James R. Hackney, Jr., CFRE — Managing Partner
As Managing Partner of Alexander Haas, Jim serves cultural clients all over the United States. In the past five years, Jim has helped clients raise more than $700,000,000. Chosen as consultant to the American Association of Museums in Washington D.C. and the American Craft Council in New York City, Jim is known as a creative strategist for projects with national impact.
He is nationally known in the museum world. He directed the Centennial Campaign for the Dallas Museum of Art that resulted in over $400,000,000 in donations of art and increased endowment. In Columbus, Georgia he conducted a unique campaign that joined nine cultural organizations in a unified fundraising effort that raised over $110,000,000 in a community of less than 200,000 people. For the State of South Carolina, Jim directed the successful campaign to build the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities in a joint public – private partnership.
As a speaker, trainer and presenter, Jim is in high demand. He was recently asked by the American Association of Museums to conduct a “webinar” for museums directors across the country on how to handle fundraising in the current economic downturn. The American Association of Museums (AAM), National Park Service, and Association of Fund Raising Professionals (AFP), Art Museum Development Association (AMDA) Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern Museum Conferences and the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) have all asked him to present. In 2009 Jim presented the fundraising strategy to the Building New Museums conference in Washington, DC on the campaign to build the new Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia.
He graduated cum laude from Wofford College with a bachelor’s degree in humanities and earned a M.A.R. from Yale University Divinity School. He is currently on the Executive Committee of the Development and Membership Committee of the American Association of Museums and is past president of the Art Museum Development Association. A founding board member of the Arts Leadership League of Georgia, Jim is an advisor to United States Artists.
Prior to joining Alexander Haas in 1995, he worked at the North Carolina School of the Arts, was Director of Development and Marketing for the Mint Museum of Art and the Director of Development of Wofford College.