Pfeiffer University alumna Lisa Mead has worked in the nonprofit sector since 2001, including successful stints in marketing, communications, community outreach, advocacy, and case management. She has become such an accomplished fundraiser that in 2023, she received the Fundraiser of the Year Award from the Triangle Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. She is dedicated to causes that foster positive change, and when asked to describe her work, she simply offers “sales.”

“Instead of selling a product, I’m selling a mission that provides a service to the community,” she said from her home office in Cary, N.C., where she most recently worked as the Director of Development for the NC Sustainable Energy Association (NCSEA). “I feel that you could go work in fundraising or you could go work in sales, but it’s all really an overlapping career field.”

Mead, a native of Durham, N.C., holds a bachelor’s degree in criminology from Florida State University, and in 2006, she earned an M.S. degree in Organizational Leadership & Management from Pfeiffer. She began working for nonprofits in North Carolina after discovering that her initial career goal of becoming a U.S. Marshal would not be for her.

“They move you around like the military,” she said. “And I did not want to move around every two years.”

Mead’s first nonprofit job began in 2001, at Child Care Services Association. She later joined Family Wellness and Recovery Services of N.C., where she was a Case Manager and Community Outreach Specialist for nearly three years. The more she discovered that nonprofit administration was a good fit for her, the more she wanted to find ways she could advance in that field. Pfeiffer’s Organizational Leadership & Management program, in which she enrolled in 2005, fit the bill: It enabled her to study nonprofits (her research analyzed the effectiveness of crisis communications at nonprofits), and it taught her practical skills such as reading finance budget reports, interacting successfully with a board of directors, and developing effective teams within an organization.

Mead’s sales mindset has served her well at several organizations, both as a full-time employee and as a consultant, a status she described as “a great fit for when you have small children and you want to flex out hours.” She said her three children are now old enough for her to take on full-time employment at the association, where she began working in May of 2024. Until then, she led successful fundraising efforts at nonprofits such as La Leche League International and WakeEd Partnership, both based in Raleigh, N.C. During the first six months of her stint at La Leche, giving by individuals increased by over 45 percent, and end-of-year contributions went up by over 125 percent. And while she was at the partnership, a fundraising campaign generated revenue to open the Tools 4 Schools free teacher supply store.

One of Mead’s most memorable achievements happened in 2019 when she marketed and helped coordinate a day of 963 free skin-cancer screenings organized by the now-dissolved Polka Dot Mama Melanoma Foundation at Duke University in Durham, N.C. This remarkable result entered and remained in the Guinness Book of World Records until 2023. It came about because of aggressive advertising, positive media coverage, and unrelenting social media campaigns.

Mead hopes that her professional work will always include making a positive impact for the nonprofit causes she serves.

“With all the cuts to services at the federal and state level, nonprofits have really stepped in to pick up the slack and are providing those services to the community,” she said. “I think the community sees the value in that, and I’m honored to contribute to that important work.”