Robert Kaplan is known internationally for his skills as a campaign, communications and fundraising consultant, and advisor. Clients have included initiative campaigns, political action committees, special interest groups, trade associations, not-for-profit organizations and foundations, candidates, and independent expenditure efforts. Kaplan is widely viewed as a foremost and trusted expert.
In more than 30 years working with and on behalf of various entities and interests, as both a consultant and advisor, Kaplan has planned, designed, positioned, directed and executed more than 450 fundraising and capital campaigns, grassroots, voter outreach and other communications programs. His experience includes more than 40 statewide and local initiative campaigns.
An award-winning expert in strategy and technique, message development, donor development, online lead generation, direct mail, grassroots organizing, and voter communication, Kaplan’s work has raised more than $120 million for his professional clients and millions more for the community groups he supports.
Honored as the “2008 Fundraiser of the Year” by the American Association of 
Political Consultants, Kaplan has also been named a “Rising Star,” “Mover & Shaker” and “America’s Hottest Fund Raiser” by Campaigns & Elections magazine. Kaplan’s work has won numerous Pollie Awards (the political consulting worlds’ equivalent of the Oscars) and was also named to the 2010 Aristotle National Campaign Dream Team.
Robert Kaplan has worked with public and private sector groups and clients on a wide range of issues. Issues include renewable energy, environmental preservation and natural resources management, public safety, transportation, public school finance, public employee pensions, land-use, auto and health insurance, public-private partnerships and capital campaigns for the construction of community service buildings and public parks.
Kaplan has been published more than a dozen times and is a frequent speaker at conferences, training programs and other community events. His activities and clients span the United States, Israel, Mexico, Canada and the former Soviet Union. In 1990 Kaplan was among the first twelve American political consultants invited to the former Soviet Union to train government and party officials on the role of politics and political campaigns in building a democratic government.
Following a degree in Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley, Kaplan was awarded a CORO Foundation Fellowship in Public Affairs. He then completed his Fellowship and studies in Public Policy at the Claremont Graduate School.
Kaplan spent more than a decade as a Director of the American Association of Political Consultants where, as Chair of both its 2008 and 2009 National Pollie Awards Conferences, he reworked their programs and awards – creating by far the two highest grossing conferences in their history, and establishing a framework that has since allowed for unprecedented growth and stability for the AAPC.
Kaplan was a member of the Board of the CORO Foundation of Southern California where, while as Chair of five consecutive Crystal Eagle Awards Gala’s, he raised in excess of four-million dollars. Kaplan was on the Board of Hillel at UCLA and on the United Jewish Appeal National Leadership Cabinet representing the Los Angeles Jewish Federation. Robert was instrumental in the creation of, and serves as a Co-Chair of, the Los Angeles Political Roast benefiting the American Diabetes Association. Over the last nineteen years the Roast has raised in excess of ten million dollars for the American Diabetes Association.
Kaplan began his political, public affairs, and fundraising career in 1966 at the ripe age of 9 when he was dragged by his older brother Allan to “volunteer” for a California State Assembly campaign. Robert was the youngest envelope stuffing, precinct walking, lawn sign planting and telephone soliciting for votes and money volunteer on that campaign, which set the stage for a lifetime of activities devoted to public and community service.