RENEE BOURQUE
Renee Bourque, MEd, Grant Professional Certified (GPC), comes from a long line of educators. She graduated summa cum laude with a master’s degree in education, Curriculum and Instruction from Seattle University. This academic legacy continued in her role as faculty, raising millions of dollars through classes in the top-ranked Nonprofit Management Program of the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs and Governance, Graduate School, University of Washington where she taught PhD and master’s students grant writing and philanthropy from across the graduate school, including medicine, library science, social work, international affairs, and business. In the University of Washington Fundraising Management certificate program, Renee taught grant writing, prospect research, and finance to students working toward careers in fundraising for nonprofits.
At the University of Idaho, she taught academic departments how to dovetail their research through the proposal development process and then get research out of labs and into rural development.
Renee is a recognized Grant Writing Subject Matter Expert endorsed by the University of South Florida and the Grant Professional Certification Institute.
Renee has been President of Bright Star Grant Consultants since 2004, where she serves a worldwide clientele of funders, nonprofits, and governments with innovative leadership in highly complex assignments and an 82 percent funding success rate. In finance, she develops diversified and leveraged funding plans that scale with organizational growth. In her role as a strategy expert, she has led local, statewide, and international initiatives related to philanthropy, leadership, human rights, economic development, education, and healthcare. Clients value Renee’s multidimensional perspective as a donor and a funds seeker and an implementer.
Renee uses wide-ranging approaches to transform poverty by building resilience with inclusive economy strategies. This work has included multi-country community assessment and development plans in places like the East Africa Hardship Zone, diversified fund and program development in Vietnam, and international organizational scale-ups with Ashoka Fellows for arts education. Bright Star research into community violence and healing has been used as Congressional testimony to shape federal funding programs at the U.S. Department of Justice. A highlight project was working with the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center to restore the endangered wood bison to its native artic habitat where it has been helping to restore fragile habitat in a time of climate change. Recently, she was Chief Editor of the first environmental conservation textbook for the Dominican Republic.
Renee began her philanthropy journey serving with her family’s trust. This experience continues through the Bright Star consultancy, which gives back to the world community it serves. Bright Star Philanthropy Partners (BSPP) is a collective impact initiative of Bright Star Grant Consultants. BSPP identifies and supports Central American indigenous leaders to realize solutions that they design and execute with assistance from Bright Star collaborations, technical assistance, and grants. Focus areas include leadership and economic development, women’s empowerment, education, publishing original work in endangered indigenous languages, and community pride.
