I chatted recently with Eliot Spitzer's former finance director, Cynthia Darrison, who spent eight years building his fund-raising operation and is now in business for herself.

Darrison Barrett & Associates L.L.C. will essentially be in the business of teaching people about the craft of fund-raising.

"I don't think donors themselves are necessarily in tune with why they're giving," she said.

Her ministrations, she said, would be "kind of like therapy."

-- Azi Paybarah