Melissa S. Brown has responsibilities for applied research projects and for researching and writing the annual report Giving USA, a publication of the Giving USA Foundation. Ms. Brown worked as the Center’s Manager for Fund Raising from 1998 to 2001 and as Manager of the Annual Fund from 1993 to 1996. She started work at the Center in 1991 as a development associate. In addition to her work for the research department, Ms. Brown teaches a course at IUPUI in proposal development and is one of the instructors for the proposal writing course offered by The Fund Raising School.

Ms. Brown has fundraising experience in higher education, health care, social services, and the arts. She worked for two and a half years as program manager for the Homeless Initiative Program in Indianapolis during its period of expansion and growth from a staff of three to more than 40, with increased services for approximately 3,500 homeless individuals annually. She started her career in nonprofit administration at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC and has worked for the Atlanta-based national office of the Arthritis Foundation.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and a Master of Governmental Administration from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Her publications include Giving USA 2001 through Giving USA 2009. She is co-author, with Partha Deb, Mark Wilhelm, and Patrick Rooney, of “Estimating Individual Giving,” in the December 2003 issue of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly and with Craig Wrouk of “Giving by Bequest” in the Journal of Gift Planning (3rd quarter 2005). She and Ke Wu, Applied Statistician at the Center, have an article about persistence in giving to education in a special issue International Journal of Educational Advancement.