Margaret Kaur Gooding

Margaret is creative full-spectrum fundraising professional with experience across institutional giving, grant writing, major gifts, planned giving and donor relations. Her areas of advocacy include reproductive rights, voter education, affordable housing, education, oral history, food access, and indigenous rights & activism. She is also a trained oral historian, incorporating practices of storytelling and deep listening into her fundraising and team leadership. Much of her academic work focuses on the concept of sense-of-place, particularly in communities that have experienced removal or migration. Margaret is an active and enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation and continues to advocate for indigenous rights, the continuation of oral traditions, and preservation of the Chickasaw language.

Work

Margaret began her fundraising career with the Kaine for Virginia campaign in 2011, where she coordinated fundraising events, stewarded donors, managed a 3,000+ constituent CRM, and compiled financial reports for FEC filings. Together with her fundraising team, Margaret helped to raise a record-setting $18M for the campaign.

In 2017, Margaret moved to Austin, TX where she worked as part of a two person development team for the Texas Civil Rights Project managing a grants portfolio in excess of $1.2 million. It was there she began to hone her skills as a fundraising professional with a focus in institutional giving. Applying her skills in academic writing and narrative, Margaret began to specialize as a grant writer.

In 2018, Margaret was brought on as the Institutional Giving Manager at ZACH Theatre - the largest and longest running producing theatre in Austin. As part of a six-person development team, Margaret oversaw all corporate, foundation, and government relations for the theatre. She was the primary grant writer for the organization, managing a year-round institutional giving calendar and writing grants earning awards in excess of $500,000 annually, with a total institutional giving total of over $800,000 annually.

In late 2020, Margaret joined the team at Thinkery - Austin’s STEAM-focused children’s museum as the Grants Writer, and is now the Senior Institutional Giving Manager. Margaret oversees a year-round grants calendar of funders ranging from small donor advised funds to large, to corporate social responsibility grants, and multi-year federal grants bringing over $1.2 million in awards annually. Working with the Chief Advancement Officer, Margaret strives to incorporate Community Centered Fundraising principles, centering equity as the guiding principle of the organization’s fundraising efforts.

In 2023, Margaret has served as the Associate Director of Donor Engagement for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden where she was responsible for raising $3.5M in major gifts, planned giving, trustee giving, and dedications. She led a team of development and donor engagement specialists with a focus on co-creative leadership, deep listening, compassion, and mentorship across the development spectrum.

Margaret joined the talented team at Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas in 2023 as the Philanthropy Officer for the Austin region. Her donor network expanded to include Northern California in 2024. She worked closely with the Community Board and helped to institute reforms to the nominations and exit process that greatly increased the diversity of the board, meeting attendance, and board giving. Margaret specialized in major gifts, expanding her role to include planned giving throughout 2025. During her time at Planned Parenthood, Margaret raised over $6M to support reproductive healthcare access for over 100,000 Texans annually.

In 2026, the opportunity arose for Margaret to create the major gifts program for YIMBY Action (c4) and YIMBY Law (c3). These organizations are at the forefront of pro-housing advocacy and legal enforcement, having grown from a grassroots movement in San Francisco to a national housing access and affordability juggernaut, influencing critical local, state, and federal housing policy. Margaret has employed her specializations in major gifts, as well as c3 and c4 compliance, board governance, and CRM management to move YIMBY from the start-up phase of funding into a sustainable long-term, donor retention focused fundraising strategy.

Board Service and Pro Bono

Margaret currently serves on the Zilker Botanic Garden Conservancy Board of Trustees, serving her Austin community and endulging her passion for plants and well-integrated urban oases.

From 2021 to 2023 Margaret served on the Development Committee for the Oral History Association (US), she started as a general member, and then served as chairperson from 2022 to 2023.

In 2020, Margaret provided pro bono grant writing and budget creation support to the president of the Oral History Association for Columbia University grant and later an NEH American Rescue Plan grant to support a fellowship and grants program for under/unemployed oral historians, with a focus on oral historians from communities that have historically been marginalized in the field; the proposal was awarded $825,000.

Education

In 2006, Margaret earned her certificate in fine arts with specializations in print-making, sculpture, and mix-media from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2011, Margaret received her B.A. from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts with a dual degree in History and Political Science with a concentrations in the history of marginalized groups and social movements in the 20th century American South. She was the proud recipient of the Hill Scholarship from the Chickasaw Nation for native youth pursuing their undergraduate degree in the humanities.

Margaret received her MA in Oral History from Columbia University in New York City in October, 2016. Her thesis, Turning Bullshit Into Fertilizer: Empowerment Narratives, Self-Definition, and Sense-of-Place in Agriculture in the American South explores the importance of stewarding and sustaining one's self and community from the land, how memories inhabit mind, body, and ritual, and the importance of sense-of-place for displaced and/or marginalized persons.

Tribal Engagement

Margaret is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation and advocate for indigenous rights. She has spoken and lead workshops on oral history at the Dynamic Women of the Chickasaw Nation conference in Sulfur and Thackerville, Oklahoma with the goal of preserving the knowledge of elders and the Chickasaw language with a focus on mother-daughter dyads. With her mother, Margaret helped to develop the “Maternal Dialogic” theory of oral history, exploring the deep bonds between mothers and daughters that often transcend language through oral history collection, transcription, archiving.