Sheena Grosshans, Director of Key Relationships

TWLOHA

Raised $250,000 inside CourageLab

November 2024 - May 2025 

Before CourageLab, fundraising felt reactive, gate-kept, and a little uncertain. I had strong experience, relationships, and instincts from past jobs, but I was building a whole new major gifts program from scratch, within a culture that was still rooted in scarcity and fear. I was raising steady mid-level and occasional major gifts, but struggled with planning, organization, and articulating a clear growth strategy.

I appreciated Julie’s candor, faith, and values. I wanted to feel like someone was philosophically in my corner when it came to how I approach fundraising. I wanted to sharpen my skills, grow in confidence with bigger asks, and develop a thoughtful, shareable, and scalable framework for my team.

Julie’s ability to simplify and clearly name what so many fundraisers feel but don’t always know how to articulate—especially through the Generosity Code and the ask process.

Julie helped me break it all down: what to say, when to say it, and how to root it in vision and impact. AND how to do it all boldly, courageously, and kindly. AND Julie taught in a way that I could pass along to my team. Julie’s courage, generosity, tangible examples, and encouragement made it all feel doable.

Working with Julie helped me step into major gift conversations with confidence and clarity, launch a whole new 5K location (born from a major donor dinner!), onboard my team to a giving philosophy rooted in abundance and courage, fire and rebuild our board to be more action- and fundraising-focused, and realign our entire strategy around our generosity code.

We raised over $250,000 directly connected to the strategies we built together in CourageLab.

• I made the case to refocus my role on major gifts and shifted grant writing to a contractor.

• We launched a new 5K event in Northern California that netted $30K, developed new partnerships with two hospital systems, and got our Between the Bells program into a local high school—impacting over 2,500 students.

• We recruited and onboarded 3 new board members with a fundraising focus.

• Now we have a qualification process, with clear ideas of who is the primary contact on each account, and are transitioning to using daily KPIs and relationship/ask trackers to drive strategy across the board.