MICHELLE MONSE, J.D., PRINCIPAL

After practicing law in Dallas and teaching at three law schools, I found my passion in nonprofit work in the early 1990s. My numerous roles thereafter included fundraiser for an HBCU, administrator of a corporate foundation, associate director of a community foundation, and president of a private foundation. Beginning in 2005, I steered the Carl B. and Florence E. King Foundation through a lengthy legal battle and corporate turnaround. I retired from that post in January 2025. During my tenure, the assets of the Foundation increased from $37 million to $118 million, enabling the Foundation to award more than $51 million in grants over my time in office.

My entire working life has involved writing or editing in some form, including legal documents, law review articles, a law dictionary, annual reports, marketing materials, websites, journal articles, grant proposals, and proposal evaluations. I am a fan of the Oxford comma. 

I also have 30 years’ experience as a grant reviewer, beginning as a grants consultant and program officer for The Dallas Foundation and later as president of the King Foundation. I estimate I have evaluated more than 5,000 proposals in my career. In recent years, I have also served as a reviewer in two major grant competitions for Lever for Change, a nonprofit affiliate of the MacArthur Foundation.

My work at the King Foundation showed me how rural nonprofits are at a significant disadvantage in raising financial support, especially from grantmaking foundations. Post retirement, I am focusing my consulting business on serving nonprofits that serve rural areas in the Southwest, as well as private foundations that want administrative or programmatic guidance. I have been a member in good standing of the State Bar of Texas since 1983.