The Ostroff Group is now part of Amplify Partners
The Ostroff Group is now part of Amplify Partners
Amplify Partners – Autumn Newsletter
Dear Friends,
So much of what we do at Amplify starts with listening. To executive directors and board chairs. To donors. To the staff who keep an organization running when no one’s watching.
We try to listen before we lead, because more often than not, what an organization needs is already there. It just hasn’t been heard yet.
This newsletter is our chance to share some of what we’ve heard.
The organizations we work with trust us with real moments: a campaign that has to change course, a family deciding what its giving should stand for, a board wondering what comes next. We learn something every time. And much of it seems worth passing along.
So, four times a year, we’ll write about it as plainly as we can. What’s working, and where we had to stop, rethink and adjust.
We’ll also introduce you to the people behind the work. I’ve spent my career in this field, and I still count myself lucky to climb alongside these colleagues, and alongside all of you.
Thank you for your trust, your partnership and your friendship. We’re grateful for every conversation.
And we’re still listening.
Michael Ostroff Co-Founder & CEO, Amplify Partners
Joshua can execute a Donald Duck sneeze so convincing it disarms a room.
It has never once helped him at work. (We’re keeping an eye out for the right board meeting.)
The work he’s proudest of? He designed and led a $200 million endowment campaign at JDC. That money will keep the agency on solid footing long after the campaign team has moved on.
Ask him what an organization should fix if it only has the energy for one thing this year, and he doesn’t hesitate: build a culture of teamwork and efficiency, with everyone pulling toward the mission.
And the lesson a client taught him recently? Talk early, talk often, and be upfront. That’s how you stay on the same path from kickoff to finish line.
Now, the fine print.
The fastest way to lose Joshua in a meeting is to keep one eye glued to your phone. Consider yourself warned.
The best bad advice he ever got: there’s no such thing as over-preparing for a meeting. (There is.)
If he weren’t doing this, he’d happily be terrible at riding the bench as a designated hitter for the Atlanta Braves. His walk-up song for client meetings is “Born to Run.”
Coffee or tea? Coffee, delivered by IV for uninterrupted pleasure. Inbox zero or inbox chaos? Chaos to the Nth degree. Deck or one-pager? Deck. He loves PowerPoint. Call or email? Email, “retro grouch that I am.”
We asked Joshua what question we should have asked him. His pick: why was the Penny Lane Beatles Museum his favorite Amplify gig?
His answer, in full: “Duh, The Beatles.”
Our work with the Hyman Family Foundation grew out of a longstanding relationship with Simcha Hyman, whom Michael first supported in 2023 while Simcha was on the board of RSK. In partnership with Amplify’s Of Counsel, Maxyne Finkelstein, we were privileged to partner with Simcha and Rachel Hyman as they continued to refine the strategic framework for their family’s philanthropy.
Working alongside the family, we helped to articulate the Foundation’s mission, vision, and theory of change across its principal areas of interest: improving quality of life in the Jewish community, particularly around mental health, substance use, and poverty; addressing antisemitism through understanding, positive narratives, and allyship; and supporting innovation in Israel, including a focus on mental health.
Throughout, our role was to help translate the family’s deeply held values into a purposeful framework, always guided by the Hyman’s clear vision, willingness to take intelligent risks, and commitment to funding opportunities that traditional philanthropy may overlook.
Our work with Congregation Shalom in Milwaukee shows why campaign work is rarely as straightforward as it looks on paper.
It began with a plan to rebuild an educational wing and create a new Lifelong Learning Center. It grew into a broader conversation about Shalom’s future and the role its building should play in it. Early on, we saw that the real story was about creating a home worthy of the Jewish life inside it: learning, worship, celebration, connection and community. Keeping everyone focused on that story has been part of the work.
Shalom came in without a strategic plan, but with an ambitious vision and significant capital needs. As the campaign developed, priorities shifted, costs became clearer and donor conversations shaped the thinking. Leadership had to decide what was essential, what could wait and what the congregation could responsibly take on. We kept returning to a few questions. What does the congregation really need? What can the community support? What has to happen now? The answers led to real changes in scope and financial framework. That’s a sign of good leadership responding to better information. Discipline keeps you focused on the objective. Flexibility lets you change the route when the facts say you should. You need both.
By summer 2026, Shalom had secured commitments totaling about 85% of its goal. Great news. But leadership had also decided not to rely on a mortgage or significant long-term debt, so more cash is still needed before construction can begin.
How do you celebrate that progress while being clear there’s more to raise? You explain why. We helped leadership frame the remaining fundraising around stewardship: a deliberate choice to build in a way that strengthens Shalom and spares future generations an unnecessary financial burden.
