Lindsay J.K. Nichols

Lindsay is Vice President of Marketing and Communications at America’s Charities, which inspires employees and organizations to support the causes they care about. She is a seasoned communications strategist whose work has spanned the nonprofit, corporate, legal, healthcare, consumer, and government sectors for nearly 20 years. Lindsay specializes in dynamic social purpose communications, digital marketing, traditional/social media and media training, grassroots and crisis communications, branding, and message development. Lindsay's work has helped impact public policy, change people's behavior, and live healthier, more equitable lives. A member of the organization’s senior leadership team, Lindsay guides and oversees the strategy and execution of marketing and communications efforts with a major emphasis on increased growth for America's Charities, its nonprofit members, and employer clients. She serves as the project lead for its new Snapshot 2017 research report, detailing what U.S. employees think about workplace giving, volunteering, and CSR, and the Charities@Work partnership.

Most recently, Lindsay served as the senior director of marketing and communications at GuideStar, the world’s largest source of information about nonprofits. She managed a team of 10 responsible for executing GuideStar’s vision and sustaining awareness of its mission through dynamic and long-lasting relationships with key audiences and influencers. Lindsay served as GuideStar’s lead on the Overhead Myth and Money for Good campaigns and acted as a national spokesperson.

Prior to GuideStar, Lindsay served as a consultant with the leading public relations firms Ogilvy PR Worldwide, Metropolitan Group, Manning Selvage & Lee, and Levick Strategic Communications. Her clients have included international businesses and foundations such as Heineken, Eli Lily and Company, and National Geographic Foundation; national brands such as Best Buy and Bracewell & Giuliani; and local accounts such as the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Her social purpose clients included Pre-K for All DC; School-Based Health Alliance (formerly National Assembly on School-Based Health Care); Land Trust Alliance; RugMark; and NIH Institutes including the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National Institute of Nursing Research. 

She began her career at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) where she handled media efforts for the ASCE/FEMA report, “Why the Towers Fell,” about the collapse of the World Trade Center towers; the five-part PBS special Building Big about megastructures; and the 2001 Report Card for America's Infrastructure about the nation's failing infrastructure.

Lindsay has been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chronicle of Philanthropy, NonProfit Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Public Radio, Dallas Morning News, and more. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Communications and Women’s Studies from the State University of New York at Oswego. She is a founding board member of Youth Rights Agency of Western New York and Social Media for Nonprofits and a volunteer of Safe Shores, the DC Children’s Advocacy Center. In 2006 she was president of Washington Women in Public Relations (WWPR). She served as a judge for the 2017 WWPR Emerging Leader Awards.

Lindsay's personal mission is to drive social change. Listen to her on the Whole Whale podcast, "Understanding Workplace Giving with America's Charities.