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Joanna Hogan is the founder of Inspire Generosity and creator of DREAMS®. For more than 25 years, she has worked across philanthropy, executive leadership, education, and organizational strategy.
She played a key role in helping Michigan State University secure $90 million for its College of Human Medicine in Grand Rapids and led a $7.5 million fundraising initiative for the Clark Foundation. At the Porter Hills Foundation, she and her team raised $1.8 million in eight weeks to support healthcare workers.
Joanna also served as president of Compass College of Film and Media. In 2025, she was named a Notable Leader in Philanthropy by Crain’s Grand Rapids Business.
Her career has given her a close view of giving relationships from several perspectives: leading an institution, working inside advancement teams, partnering with foundations, and helping boards and nonprofit leaders connect with generous individuals and families. Across those experiences, Joanna became increasingly interested in a question that now sits at the heart of her work:
What helps generosity move, and what causes it to stall?
Inspire Generosity grew from that question and from a conviction that generosity flourishes when relationships are grounded in trust, authenticity, and shared purpose.
Today, Joanna helps nonprofit leaders, development professionals, and boards recognize what gets in the way of generosity and learn how to create the conditions in which it can grow.
When my last job ended, it felt like the perfect storm.
I had been hired to fix a fundraising problem, but the deeper issue was something else entirely: culture, clarity, trust. In the end, I helped the board make the hard decisions. I told the truth. The college closed, and my role as president was over.
But it wasn’t just a job that ended. It was an entire season of my life. And now, the role I had poured myself into was gone. The version of me who had held it all together for so long came undone. I kept asking God, “What am I supposed to do next?” Until a wise man gently said, “Joanna, I think you’re asking the wrong question.” So I stopped asking what I should do and asked instead: “God, what are You doing, and how can I be part of it?”
That’s when I received a clear message and a vision about nonprofit leaders who are doing brave, often lonely work to serve their communities. People full of vision and hope, but carrying the heavy burden of needing money to make it work. And I heard: They need what you have. Teach them the way I taught you. Help them get unstuck. Inspire them to dream again and dream bigger.
A few months later, I went on a seven-day solo retreat to begin writing the book that would become the foundation for The DREAMS® Framework. As I moved through each section, I kept inviting God’s guidance before I put anything on the page. In each part of the framework, before I could teach anything, God held up a mirror to my own life.
Every lesson had to be lived first, and every truth relearned. The first theme was generosity itself. When I asked what to say, I saw an image of an airplane oxygen mask. That’s when it clicked: before we can inspire generosity in others, we have to practice self-generosity ourselves. That realization changed everything.
This wasn’t just a curriculum. It was soul work.
And while this can be taught in many formats, this would be best received in a retreat setting, a space for stillness, reflection, and real transformation. I knew then that if I wanted to help others truly inspire generosity, I had to give them what I had just received. Not just tools. Not just training. A moment to breathe. A place to reflect. A path back to what really matters.That’s how Inspire Generosity was born.
Whether you lead, serve, fund, or guide, there's a place for you here.
