Partners
Walk Together PJR was founded to address the scarcity of accessible, independent expertise available to nonprofits—especially those organizations in the business of “worldmaking”: they are interdisciplinary, collaborative, historically aware, and aspiring to nothing less than reimagining cultural production (and thus, the ways we reimagine the world). By prioritizing these organizations, Walk Together PJR intends to make the field more resilient and diverse.
We are notable for our work with Founders and first-time Executive Directors from creative backgrounds who, despite years in the field, may suddenly find themselves faced with the challenge of growing a Board, fundraising philanthropically, rebuilding an operating budget, or assembling a team. These individuals hold the greatest potential to radically reinvent the field yet often face the steepest curve. Walk Together PJR aims to flatten that curve.
Approach
Walk Together PJR takes an embedded approach to working closely and collaboratively with each partner, patiently understanding and supporting an organization as the sum of its parts—program, finance, fundraising, and communications all working in equilibrium. This approach requires us to not only anticipate needs, but to also nurture the conditions necessary for staff and Board to listen and learn from one another and from stakeholders.
Through this approach, we help partners achieve long-term sustainability with a focus on researching, developing, and testing the fundamental tools every organization requires, regardless of its mission or scale—a compelling case for support, a rigorous financial model, free of assumptions, and an ambitious yet achievable multiyear development strategy. Every step of the way, we devote care to crafting solutions that are results-oriented yet lightweight, flexible, and sensitive to a team’s evolving needs and capacity.
Skills & Experience
Strategic planning that integrates vision development, program architecture, financial modeling, and campaign preparation to successfully launch an ambitious startup or re-envision an established institution’s work.
Creative research that convenes stakeholders from diverse backgrounds to share their needs through moderated roundtables, culminating in reports and recommendations to calibrate an organization’s mission, values, and program.
Development strategies comprising research, interviews, benchmarking, multiyear analysis of sources/uses of funds, operational assessments, and recommendations toward growing fundraising at the intersection of a program and its financial need.
Staff and board development that prioritizes a diversity of backgrounds, skills, interests, and experiences in direct reflection of the organization’s program and the values that guide it, leading to deeper and more authentic relationships.
Personalized programs for philanthropists that combine education, research, and the transformation of ideas into action, advancing one’s values, and building leadership and governance skills.
Ongoing tactical support—remote and in-person—for small and large teams alike, including workshops, project planning, and convenings designed to strengthen an organization’s practices, expand its internal capacity, and realize ambitious goals.
Registered fundraising counsel in New York State, California, and elsewhere.
Who We Are
Peter J. Russo, Director
As a consultant, I understand the challenges facing organizations because I’ve built one. I experienced these needs first-hand as director of Triple Canopy, an experimental arts publication cofounded in 2008 with a collective of artists and writers in response to the world’s shifting cultural and technological landscape. The skills and experiences I gained at Triple Canopy were further honed while working in support of nonprofit consultant Susan Courtemanche. The organizations I’ve recently worked with range greatly in scale: from part-time teams overseeing budgets of a few hundred-thousand dollars, to large staffs with eight-figure annual goals. Earlier in my career, I produced four editions of Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1, and cofounded Common Practice New York, an advocacy group for small-scale organizations. My cultural work began with counterculture, running a hardcore record label and touring with bands. I’ve spoken at many international art fairs, museums, and universities.
Momo Ishiguro, Associate
My perspective as a cultural practitioner is grounded in my experience working within New York City’s vibrant ecology of arts nonprofits, where I’ve worked over the past decade. I most recently served as Deputy Director of Triple Canopy, a New York-based arts publication and nonprofit, where I oversaw fundraising, finance, operations, and communications, and honed my ability to translate ambitious, boundary-pushing projects for broad publics. Prior to my seven-year tenure at Triple Canopy, I began my career at Printed Matter and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, where I learned firsthand how organizations foster and help sustain the art forms and movements that emerge from their communities. I began my work with Walk Together PJR in 2023, where my work in strategy, research, and writing offers opportunities to delve deeper into my perennial interest in the ways culture shapes our identities, relationships, and shared futures.
Nicole Lindner, Associate
As an artist, educator, and organizer I’m familiar with the many hats creatives wear every day and the ways the field oftentimes demands this of artists. My work with Walk Together PJR began in 2020 and has since then grown organically into collaborative relationships with organizations grounded in research, writing, and responsive support. My personal practice addresses extractive economies, most poignantly in the Global South and, particularly, in relation to the inscription of ambiguity on place. Most recently, I jointly founded a community garden and education space in South Florida and serve as an arts editor for Latinx Spaces, a latinx media publication.
Morgan Hayes, Researcher
As a multidisciplinary artist and development professional, I have a working knowledge of how systems of support and artistic production interplay. Establishing my development background through opportunities at BAM and Lincoln Center, my work with Walk Together PJR, beginning in 2022, has focused on research, writing, and operations. My personal practice revolves around collective and community memory for Black women and femme-presenting people in the United States. Often produced collaboratively, this work manifests in video essays on pop culture, colloquial storytelling, and myth-building. Recent projects include a ten-episode local-access style television show alongside collaborator, Adrienne Bennett, entitled “You Would.”
Contact
Write to us to learn more about Walk Together PJR. We prioritize extended engagements with partners that allow us to fully understand the arc of their year, and thus better support them. We also reserve hours for occasional workshops, retreats, and pro-bono consultations with organizations that would benefit from shorter-term engagements.