About Best Practice FS

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With more than 20 years of leadership-level experience in advancement, strategic funding development, and institutional partnerships, Dr. Charles (Chad) Vogel is the founder and principal consultant of Best Practice FS. His career has included leadership positions as Athletic Director at his alma mater, Dakota Wesleyan University, and Associate Dean of Advancement at the University of Illinois.

Throughout his career, Dr. Vogel has led complex funding initiatives and capital campaigns and developed strategic partnerships across higher education, healthcare, conservation, agribusiness, and nonprofit sectors. He is a certified grant writer with expertise in federal funding, major-gift strategy, public-private collaboration, and the development of complex funding ecosystems.

Today, Best Practice FS works across two distinct but complementary environments. For nonprofits and institutions, BPFS helps capitalize the mission by aligning vision, storytelling, philanthropy, grants, partnerships, and advancement strategy. For businesses, BPFS helps capitalize growth by identifying where external and non-dilutive capital can legitimately advance demonstration, validation, deployment, market development, commercialization, and other strategic objectives.

Through its Strategic Funding Systems™ approach, Best Practice FS begins not with an individual grant or solicitation, but with what an organization is trying to become—and then develops the relationships, funding pathways, partnerships, and implementation strategies that can help it get there.

Best Practice FS is built around thoughtful strategy, trusted relationships, independent judgment, and measurable results.

Best Practice FS helps organizations and businesses develop Strategic Funding Systems™ that connect vision, capital, partnerships, project development, and implementation. Rather than beginning with an individual grant or funding opportunity, BPFS begins with what the client is trying to accomplish and builds a strategy around the funding sources, relationships, and implementation pathways that can help make it possible.

For nonprofits and institutions, this may mean aligning philanthropy, grants, partnerships, and advancement strategy around mission growth. For businesses, it may mean identifying where external and non-dilutive capital can legitimately support demonstration, validation, deployment, commercialization, market development, and other investments necessary for enterprise growth.

Best Practice FS has particular expertise in identifying opportunities where the interests of companies, federal and state agencies, municipalities, nonprofits, research institutions, and other stakeholders intersect. These shared interests can create opportunities to develop projects that produce meaningful public or community benefit while simultaneously advancing legitimate organizational or commercial objectives. BPFS helps identify that alignment, bring the appropriate partners together, develop the project and funding architecture, and position the initiative for investment.

The work does not necessarily end with an award. Best Practice FS can provide post-award strategic implementation support, helping clients translate funded proposals into successful projects through partner coordination, implementation planning, funding and compliance strategy, stakeholder engagement, performance management, and preparation for subsequent funding and growth opportunities.

The objective is not simply to secure funding. It is to build a funding system in which strategy, capital, partnerships, and implementation reinforce one another over time.

Best Practice FS provides comprehensive major-gift and capital-campaign strategy designed to help nonprofits and institutions secure transformational philanthropic investment while strengthening the relationships and systems that sustain advancement over time.

Services include campaign readiness and feasibility assessment, strategic campaign planning, leadership and volunteer structure development, donor identification and cultivation strategy, major-gift engagement, solicitation counsel, and campaign implementation. Campaigns are approached through a disciplined, phased methodology that develops institutional alignment and leadership support before expanding to broader constituencies.

Best Practice FS approaches major philanthropy as more than a series of transactions. Effective advancement connects an organization's mission and future vision with donors who see themselves as meaningful participants in that future. The goal is therefore not only to achieve a campaign or major-gift objective, but to strengthen donor confidence, institutional alignment, leadership capacity, and long-term stewardship.

Led by a Certified Grant Writer with professional certification in Federal Uniform Guidance Principles under 2 CFR 200, Best Practice FS provides grant and project-development strategy for nonprofits, educational institutions, businesses, conservation initiatives, municipalities, and collaborative partnerships.

Services include opportunity identification, strategic positioning, project development, partnership architecture, proposal development, budget strategy, regulatory and compliance guidance, and submission support. Particular expertise lies in complex state and federal opportunities requiring multiple partners, public-private collaboration, sophisticated implementation structures, and alignment among governmental, organizational, community, and commercial interests.

For business clients, BPFS looks beyond the face value of an individual grant to evaluate its strategic and economic value—including whether external or non-dilutive funding can legitimately finance work the company already needs to undertake, reduce the amount of company capital required, create demonstrations or performance evidence, develop strategic relationships, open markets, or advance commercialization.

When funding is secured, Best Practice FS can remain engaged through post-award project implementation, helping translate the commitments made in an application into coordinated execution, measurable outcomes, strong stakeholder relationships, and positioning for the next opportunity.

At Best Practice FS, we believe sustainable success is rarely the result of a single grant, donor, campaign, project, or funding opportunity. It comes from building Strategic Funding Systems™ that align an organization’s vision with the capital, relationships, partnerships, and implementation capacity necessary to achieve it.

Our work begins with a simple question: What are you trying to become? From there, we help determine what resources are required, where interests align, and who else may have a legitimate reason to help finance the journey.

For nonprofits and institutions, that means connecting mission, philanthropy, grants, storytelling, partnerships, and leadership around a compelling future. For businesses, it means understanding how external and non-dilutive capital can strategically support demonstration, validation, deployment, commercialization, market development, and growth.

We are particularly interested in the places where interests intersect. Companies, governments, municipalities, nonprofits, research institutions, funders, and communities do not need to share the same motivations to pursue shared outcomes. When their interests legitimately align, thoughtful project development and public-private collaboration can create value for multiple stakeholders while advancing work that might otherwise be difficult to finance.

We also believe implementation is part of the strategy. Securing funding is not the finish line. Successful projects must convert investment into measurable outcomes, stronger partnerships, demonstrated credibility, and future opportunity. That is why Best Practice FS can remain engaged beyond funding development to help clients move from strategy and proposal through implementation and into what comes next.

We value thoughtful strategy over quick fixes, trusted relationships over transactional consulting, and practical execution over abstract planning. The objective is not simply to win funding. It is to build a system capable of turning aligned interests and strategic investment into enduring value.