ABOUT COGEO
Built from the inside out. Just like the organizations we serve.
COGEO was founded in 2010 on a single belief: that the organizations doing the most good in the world deserve the same quality of fundraising expertise as the largest institutions. We built a firm around that belief — and we've spent 17 years proving it works.
HOW WE STARTED
A meeting that changed everything — for both of them.
In 2010, Patrick Sampson was studying for his Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) designation at UC Berkeley when he met Tom Horton — the Vice President of Philanthropy at Guide Dogs for the Blind. Tom was running a capital campaign at the time and introduced Patrick to his campaign counsel, Rob Kusel, one of the most experienced fundraising consultants in the country.
Patrick was employed in wealth management at his family's investment firm at time and found himself drawn to the philanthropic side of that work — the conversations about giving, about legacy, about what people wanted their money to do in the world. He was drawn to asking himself how to make that his full-time focus.
Meeting Rob was the answer. Patrick approached Rob with a general vision. Rob refined the vision and said yes. COGEO was born — and with it, a firm built on Rob's three decades of fundraising expertise and Patrick's background in financial strategy, client relationships, and a genuine belief that every mission-driven organization deserves to be fully resourced.
WHAT COGEO MEANS
CO · GEO
The name COGEO stands for a vision of our world, together. It reflects how we work — not as outside consultants, but as partners embedded inside organizations, building from within.
"We are a company that ensures organizations have what they need to over-deliver on their missions."
COGEO’s mission
HOW WE OPERATE
For-profit by design. Mission-driven by conviction.
COGEO is a for-profit company that has never accepted outside investment. That's a deliberate choice. We believe our success should be directly tied to yours — and that a firm with no outside financial pressures is better positioned to make decisions purely in the interest of the clients it serves.
We operate like a social enterprise — measuring success not just in revenue but in the organizations we've helped become more resourced, more resilient, and more capable of over-delivering on their missions.
We bring the full team
Strategy, design, data management, research, and writing — all in-house. You never need to manage multiple vendors during the most important fundraising effort of your organization's life.
We stay until the work is done
We don't hand you a plan and move on. We sit beside your organization through every phase — and we measure our success by the capacity you have to sustain the work after we step back.
We work with organizations doing this for the first time
The large firms are built for institutions with full development teams. We specialize in organizations at the inflection point — ready to build professional philanthropy for the first time, and choosing a partner who has done it hundreds of times.
We measure what matters
Return on Contribution®, People Impacted, and Steps Progressed — our three north star metrics — keep every engagement honest. If the numbers don't reflect real value for your organization and the people you serve, we haven't done our job.
LEADERSHIP
Patrick Sampson
President & CEO
Portland, Oregon
Growing up in the Portland area and playing Division I soccer as a goalkeeper at Loyola Marymount University, Patrick graduated in 2009 with a competitive instinct and a deep appreciation for what a great team can accomplish together.
After college he joined his uncle's firm, Sampson Investment Management in Danville, CA, where he was immediately given significant responsibility in financial planning and investment strategy. That background in wealth management turned out to be formative in an unexpected way — it was the philanthropic side of client conversations that pulled most. The discussions about giving, legacy, and what people wanted their resources to accomplish in the world. A question started taking shape: how do you make that the entire job?
In 2011, while pursuing a CFP® designation at UC Berkeley, the answer arrived. A professor introduced him to Tom Horton, Vice President of Philanthropy at Guide Dogs for the Blind, who was running a capital campaign at the time. Tom introduced him to his campaign counsel — Rob Kusel — and the two men recognized something in each other immediately. A vision for a different kind of firm took shape. Rob said yes. COGEO was born.
The financial planning background that came from those early years in wealth management quietly shaped what COGEO would become. A fluency in the language of investment, return, and measurable outcomes informed the way COGEO thinks about client engagements — and ultimately gave rise to Return on Contribution®, a performance standard built on the belief that organizations deserve to know exactly what their philanthropic investment is producing.
Outside of COGEO, Patrick is a lover of food from every culture, the outdoors, and everything that makes Portland and the Pacific Northwest an extraordinary place to call home.
Rob Kusel
Managing Director of Consulting Services
Portland, Maine
Rob Kusel is one of the most experienced fundraising consultants working in the country today. His career spans more than three decades and includes some of the most significant capital campaigns and development programs in the sector.
