W. Michael Gretschel

Mike is a founding partner of MDG and the firm’s president and CEO. Over the past three decades, Mike shepherded MDG from a fledgling agency into one of the world’s largest mailers and pre-eminent fundraising consultants. Along the way he helped hundreds of organizations raise hundreds of millions of dollars. This success has earned Mike nationwide recognition as a trendsetter and shrewdly creative mind.

As an industry leader, Mike has been a featured speaker at numerous direct-marketing conferences across the country. He is involved with a variety of industry trade organizations and served on the Board of Directors of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington, DC.

In 1993, Mike co-founded the Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation (DRWF) and still serves as its volunteer president. DRWF is the publisher of the largest paid consumer/patient circulation newsletter in the field, Diabetes Wellness News, and the first publisher of a weight-loss system for people with diabetes.

In addition to his diabetes leadership, Mike has served on the board of trustees of several non-profit groups throughout metropolitan Washington, DC, including Good Counsel High School, Catholic Charities and the Smyth Fund of Blessed Sacrament School. He and his wife, Maureen, chaired the Catholic Charities Foundation benefit gala in 2002 and are active in many charitable efforts for the Catholic Church in Washington and beyond. Mike is also a member of the board of America’s Charities, the workplace giving giant based in Chantilly, Virginia.

Mike and Maureen live in Chevy Chase, Maryland and enjoy the company of their four children and eight grandchildren.