Latinx Affinity Group Meeting - October 2025
October 7, 2025 | 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. Eastern
Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with our Latinx Affinity Group! We welcome guest speaker Armando Zumaya, Founder & Executive Director of Somos El Poder.
Facilitators: Evelyn Hernandez and Lisa Vega-Fields
Armando Zumaya has been in fundraising for over 40 years in a variety of roles that have given him a unique perspective on all aspects of development offices, fundraising culture and Latinx in the US nonprofit world. He founded Somos El Poder because of his experiences of his long career in development, his success in teaching fundraising, and a deep pride in his Chicano heritage.
He is a noted expert on Latinx Major Giving and all aspects of fundraising with the Latinx community. He has direct experience raising five, six and seven-figure gifts from Latinx. He lectures and writes about the Latinx experience in the nonprofit world. His work includes direct experience raising five, six and seven-figure gifts from Latinx in the US. He is an active development officer.
He has spent the bulk of his fundraising career as a Major Gifts, Leadership Gifts, and Annual Fund Officer on two $1+ billion dollar campaigns at Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley. He began his career in 1985 as a canvasser for SANE/FREEZE in Los Angeles and Ithaca N.Y. where he led door to door canvassers in the field for 5 years. He has served as the Vice President of Development, Director of Major Gifts and Chief Development Officer, Annual Fund and Leadership Gift roles.
He is well known for his work in teaching prospecting, solicitation, cold calling, major gifts techniques and remote constituency fundraising. He has been a tireless advocate for improving the Prospect Researcher/Fundraiser relationship and creating a prospecting culture inside development teams.
He is a well-reviewed speaker. His session at the 2018 AFP International Conference was one of the few highlighted in the Chronicle of Philanthropy's coverage of that conference out of 116 sessions in their April 17th, 2018 issue.
Armando has also lectured at APRA, AFP Chapters, AFP Hemispheric, APRA Chapters, BBCON, GIFT, AFP, The Foundation Center, Development Executives Roundtable, CARA, SAWA, MARC, Compass Point, Blackbaud, and Forum on Fundraising and Academic Impressions. He has been featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, APRA Connections, the Grassroots Fundraising Journal, and other publications.
He has been widely published, including the nationally acclaimed OpEd in the Chronicle of Philanthropy on March 24, 2014, entitled “Give Fundraising Researchers More Influence and More Credit”. He has also been published in the Grassroots Fundraising Journal, Currents (The Magazine of CASE), The Major Gifts Report Fundraising Compass, Bloomerang, Frost on Fundraising, and others.
In 2024, Armando was recognized by the Nonprofit Times, being placed for the first time on their "Top 50 List of Leaders of Power and Influence". This is for leaders who have created innovative, impactful new movements.
In 2025, he was also awarded the "Maestro Award" by Latino Leaders Magazine for Community Service.
He lives in Northern California and is a proud alumnus of the University of California, Riverside, and Theodore Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles.