Founders • Team • Constellation • Partners • Story
We are dreamers and doers, listeners and leaders, pros and partners.
So who are we exactly?
TakeTwo Services works with nonprofits to raise their funds and visibility.
We provide the foundational services that help nonprofits grow in size and success: donor communications and fundraising.
Our unique approach —that integrates these two areas —saves time, increases efficiency, and gets results.
We are a NYC Certified Women’s Business Enterprise. And we work with all types of nonprofits all across the US, and internationally.
Founders
Stephanie Arcella
Co-founder, Fundraiser
Stephanie is a social worker and a seasoned fundraiser – a unique professional combo. She brings understanding and knowledge of your work and expertise in building and strengthening funding bases. She has extensive experience working closely with board members, executive directors, directors of development, and major donors. Stephanie is an expert in relationship management, strategic and fundraising plan development and implementation, donor cultivation, grants management, and events management. She’s also great as a team leader, and at finding the best restaurants.
She has 18+ years experience in fundraising. To learn more about Stephanie, visit her LinkedIn page.
Bix Gabriel
Co-founder, Communications
Bix started her career as a copywriter in advertising, but found that selling toothpaste didn’t quite measure up to the thrill of telling stories about transforming people’s lives.
Bix has more than fifteen years of experience helping nonprofits tell their stories, and persuading people to care, give, and take action. She’s an expert in developing memorable brands, creating and executing communications campaigns and strategies, storytelling, and staff and board trainings. She has three Masters degrees: Communications, and Media Studies, and a MFA in Creative Writing. She’s best at ‘using her words’, and after a cup – or seven – of tea. For more, visit Bix’s LinkedIn page.
Team
Bhavana comes to TakeTwo Services with almost fifteen years of experience in nonprofit operations. As administrative staff at several organizations, Bhavana’s work has included organizational event planning and management.
Bhavana is also a seasoned activist in grassroots movement-building spaces, and brings experience with organizing workshops, conference tracks, fundraising events and online campaigns as additional experience in logistics and event coordination.
Bhavana’s interests include healing and transformative justice.
Mona has close to twenty years of experience spanning from marketing, media, and strategic communications to strategic planning, organizational and program development. Most recently, she was with Women for Afghan Women (WAW) in New York, where she continues in a part-time capacity, and where she was responsible for developing and executing a new communications strategy, including rebranding, updating and overhauling all of WAW’s communications and social media platforms, and marketing collateral. Before moving to the U.S. in 2012, she worked extensively with grassroots organizations that served refugees, and women and youth in the Middle East, as well as with Handicap International, Oxfam Quebec, UN-ESCWA, Heinrich Boll Foundation, the Arab Resource Collective, Lebanese International University, and Saatchi & Saatchi, among others.
Rebeccah is an innovative systems-thinker who excels at developing solutions to strengthen organizations and maximize impact. She has worked in the nonprofit sector for 20 years on missions that include a focus on workforce and community economic development, business assistance, immigrant rights, domestic violence prevention, environmental education, economic justice, and capacity building.
Rebeccah is passionate about teaching and professional development. She earned her B.A. from Williams College and her Ph.D. from New York University. Prior to her work in the nonprofit sector she served as a Fellow at NYU, Boston University, and Harvard University, and has written about politics and history in the academic and popular press.
More about Rebeccah here.
Laimah is a visual artist, educator, and graphic designer who brings a multidisciplinary and collaborative spirit to the table. She has over fifteen years of experience working with nonprofit, advocacy, and education institutions. Laimah enjoys designing for print and web. Her projects include a variety of tasks, from intricate hand-lettering and illustration, to logo ideation and online instructional design. She teaches printmaking and book arts at Parsons School of Design (The New School).
You can learn more about her work by viewing her visual art portfolio and her design portfolio.
Matthew is a filmmaker and photographer with experience in all facets of photo and video production.
With over ten years of experience working as a documentary producer, and with a strong track record crafting documentaries, PSAs, fundraising videos, and awareness raising short films for non-profit clients, he is here to bring your stories to life in professional quality HD, from initial concept through final delivery.
Matthew’s ultra-observant eye for irony make his reel and photos worth a second, third, and even a fourth look.
Amanda is a creative thinker, content marketer, and nonprofit communications strategist.
A devoted reader, Amanda started her career in book publishing before landing in the nonprofit world. Amanda has a proven record for converting nascent ideas into thriving campaigns. She is skilled in helping organizations develop and share their stories.
View Amanda’s LinkedIn profile here.
