocacy — including as advocacy chair for A Leg To Stand On’s NextGen Council.