Here’s what I’ve learned: asking for coaching support without first educating funders about its value is like trying to harvest a garden you never planted. The most successful nonprofit leaders I work with understand that funder education is a long-term cultivation process, not a one-time pitch. They’re playing a different game entirely.
The Funder Education Journey: Four Stages of Understanding
The path from funder skepticism to championship isn’t linear, but it does follow predictable stages. Understanding where your funders are on this journey helps you meet them exactly where they need to be met.
Stage 1: Awareness – The funder has heard of executive coaching but sees it as a luxury for the corporate world. They might say things like, “Isn’t that what board members are for?” or “We fund programs, not professional development.” At this stage, your job isn’t to convince – it’s simply to plant seeds of curiosity.
Stage 2: Understanding – Something has caught their attention. Maybe they’ve seen an organization transform after coaching, or they’ve noticed patterns in their struggling grantees. They’re asking questions like, “How does coaching actually work in nonprofits?” This is your moment to share stories, not statistics.
Stage 3: Consideration – Now they’re actively exploring. They might be researching coaching models or asking other funders about their experiences. The questions shift to “How would we measure this?” and “What would success look like?” This is where demonstration beats explanation every time.
Stage 4: Investment – They’ve become believers and champions. Not only are they funding coaching, but they’re also advocating for it within their foundation and among peer funders. These are the funders who will say, “We won’t fund an expansion unless there’s coaching support for the leadership team.”
What’s crucial to understand is that rushing this journey almost always backfires. I’ve watched too many leaders try to leap from awareness to investment in a single meeting. It doesn’t work that way.
Five Conversation Frameworks for Different Funder Types
Not all funders are created equal, and neither should your education approach be. After years of refining these approaches, here are the frameworks that consistently open doors:
The Data-Driven Foundation
These funders live and breathe metrics. They want to see the – and fortunately, the evidence is compelling. Lead with research showing that 86% of organizations recoup their coaching investment, with many seeing returns of 4-10 times the initial cost. But here’s the key: connect those returns directly to program outcomes. Show them how a more effective leader means more children served, more families housed, more communities transformed.
The Relationship-Focused Funder
These funders care deeply about the people behind the mission. They’ve often seen beloved leaders burn out and leave. For them, share the human story. Talk about the isolation of nonprofit leadership, the weight of carrying everyone else’s struggles, the toll of constant crisis management. Then show how coaching provides the support system these leaders desperately need but rarely ask for.
The Systems-Change Funder
These foundations think in terms of root causes and sector-wide transformation. Help them see that the nonprofit leadership crisis IS a root cause. When show that 86% of foundations now provide some capacity-building support, they’re recognizing that strong organizations require strong leaders. Frame coaching as essential infrastructure for systems change.
The Innovation Funder
They’re always looking for the next breakthrough. Show them how coaching unlocks innovation by giving leaders the space to think strategically instead of just surviving. Share examples of organizations that developed groundbreaking programs only after their leaders had coaching support to step back and see the bigger picture.
The Legacy Funder
Often family foundations or donors nearing the end of their giving years, these funders care about sustainability. Help them understand that coaching builds organizational resilience that outlasts any single grant. It’s an investment in permanence, not just programs.
“The funders who experience coaching themselves become its most passionate advocates – they understand viscerally what their grantees are missing without it.”
Myth-Busting Toolkit: Addressing Common Objections
Let me share the objections I hear most frequently and how to address them with both grace and evidence:
“Our board wants every dollar going directly to programs.” This is where you need that reframes the conversation. Help them see that leadership IS program delivery. When an executive director spends 20 hours a week fighting fires instead of leading strategically, that’s 20 hours not advancing the mission. Coaching that reduces crisis management from 20 to 5 hours weekly just created 15 more hours of program impact.
“We’ve funded training before and didn’t see results.” Acknowledge their experience, then help them understand the difference. Training is one-size-fits-all knowledge transfer. Coaching is personalized behavior change. Training tells you what to do; coaching helps you actually do it in your specific context with your unique challenges.