Fivel Rothberg specializes in producing short nonfiction films for NGOs and long-format documentaries. He produced a feature-length documentary by Nathan Fitch, “Island Soldier,” about Micronesian citizens serving in the US military. It premiered at Full Frame 2017, had its international premiere at HotDocs 2017 and aired on World Channel in 2019. He was the Associate Producer of Kelly Anderson’s film, “My Brooklyn,” which aired in 2014 on the PBS series America ReFramed. Fivel’s nonprofit work include videos for the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault, Say Yes to Education, Vibrant Emotional Health, and more.
Kristine has over 12 years of experience in grant development, fundraising, and international development focused on creating impact at the intersections of women’s and human rights, peace-building, and migration. This includes working in community-based organizations, a Cabinet-level government agency, and national/international women’s/human rights organizations. Kristine is passionate about finding the best solutions to social problems. She specializes in writing, developing, and managing grants and systems so nonprofits can dedicate more time to achieving their missions.
Owner and founder of KVDesign, Kerstin Vogdes Diehn specializes in working with nonprofit organizations. Her focus: clean, modern and brand-specific design for print, large-format graphics (like exhibits), and the web. One of her specialties is designing with type – a true asset for any design involving, you know, the written word.
Rare Dimension is the Portland, OR, based one-man studio of Matt Pahler. He is a graphic designer specializing in WordPress based websites, Logo design, and digital artwork.
Matt Pahler/Rare Dimension has worked with clients big and small- from corporate identity to local Mom-and-Pop – and of course, with nonprofits.
Passionate about taking ideas that have the potential to make meaningful change, and helping to lay the foundation for them to grow, Bambu is a nonprofit-focused fundraising firm. Bambu and TakeTwo have partnered on fundraising projects such as securing U.S-based funding for GRAVIS, an organization in Rajasthan, India; developing fundraising materials for a new Women’s Leadership Program at the University of Montana, and more.
Our Story
We like to tell stories. Here’s ours:
Sometime in the new millennium, erm, the year 2003 to be precise, two passionate-for-change young women met at a small nonprofit. One of us, Bix, worked on communications. The other, Stephanie, was a fundraiser.
Working together, though in our tiny and separate domains, we accomplished a lot: grew the annual budget, raised the profile of the organization, and as a result gained more donors, and volunteers. We loved what we did, and we discovered that when we combined our efforts — whether on galas, or annual reports — we got a lot more done, and did so more efficiently and quickly.
We also had a lot of fun.
But we thought it was just us, a serendipitous partnership. Except that this collaborative effort worked again, and again, at nonprofits small and large, local and international.
Somehow it was 2010. That year, Twitter users sent 50 million tweets per day! Social media was no longer just for fun and friends. What we take for granted today, was just becoming clear: donors are everywhere.
But was the nonprofit industry ready for change? In most organizations then, (and even some now,) communications and fundraising were two silos — with few and tenuous bridges. We had a winning combination. But could we change our organizations? The sector?
Then, the effects of the recession really began to hit nonprofits. Downsizing was rampant. Was it the best time to start a new business? For us, two passionate-for-change people, it felt like the chance to do something that was going to be the future.
One evening in SoHo, over meatballs and wine, we made the leap. The next year we launched TakeTwo.
Since then, we’ve grown, we’ve adapted to the immense changes – social, political, technological – sweeping the nonprofit world. But our core is the same as always: we still put our heads together to achieve the most in the least time, without compromising quality.
And we still have fun. A lot of it.
Partners
Constellation
Find and hire #NonprofitConsultantsOfColor!
Take Two Services is pleased to be the creator and owner of #Constellation, the 1st and only (as of 2023) national directory of Nonprofit Consultants of Color. This online directory connects #BIPOC consultants with nonprofits, foundations, and recruiters to promote equity in the nonprofit world!
We created Constellation to help nonprofits, foundations, and other recruiters find consultants who are diverse in identity, representation, skills, and experiences, who can serve as credible messengers to their unique missions and communities.
The directory lists consultants by area of specialty, issues nonprofits work on, sectors, experience, location, and more, so that hirers – nonprofit organizations, foundations that support them, and recruiters – can target consultants who fit their needs. Hirers can search consultants for free, and contact them for a sliding scale fee, based on budget size. More information on joining here.
History:
In May 2020, in response to the ongoing racism and violence against Black people in the US, we felt that rather than issuing a solidarity statement, we needed to do something with tangible impact. We often hear that nonprofit leaders would love to hire but “can’t find Black consultants,” or “don’t know any consultants of color.” So, we put together a simple Google sheet directory of Nonprofit Consultants of Color, where anyone who identified as a consultant of color could list themselves. (This was inspired by writersofcolor.org – hat tip and thank you!)
In 2023, we have further developed the directory to include and intersect racial and ethnic identity with other categories of identity (ability, neurodivergence, sexuality and gender identity, etc).
We hope this directory helps to diversify the nonprofit consulting field!