Speaking
Kathy Arney speaks about money, mission, and the courage to fund the work.
Kathy Arney is an accountant who came into fundraising by accident, and agreed to it on one condition: she would have nothing to do with the actual fundraising. She was working full time at Queen’s University, moving from executive education into operations for a task force that helped researchers win grants. When the leader she worked for was asked to turn around the university’s advancement office, he brought her along, and she went for the operations and the strategy, certain it was a short-term posting.
She stayed because of what she found: extraordinary leaders doing essential work, without ever being shown how to fund it. And she stayed because fundraising turned out to be nothing like she had expected. It wasn’t about money at all. At its best, it was about connecting people to work that mattered to them, and giving good organizations the means to carry it out.
Two decades later, she has helped deliver a $262 million university campaign, built development offices from scratch, and walked beside hundreds of nonprofit leaders as founder of KEA Canada.
Audiences describe her sessions as practical, fun, and quietly transformative. People leave with tools they use the next morning, and a different way of thinking about what their work is worth that stays with them much longer.
Signature Speaking Topics
The Scarcity Trap: Escaping the Overhead Myth
The most destructive belief in the sector is that a good organization spends as little as possible on itself. This session dismantles the overhead myth, shows what capacity actually costs in talent, technology, and reserves, and gives leaders the full-cost language to plan for abundance instead of survival. Audiences leave with a full-cost lens on their own programs, and the words to defend investing in capacity.
Building a Revenue Model That Holds
Most nonprofits fund their work one grant, event, and appeal at a time, without a model underneath it all. This team workshop introduces the GROW Model, KEA Canada’s approach to designing revenue that is grounded, diversified, and built to last. Boards and staff leave with a shared picture of where their revenue comes from now, where it is concentrated, and the first moves toward a stronger mix. Audiences leave with a map of their current revenue and a plan for the gaps.
Invitations, Not Asks
Fundraising isn’t asking for money. It’s offering people the opportunity to support something they already care about. This session, a favourite with boards, replaces the dread of the ask with the confidence of an invitation. Audiences leave with a practical framework for donor conversations, and the courage to have them.
Finance and Fundraising in the Same Conversation
In most organizations, the people who manage the money and the people who raise money barely share a plan. Drawing on Kathy’s dual background as a CPA and a fundraiser, this session builds the shared language that lets boards, finance, and fundraising answer the sector’s most fundamental question together: what does the mission actually cost, and how will we fund it? Leave with a shared planning frame your leadership team can use right away.
You Don't Have to Ask for Money
A working session that turns “our board doesn’t fundraise” into a board that knows its role and wants to play it. Practical, participatory, and kind. Nobody is cold-calling anyone. Audiences leave with a board role map, and at least one thing every member can do this quarter.
Coming November 2026: Into the Deep End
A keynote built on The Deep End (Kathy Arney and Gordon Holley), following one nonprofit leader’s journey from financial chaos to clarity, and the tools that carried her through. The story is fictional. Every situation in it is real.
Formats
- Keynotes (45 to 60 minutes)
- Workshops, half or full day
- Board sessions
- Webinars & virtual training
In person or virtual, every session is tailored to the audience.
Kathy will want to know who’s in the room and what’s keeping them up at night.
What organizers say
Your obvious passion for the work you do, combined with your experience and incredibly affable and down-to-earth delivery, combine to make a session with you a really affirming experience. Your sense of humour and bouts of laughter were hugely contagious.
Suzanne Riverin PhD, board member, Enliven Cancer Care Muskoka
You have such an amazing gift for taking big topics like fund development and nonprofit finance and creating trainings that are informative, practical, and rooted in the day-to-day lived experience of nonprofit leaders.
Kathy Arney Speaker Bio
Kathy Arney, BCom, CPA, MFA-P, is the Founder and CEO (Chief Encouragement Officer) of KEA Canada and the creator of the GROW Model, KEA Canada’s approach to helping nonprofits build the revenue to fully fund their missions.
A rare blend of accountant and fundraiser, she has spent more than two decades walking beside nonprofit leaders as they build the revenue to fund their work. Her experience includes a $262 million campaign at Queen’s University, fund development leadership at The Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, and hundreds of engagements with organizations across Canada and beyond.
She is co-author of The Deep End, written with Gordon Holley. Coming in November 2026.
She lives in the mountains of Canmore, Alberta, in Treaty 7 Territory.
Photo by Banff Centre
Honoured to Present to…
Tell us about your event: date, audience, format, and what you’d like people to leave with, and we’ll be in touch within two business days.
Land Acknowledgement
The KEA Canada team is thankful for the opportunity to create, collaborate, play and work on the lands known today as Canada. We recognize that these lands are home to the enduring presence of all First Nations and Métis people, and the Inuit.
We acknowledge that KEA Canada's home office in Canmore is in the area traditionally known as “Chuwapchipchiyan Kudi Bi” (translated in Stoney Nakoda as “shooting at the willows”) and the traditional Treaty 7 territory of the Îyârhe Nakoda (Stoney Nakoda) – comprised of the Bearspaw First Nation, Chiniki First Nation, and Goodstoney First Nation – as well as the Tsuut’ina First Nation and the Blackfoot Confederacy comprised of the Siksika, Piikani, Kainai. We acknowledge that this territory is also home to the Rocky View Métis District within the Battle River Territory (District 4).
We are grateful for the meaningful relationships that we are forging with Indigenous communities across this land that we know today as Canada as we work towards truth and reconciliation in all that we do today and every day.
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New book, The Deep End, coming November 2026