When you partner with Thrive Marketing Group a principal will work daily on your behalf with a select team of seasoned analysts, creative strategists and marketers. Direct contact with our founders and senior fundraisers is as important to us as it is you.
Our expertise in designing and implementing customized, integrated fundraising programs for donors of every generation and across all giving levels is the core of what we do.
Our commitment to partnering with nonprofits that share our passion for social justice, equality, human and civil rights and ending poverty and hunger is the reason we are here.
Ellen Cobb Church – Founder
For more than 35 years, Ellen has dedicated her career to advancing organizations that affect social change. She has long been one of the brightest and most uplifting consultants on the U.S. fundraising landscape. Happily — for her clients and the beneficiaries of their important work — she backs up her optimism and with passion, dedication and the know-how to create rich and innovative strategies, hugely successful campaigns, and transformative results.
She is also a rich source of strategic knowledge, including industry trends, the fundraising landscape and domestic and foreign affairs that drive her clients' programmatic work.
Ellen spent 20 years with the highly regarded Craver Mathews Smith & Co., becoming president and CEO in 2006 and a principal in 2008 before founding Thrive Marketing Group in 2018. She has crafted cost-effective, high-net-producing fundraising programs for organizations of every size and complexity. Ellen has directed the design and execution of the creative and strategic plans for complex programs of newly launched and well-established national, international and local nonprofits, working with both charitable and advocacy organizations.
Ellen’s vast experience includes launching, growing and sustaining multichannel fundraising programs for local, national and international organizations across multiple sectors. She is proud to have partnered with organizations that include Americans United for Separation of Church and State, American Red Cross, Americans for the Arts, Bideawee, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, ChildFund International, Child Mind Institute, City Harvest , Covenant House, Heifer International, Habitat for Humanity International, Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Operation Smile, Project HOPE, Providence Hospital, the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center, West Virginia State University and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
