Vandever Batten sets the gold standard for helping Charlotte’s nonprofits envision and fund their future. We have a hand and heart in initiatives that have made our region more resilient and vibrant.
At Vandever Batten, we know what makes an organization
invaluable. Let’s get to work.
Lauren Batten is president of Vandever Batten, Inc., a consulting firm that helps nonprofits envision and fund their future. Vandever Batten helps shape possibilities, draw valuable connections, and leverage resources in ways that improve lives across the Charlotte region. Since its founding in 1999, the firm has enjoyed a campaign success rate of 126% in helping its clients raise more than half a billion dollars to strengthen our local community.
Lauren has enjoyed more than 30 years in fundraising, grantmaking and strategic, organizational planning. Beyond Lauren’s community-wide consulting efforts, she went on special assignment to Charlotte Country Day School in 2011 to help propel the institution through the most transformational season of its 77-year history. After refreshing its brand, conducting a strategic planning process, hosting a master facility planning process, and shaping a refreshed Advancement function, Country Day raised more than $120MM over an historic decade. Outside of raising more than $90MM for capital, the school’s endowment corpus (currently valued at more than $65MM) tripled by adding more than $25MM and its Annual Fund doubled to $2.3MM.
Lauren’s early professional engagements include serving as a vice president with the First Union Foundation (now Wells Fargo), vice president for development for the Arts & Science Council – Charlotte/Mecklenburg (ASC) and regional program director of Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She found her love for consulting as an associate director with Coxe Curry & Associates, Atlanta’s premier nonprofit consulting firm.
Lauren Batten is committed to her community. She is an elder of Covenant Presbyterian Church and most recently served as a leader of Covenant’s capital campaign, raising more than $20MM for affordable housing and preschool education against a campaign goal of $12MM. She currently serves on the Church’s Elder Nominating Committee. Lauren is a member of Queens University of Charlotte’s Board of Advisors and has co-chaired every reunion since graduating from Duke University in 1992, breaking the University’s 25th reunion fundraising record. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of Duke University’s Annual Fund. An alumna of Leadership Charlotte and founding member of the Women’s Impact Fund, Lauren received a Women in Business Achievement Award from the Business Journal in 2002.
While using her professional time to strengthen nonprofit organizations, Lauren primarily enjoys investing in individuals and families as a volunteer. She currently serves as a member of the Advisory Board for ParentChild+, a national nonprofit that uses education to break the poverty cycle for low-income families. She is a perennial reader for Freedom School Partners and routinely serves as a confirmation mentor for Covenant Presbyterian Church’s middle school youth. One of Lauren’s greatest joys beyond raising her three children is serving as a reader with the Read, Roar, Soar program for at-risk third graders at Highland Renaissance Academy (a Title One elementary school within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools district).
Vern Vandever (pictured second from the left) was Lauren Batten’s great grandfather. He and his four older brothers owned and operated Vandever’s — Tulsa’s first modern-day department store — at the turn of the 20th century. Vern was a generous and active civic leader beyond being a pioneering retail merchant. He valued relationships deeply, which he illustrated by greeting customers and their children by name as they entered the store and by sacrificing to keep all of Vandever’s employees fully engaged during the Depression. His kindness, generosity, and civic-minded leadership serve as a spiritual guide to Vandever Batten’s work today.
