Mark Hernandez

Consultant Mark Hernandez is committed to ensuring that the arts, in all of their wonderful variety, survive and thrive. Toward that end, he has worked since 1999 on a freelance basis for non-profit arts providers, individual artists, and grantmakers.

With experience spanning fundraising, marketing, and programming, Mr. Hernandez is uniquely qualified for a range of tasks, from content creation and research to planning and analysis. In addition, his comprehensive knowledge of both the grantseeker and grantmaker worlds, combined with his active career as a performer, has given him an unusually sweeping perspective of what it takes to achieve results.

Mr. Hernandez has managed discrete assignments; jumped in at the eleventh hour to help complete or fix projects; and worked on an interim basis for weeks or months, providing stability to organizations while they look for long-term solutions. His client list includes San Francisco's "Big Three" (Opera, Symphony, Ballet), San Francisco Classical Voice, and Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, to name a few.

Through his work with arts providers Mr. Hernandez came to the attention of the grantmaker community. He has been engaged by a number of granting agencies, including private foundations, to provide subjective analysis of artistic work, objective evaluation of institutional capacity, opinions on issues facing the field, and funding recommendations.

Recently, Mr. Hernandez gained notice for ghostwriting several chapters of an opera luminary’s memoir. He is currently co-authoring a book that takes a lighthearted look at real life behind the scenes at the opera, scheduled to be published in 2012.

Mr. Hernandez received Bachelors and Master of Music degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. From 1992 to 2000 he worked for San Francisco Opera, four of those years as Development Staff Writer.