A Real Goal-Getter

Alice Ferris has taken a winding career path centered on helping others succeed

A lot of Alice Ferris’ (B.A. ’91, MBA ’94) life happens by accident. Or, at least, there’s a pattern of unintentional happenings that she credits with getting her from point A to point B on the broader timeline of her career.

Born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, to parents who emigrated from Taipei, Taiwan, Ferris was the first Chinese baby born at Beaver Dam Lutheran Hospital. She grew up in Wisconsin and loved it so much she thought she would never leave.

“I liked growing up there,” Ferris says. “I just figured I was going to live and die in Wisconsin.”

As it turns out, Ferris’ career eventually took her out of Wisconsin, but not before first receiving two degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Ferris pursued her undergraduate degree with the intention of majoring only in radio, TV, and film. But after taking enough economics classes on the side for fun, she realized she could declare a double major. This, she says, was the first of many “accidents” that have landed her where she is today.

The same kind of unpredictable fate befell her graduate degree. Originally on track to get her MBA in general management from the Wisconsin School of Business, Ferris quickly realized that all the accounting classes she was taking out of sheer interest would allow her to once again double major.

It might be difficult to imagine all the possible career trajectories for someone with such a range of skills and knowledge, but the eventual focus of Ferris’ career can perhaps once again be credited to a happy accident.

Ferris started volunteering for Wisconsin Public Television (WPT) when she was 15 years old and attending West High School in Madison. From a young age, she knew she wanted to study media and got a job on the production crew at WPT her freshman year of college. But she also—unintentionally—landed a job in the membership department there. It became clear that Ferris had an aptitude for fundraising, and she saw great opportunity to expand not only her skill set but also her career.

“I wasn’t so sure about always having a job, going into television production,” Ferris says. “That’s kind of why I switched to the revenue generation side of things and why the Wisconsin MBA made sense to me.”

After completing her MBA, Ferris began searching for experience outside of WPT, where she was then working in fundraising full time. Her next chapter presented itself in the form of a job as director of development at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.

The job, Ferris says, had fateful UW–Madison connections.

“I’m pretty sure there are two reasons why my résumé ended up on the top,” she says. “One was that the director at the time was a UW alumnus. The second was that I was the only person among all the fundraising applicants who had actually taken two semesters of astronomy. Back to the random nature of the classes that I took at UW–Madison, I took the only two astronomy classes you could take as a nonmajor. And that’s what brought me to Flagstaff, Arizona.”

In 2001, Ferris launched her own consulting business in Flagstaff. The intent was for the business to be a part-time gig, and a way for her to help local nonprofit organizations with fundraising activities, direct mail, and other types of campaign management.

The business, which became GoalBusters in 2006, is now a full-service, national consulting company that focuses predominantly on small and medium nonprofits.

“There are a lot of firms that deal with the big dogs—education institutions, health care institutions, large nonprofits,” Ferris says. “But we’re interested in helping the small charities. Those are the organizations that typically need the help, and yet those are not the ones targeted by the large institutions.”

But this, she says, is rightly so, mainly because larger firms’ business models aren’t designed to cater to the level of service that small nonprofits need. Finding the right balance and identifying their needs is Ferris’ primary challenge.

“Small charities need a lot of help, and they don’t have a lot of resources,” she says. “Our strategy differs from client to client because we want to set each one up for success while staying true to their mission.

“We like to work with the organizations that are trying incredibly hard to make a difference in the world—the organizations that need a boost and need the tools and training to be able to do what they’re passionate about doing,” says Ferris.

Although she still lives and works in Arizona, Ferris finds plenty of reasons to return to Wisconsin. Not only does she serve on the Bolz Center for Arts Administration advisory board, she occasionally comes back to WPT to assist with fundraising and filming live breaks for their pledge drives.

For Ferris, serving organizations and working as a fundraising consultant brings her not just a sense of accomplishment, but also great meaning in helping others. Through a series of accidents, she has been able to do just that.

“I feel like throughout my entire career, I’ve tried to go out of my way to reach out to people who I think have promise, and to help people who are really trying hard and just need a little boost,” she says. “I want to help other people succeed.

“As cheesy as that might sound, it is really what has pushed me a lot: helping other people do what they’re passionate about. It’s about taking on volunteer roles and mentor roles and paid positions and clients where I think I can make an impact by helping other people.”