Leigh A. Chambliss, President

A grant writing consultant for the last 21 years, Leigh Chambliss works with more than 80 nonprofit clients nationally and internationally to fund needed services and infrastructure to meet philanthropic visioning. She is responsible for helping to raise $40 million in grants (the majority of her fundraising), cash match, and in-kind to leverage investments.  

Leigh Chambliss, with a Business Administration degree from Stetson University and experience as a not-for-profit executive director, opened LAC Grant Consulting in 2001 after a successful grant writing career within a public housing authority and substance abuse and mental health fields. She has held board positions within a professional grant association—as the president and program chair of the Grants Collaborative of Tampa Bay, and taught grant writing at the University of South Florida (USF).

Her grant writing expertise is extensive as shown in the list below.

LAC maintains an average program award rate of 72 percent with some clients even higher; this is compared to the industry average where typically, for every grant approved by a foundation, ten to twelve are rejected.

Two federal grants, by example, approved on behalf of LAC Grant Consulting clients include the following:

• Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Bureau of Health Professionals (BHPr) for $1 million for a multi-county project area

• Administration for Children and Families; Administration on Children, Youth and Families; Children's Bureau (ACF-ACYF-CB) Family Connection Grant: Child Welfare/TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) Collaboration in Kinship Navigation Programs for $2.25 million. Only seven awards were granted in the nation

Besides working directly with nonprofit organizations, Ms. Chambliss has provided technical assistance to grantees of the Eckerd Family Foundation, a time limited family foundation created by Jack and Ruth Eckerd (founder of the Eckerd Drug Stores). Over the span of its lifetime, beginning in 1998, the foundation distributed close to $50 million. LAC has been called on frequently by the Eckerd Family Foundation to provide capacity building through grant research, writing, and department organization on behalf of their grantees.

For agencies just getting started or lacking a systematic approach,  consider the following: LAC has built grant departments, where none existed, up to $300,000 in renewable, local grant revenue in one year and up to $2.4 million with the same turnaround when including state and federal grants.

LAC is recognized as an innovator and tough competitor in the field of proposal writing in response to available grants. She is also a strategist who locates grants most likely to return an award; she is usually found where the need is highest, the challenge greatest, and the competition intense.

Wendy C. Garfinkle, Editor/Writer

Wendy C. Garfinkle has been an editor since the late 1990s and in 2016 began her own freelance business for proofreading and editing, Grammar Goddess Editing. She has been working as a copyeditor with LAC Grant Consulting since 2017. Ms. Garfinkle holds both MA and MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. Her experience includes proofreading and editing for a daily newspaper, court proceedings, depositions, college essays, Hippocampus Magazine, and Booktrope Publishing.