Rob began his development career at The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, where he served as Director of the six-year, $103 million Centennial Campaign — at the time the largest campaign ever undertaken by an independent school globally. He then spent five years as Director of Major Gifts at Stanford University, managing a portfolio of 250 major gift prospects and working directly with then-Provost Condoleezza Rice and President Gerhard Casper.
After Stanford, Rob went on to lead development at Blue Oak School — the first independent school in the Napa Valley — where he raised over $10 million for facilities and endowment. He later became a Vice President and Partner at Essex & Drake Fundraising Counsel, directing more than 70 clients across social services, education, healthcare, environment, and the arts.
It was Rob's particular depth — his ability to serve organizations comprehensively, across every dimension of development — that shaped how COGEO was built. The market segment COGEO serves, the services it offers, and the standard it holds itself to are all rooted in Rob's three decades of getting it right for some of the most demanding organizations in the country.
Born in Paris, France, Rob is bilingual in French and English. An All-American soccer player at Williams College, he remains an active person and coach — and brought that same instinct for team-building and competitive strategy into the firm he helped create.
THE TEAM
Chelsi Straubinger
Chief Operating Officer
Chelsi rose from an entry-level role at COGEO to COO, a testament to her exceptional capabilities and command of the company’s ecosystem. As COO, Chelsi leads the operational infrastructure that allows COGEO to deliver consistently excellent results across every client engagement. She oversees the systems, processes, and team structures that have made COGEO's service model both scalable and deeply personalized — ensuring that as the firm grows, the quality of what clients experience never wavers.
Victoria Ronga
Director of Client Services, Senior Consultant
Victoria leads internal training, client relationships, and senior-level consulting engagements across COGEO's client partner campaigns.
Catie McQueeny
Senior Consultant
Catie brings senior-level consulting expertise to client campaigns, guiding organizations through the strategic and relational dimensions of fundraising at every stage of the engagement.
Ketki Lele
Senior Consultant
Ketki works directly alongside client organizations to build and execute fundraising campaigns from the ground up.
Sunny Albright
Lead Consultant
Sunny brings deep campaign expertise to every engagement, helping organizations build the donor relationships that drive lasting results.
Sam Town
Lead Consultant
Sam guides client organizations through every phase of campaign development — from strategy through execution and stewardship.
Alan Chin
Director of Culture
Alan is the artistic foundation of COGEO — the creator of the visual identity that defines how the firm presents itself to the world, and a strategic advisor who has shaped the company's culture since its earliest days. → alanchin.us
Shaterra Martin
Operations Manager
Shaterra keeps the internal engine running — managing the operational systems that allow the full COGEO team to deliver at the highest level.
Jordan Schweitzer
New Client Partner Relationships
Jordan leads COGEO's business development efforts — building the relationships and partnerships that connect the right organizations with the right expertise.
MISSION
From resource-scarce to resource-rich.
We are a company that ensures organizations have what they need to over-deliver on their missions.
VISION
A more just and equitable world — where every mission-driven organization has the resources to over-deliver on its promise to the people it serves.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
Inclusion and respect
We aim to create a space where everyone feels welcome no matter who they are, where they come from, how they worship, or whom they love. We work to educate each other with empathy and compassion.
We revel in the fact that we have a job that doesn't feel like a job
We hire sharp people, give them meaningful work, and treat them with respect. We give our team the freedom and autonomy to work when and how they please.
We focus on craftsmanship
Before every client interaction we ask: is this the best we can do? Are we proud of this? If the answer is no, we go back to the drawing board.
We do not allow jerks
No political climbers, bullies, or yellers. When somebody — no matter how talented — breaches the line of mutual respect, they need to go. This goes not only for our team but for our clients too.
We have been programmed by nature to listen
Every aspect of our business requires active listening. We have two ears and one mouth for a reason — we strive to use them accordingly.
We value people over profits
We'd rather break even than run a company that isn't enjoyable to work at. Profits keep the lights on — but we will not compromise our work or make ourselves miserable in pursuit of financial gain.
We are honest, not perfect
We all make mistakes and should be comfortable owning our failures. It's how we own our mistakes that matters. We accept that there will always be a gap between where we are and where we want to be — and we think that gap makes us do better work.
We are the stewards of our culture
Our values are simultaneously preserved, protected, and evolving by the efforts of all of us. We acknowledge the responsibility to consistently and continually be their stewards.
We are committed to a formal organizational culture
We talk with people instead of about people. We promote transparency and a culture of trust.