“How do we know it’s working?” This is actually a great question, not an objection. Share that
“Other organizations manage without coaching.” Do they really? Dig deeper and you’ll often find those “successful” organizations have hidden support systems – former corporate executives on boards providing informal coaching, leaders with independent wealth who can afford their own support, or organizations perpetually cycling through burned-out executives. Ask: “What if we could democratize that support?”
The Demonstration Strategy: Let Them Experience the Magic
Here’s something I learned from a brilliant program officer in Detroit: sometimes the best education is experiential. She convinced her foundation to pilot coaching for their own board members. Within six months, those board members became the strongest internal advocates for funding coaching across their portfolio.
Consider these demonstration approaches:
Funder Cohort Experiences: Partner with other nonprofits to offer a coaching workshop specifically for foundation staff and board members. Make it about their leadership challenges, not a veiled funding request. When they experience the power of coaching questions, the shift in perspective, the clarity that emerges – they get it.
Site Visit Integration: During funder site visits, instead of the usual dog-and-pony show, demonstrate coaching in action. Have them observe a brief coaching conversation (with permission) or participate in a coached strategic planning session. Seeing coaching’s impact in real-time is worth a thousand proposals.
Board Meeting Invitations: When you’re working on , invite funders to observe board meetings where coaching has transformed the dynamic. Let them see the shift from rubber-stamping to strategic thinking, from confusion to clarity.
Creating Funder Champions: The Multiplication Effect
The most powerful funder education doesn’t come from you – it comes from other funders. Here’s how to cultivate champions who will carry your message forward:
Start with Program Officers: They’re often closer to the work and see the struggles firsthand. Educate them first, and they become internal advocates when foundation priorities are being set. Share articles, invite them to workshops, keep them informed about coaching impacts without always asking for money.
Document Everything: Every breakthrough, every transformation, every moment when coaching made the difference – document it. But don’t just capture the what; capture the how. Funders need to understand the mechanism, not just the outcome.
Create Peer Connections: Introduce funders who support coaching to those who don’t. Peer influence in the foundation world is incredibly powerful. One funder telling another, “This was the best investment we ever made” carries more weight than anything you could say.
“Education is cultivation – you’re planting seeds today that may not bloom for years, but when they do, they’ll sustain your organization far longer than any single grant.”
Collaborative Funding Models: Strength in Numbers
Sometimes the path to coaching support isn’t through one funder but through several. I’ve seen creative collaborative models emerge when nonprofits think beyond traditional single-source funding:
The Pooled Fund Approach: Three foundations each feel coaching is important but can’t justify the full investment alone. Together, they create a pooled fund for leadership development across their shared grantees. The risk is distributed, the impact is multiplied.
The Match Challenge: One forward-thinking funder offers to match any coaching investment from other funders. This creates momentum and makes it easier for hesitant funders to take the first step.
The Learning Community Model: Multiple funders support a cohort of executives receiving coaching together. The funders themselves become a learning community, sharing insights about what’s working and building the case for continued investment.
These collaborative approaches do more than fund coaching – they build sector-wide understanding of its value. When multiple funders invest together, they’re also learning together.
Site Visit Strategies: Making the Invisible Visible
Site visits are golden opportunities for education, but most nonprofits waste them on rehearsed presentations. Here’s how to use them strategically:
Before the Visit: Send a brief (one-page) overview of how coaching has impacted your organization. Include one powerful story and 2-3 concrete metrics. Plant the seed of curiosity.
During the Visit: Instead of telling them about coaching impact, show them. Have team members share specific examples of how their executive’s coaching has changed their work experience. Let board members describe the transformation in board meetings. Make it tangible and personal.
After the Visit: Follow up with a note that connects what they saw to coaching support. “Remember when our program director talked about how we shifted from crisis to strategy? That happened because our ED’s coach helped her develop systems for delegation.”
Long-Term Relationship Building: Beyond the Transaction
Here’s the mindset shift that changes everything: stop thinking about funder education as a means to an end. Start thinking about it as relationship building that happens to involve funding.
