737: How to Fundraise for Leaders Who Never Wanted to Fundraise, with Alice Ferris
Coaching for Leaders
Dave Stachowiak
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 June 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alice Ferris is the Founding Partner of GoalBusters, a firm working to help small and mighty fundraising teams achieve big impact by planning practical strategies, teaching essential fundraising skills, and doing the hands-on work to turn vision into reality. She has more than 30 years of professional fundraising experience, specializing in strategic and development planning, campaign readiness and development program assessments, board and organizational training, executive leadership coaching, individual giving, and grant proposal evaluation. She’s also a graduate of the Coaching for Leaders Academy.
Fundraising is not a word that sparks joy for most leaders. In fact, many people who do fundraising never planned to have that be part of their career. And yet, almost every leader has an aspect of fundraising in their professional or personal lives. In this conversation, Alice and I explore how to get better at it.
Key Points
Almost every leader is involved with fundraising in some capacity, either personally or professionally.
It’s a myth that fundraising is just asking for money. Most fundraising activities happen outside of the ask.
Consider fundraising goals options for must do activities, maintaining the current state, and aspirational growth.
Most people share health issues with their immediate family and close friends. When your organization is facing headwinds, tell your donors how they can help.
Dedicated attention to fundraising is key for both prioritization and relationship continuity.
Connectors, experts, and closers are all essential roles in the fundraising process. Play to the strengths of both staff and volunteers to fill these roles well.
Resources Mentioned
Connect with Alice on LinkedIn
GoalBusters
Related Episodes
How to Lead Top-Line Growth, with Tim Sanders (episode 299)
How an Executive Aligns with a Board, with Joan Garry (episode 662)
The Reason People Make Buying Decisions, with Marcus Collins (episode 664)
Expert Partner
Beginning a career transition? Feeling stagnant in your current role? Scott Barlow and his team may be able to help as official partners of Coaching for Leaders. To discover more about how his team can support you, get in touch on our expert partners page.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Fundraising is not a word that sparks joy for most leaders. In fact, many people who do fundraising |
| 0:06.4 | never planned it to be part of their career. And yet, almost every leader has an aspect of |
| 0:12.5 | fundraising in their professional or personal lives. In this episode, How to Get Better at it. |
| 0:19.4 | This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 737. |
| 0:23.3 | Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. |
| 0:31.8 | Greetings to you from Orange County, California. |
| 0:35.2 | This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stahoviac. |
| 0:39.8 | Leaders aren't born. They're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom |
| 0:45.1 | through insightful conversations. One of the challenges that many of us have in our organizations, |
| 0:52.9 | either because it's part of our job or we work |
| 0:56.0 | for a nonprofit or we know folks who have this as part of their role, is fundraising. |
| 1:01.0 | How do we be able to provide the resources for organization to do good work in the world? |
| 1:06.8 | It's one of those things most of us never went to school for, but we all have an eye to it in some way. |
| 1:12.6 | Today, a conversation on how do we do a better job at this thing that so many of us never got any training at? |
| 1:20.6 | I am so pleased to welcome Alice Ferris to the show. |
| 1:24.0 | She is the founding partner of Goal Busters, a firm working to help small and mighty |
| 1:29.5 | fundraising teams achieve big impact by planning practical strategies, teaching essential fundraising |
| 1:36.1 | skills, and doing the hands-on work to turn vision into reality. She has more than 30 years |
| 1:41.9 | of professional fundraising experience, specializing in strategic and |
| 1:45.7 | development planning, campaign readiness and development program assessments, board and |
| 1:50.5 | organizational training, executive leadership coaching, individual giving, and grant proposal |
| 1:55.7 | evaluation. |
... |
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