As Shalom moves from a quiet phase focused on major donors to engaging the broader congregation, the challenge is bringing a much larger community into a campaign whose scope and story have shifted along the way. So we keep revisiting the narrative. What does the congregation need to understand now? What might confuse someone who hasn’t been close to it? How do we keep the conversation on what the project makes possible, and off construction details?
One line keeps anchoring us:
The building is the setting; Jewish life is the case.
Stakeholders see the project through different lenses, and that’s expected. Questions keep surfacing about balancing donor interests and new opportunities with the organization’s priorities, and when to flex versus hold the line. No campaign manual answers those. They take judgment, an understanding of the relationships and a clear view of the strategy. Sometimes we recommend a course of action. Just as often, we ask the question that helps leadership reach the answer themselves. And the longer we work with Shalom, the better we can see what a decision might mean three or four steps down the road.
The campaign we’re advising today differs from the one we started with. What matters is whether those changes are thoughtful responses to what we’ve learned, or reactions to the latest issue. Alignment needs constant attention. The story has to evolve with the strategy. And some of our most valuable work has happened in conversations no scope of work anticipated.
Shalom’s campaign is still underway. No neat ending yet.
That’s what makes it worth sharing. This is what campaign counsel actually looks like: moving from vision to strategy, from major gifts to community engagement, and adjusting as things change.
Sometimes we lead. Sometimes we challenge. Sometimes we coach. And sometimes the most useful thing we can do is help a leadership team think a decision through before they make it.
At Amplify Partners, we work alongside leaders as strategic counsel, helping them navigate complexity, stay aligned and turn an aspirational vision into something their community believes in and is ready to invest in.
Because campaigns, like organizations, rarely move in a straight line.
Everyone knows the drill.
A host breaks into the show you were enjoying. They remind you that listeners like you make this possible. You make a gift, a tote bag arrives in the mail, and you feel square.
That deal kept public radio running for decades. It was never built to carry the whole weight.
And since July 2025, it’s been asked to. When Congress rescinded roughly $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, about 1,500 local stations lost support many had counted on for half a century. CPB is now winding down.
Listeners answered with a wave of emergency gifts. Encouraging. But anyone who has run a few campaigns knows a crisis spike tends to fade once donors move on to the next emergency.
So every station now faces the question we spent more than a year on with New York Public Radio: how do you turn people who love you into people who invest in you?
Ahead of NYPR’s 100th anniversary (WNYC first went on the air in 1924), our team set out to position public radio as a philanthropic priority for donors capable of gifts of $50,000 and more.
With our partners at Prasad Consulting and Research and Advantages, we screened lapsed donors, mapped giving families across generations, interviewed trustees and major supporters, and ran three rounds of message testing with listeners, high-net-worth New Yorkers and their adult children.
A few findings have stayed with us.
Love and giving aren’t the same thing. Every person we interviewed praised the reporting. They called NYPR trustworthy, thoughtful, a treasured part of the city. Some also worried it lacked the stature of New York’s other great cultural institutions. And several described their giving as paying for something they use.
Listener first. Donor second.
That’s a membership mindset. Major gifts need a different one.
Donors love the station they think they’re hearing. Nearly everyone said local journalism mattered most. But when they named the programs they valued, many reached for national shows. The local work they cared about was partly invisible to them. A station can’t raise major money for work its donors can’t see.
The past didn’t move people. The future did. You’d expect a centennial to run on nostalgia. The testing said otherwise. A purely historical message fell flat with high-net-worth donors. What compelled them was a chance to shape what comes next, with a clear purpose behind it. Recognition worked when it was tied to real impact. Exclusivity worked only when it meant something.
The next generation wants its own seat at the table. Parents and grandparents hoped their children would carry the commitment forward. Their adult children wanted to decide for themselves. Many had never been introduced to public media’s values at all. They responded to hands-on roles, journalism and education projects, and a real voice in strategy. And they needed to hear it from someone other than Mom and Dad.
Someone usually brought them in. Most major donors first got close to NYPR through a trusted friend. After all the screening and testing, that’s still the most reliable path to a major gift we know.
Our work with public radio goes back years: WNYC, WFUV, KWMU–St. Louis Public Radio, New York Public Radio’s centennial and, more recently, prospect research for WBGO in Newark. The same lessons keep surfacing. The loss of federal funding just makes them urgent.
For stations rethinking their fundraising, here’s where we’d start:
None of this replaces the tote bag. Loyal, steady member gifts are still the backbone of public radio, and they deserve every thank-you they get.
But a backbone isn’t the whole body.
For a century, public radio has asked listeners to give back for what they hear.
The stations that thrive in the next hundred years will ask something bigger: help us decide what you’ll hear next.