The nonprofits that successfully build long-term funder support for coaching understand this is a multi-year journey. They’re not rushing to the ask; they’re investing in understanding. They share coaching insights even when they’re not seeking funding. They celebrate coaching victories with funders who didn’t pay for them. They’re building a narrative over time, not making a pitch.
“The best time to educate funders about coaching is when you’re not asking for money – that’s when they can truly hear you.”
This also means being strategic about timing. The middle of a grant cycle when everyone’s stressed about deadlines? Not the time for education. But that informal coffee three months after a grant award, when you can share early insights about how coaching is amplifying their investment? Perfect.
From Education to Investment: Knowing When They’re Ready
How do you know when education has done its work and a funder is ready to invest? Watch for these signals:
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They start asking about coaching unprompted
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They reference other organizations that have benefited from coaching
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They express concern about leader burnout in their portfolio
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They ask for your opinion about coaching approaches
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They mention coaching in their strategic planning documents
When you see these signs, you can shift from education to partnership. But even then, approach it as co-creation rather than request. “Based on our conversations about leadership support, I’ve been thinking about how coaching could amplify the impact of your current grant. Would you be interested in exploring what that might look like?”
Building Your Funder Education Practice
This isn’t something you do once – it’s an ongoing practice that requires intention and patience. Start by mapping your current funders on the education journey. Where is each one? What does each need to move forward?
Create a simple system for tracking education touchpoints. Every article shared, every conversation about leadership, every coaching success story – document it. You’re building a case over time, brick by brick.
Remember, you’re not just educating funders about coaching for your organization. You’re helping transform how the sector thinks about leadership support. Every funder you educate becomes a potential advocate for coaching across their entire portfolio. The ripple effects extend far beyond your own funding needs.
The Path Forward
The most successful nonprofit leaders I know treat funder education as seriously as program delivery. They understand that shifting philanthropic mindsets about leadership support is part of their mission, not a distraction from it.
Start small. Choose one funder relationship to focus on for the next six months. Don’t ask for coaching support – just educate. Share insights, invite them to learning opportunities, celebrate the impact of any coaching you’ve received. Build the relationship and understanding first.
Frequently Asked Questions
From my experience, moving a funder from awareness to investment typically takes 18-24 months of consistent, patient education. However, I've seen it happen in as little as 6 months when there's a catalyzing event (like a beloved grantee's ED burning out) or as long as 5 years for very traditional foundations. The key is playing the long game while celebrating small progress along the way.
Don't argue or try to convince them they're wrong. Instead, connect coaching to what they DO care about. If they fund education, show how coached leaders improve educational outcomes. If they fund health, demonstrate how leadership coaching reduces program delivery costs. There's always a bridge between coaching and their stated priorities – your job is to help them see it.
Begin by sharing insights about the sector, not your needs. "I've been learning about the nonprofit leadership crisis and wanted to share some insights" opens doors differently than "We need coaching support." Focus on their entire portfolio's health, not just your organization. When you advocate for sector-wide change, you're a thought partner, not a supplicant.
Absolutely, and this can actually be more powerful. Share what you're learning from research, other organizations' experiences, and sector-wide data. Position yourself as exploring solutions to the leadership challenges you're seeing across the nonprofit landscape. Your genuine curiosity and learning stance can be very engaging for funders.
While each funder has unique interests, most want to see: reduced executive turnover rates and associated costs; improved organizational health scores (staff satisfaction, board engagement); increased fundraising success; expanded program reach or improved program outcomes; and reduced crisis management time. The key is connecting these metrics to their specific funding priorities.
Start with low-stakes opportunities. Offer a "lunch and learn" about coaching for foundation staff. Partner with other nonprofits to provide a coaching workshop for funders. Some bold organizations even offer to include a program officer in their team coaching sessions (with appropriate boundaries). The key is making it about their development, not your funding needs.
Both, but in different ways. Program officers are your day-to-day champions who can advocate internally. Foundation leadership makes ultimate funding decisions. Educate program officers first – they'll help you understand how to approach leadership. But don't neglect board members, who often have personal experience with executive coaching from the corporate world.