Ali Kelley

Ali Kelley is a partner in Bridgespan’s Boston office. Ali leads Bridgespan’s work on Funding and Sustainability. In this role, she advises nonprofits on how to develop a funding strategy to support their missions. Ali has expertise in approaches that nonprofits use to secure funding from a wide range of sources – government, earned income, foundations, individuals, corporations, and endowment income. She has co-authored articles about nonprofit funding, including A New Look at How US Nonprofits Get Really Big (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2024) and "Finding Your Nonprofit's Funding Strategy" (Bridgespan.org, 2024). Ali is a regular speaker on the topic of nonprofit sustainability; she has given presentations at the Stanford Nonprofit Management Institute and the Institute for Philanthropic Leadership.

Ali has served a wide range of nonprofit clients with strategic planning, including City Year, Last Mile Health, HealthySteps, and Project ECHO. She has worked especially closely with Youth Villages, a national leader in child welfare, mental and behavioral health, and violence prevention. Over more than a decade, Ali has supported Youth Villages with strategic plans on topics including growth, innovation, licensing, measurement, sustainability, and operations.

Ali also advises donors and impact investors. She has worked for philanthropists including Blue Meridian Partners, Co-Impact, and The Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation. She helped lead the Bridgspan team that supported TPG Capital in launching The Rise Fund. In this capacity, Bridgespan developed and applied a methodology for rigorously analyzing the potential impact of portfolio investments.

Previously, Ali worked at Cambridge Associates where she evaluated investment opportunities for foundations, universities, and families. Ali has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Master’s in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She earned her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College. Ali serves on the advisory board of the Lwala Community Alliance, a community health program in Kenya. Most weekends Ali, along with her husband and two children, can be found outdoors, hiking, skiing, or shellfishing.