What Fundraising Taught Me About Marketing

In 2019, I was nominated for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Man & Woman of the Year campaign, now known as Visionaries of the Year through Blood Cancer United. At the time, I had never participated in a fundraising campaign. Like many marketers, I assumed I was bringing my professional experience to help a nonprofit raise more money.

I expected to learn a few things about fundraising along the way.

What I didn’t expect was that the experience would fundamentally change the way I think about marketing.

During the campaign, I met with business owners, community leaders, friends, and complete strangers. I learned how to build relationships, tell more meaningful stories, and inspire people to take action. After completing the campaign, I joined the leadership team, where I continue to help recruit and mentor future Visionaries.

Many of the principles we use every day as marketers became much clearer through fundraising because I was able to see them play out in real conversations. Whether you’re asking someone to support a nonprofit, partner with your business, or become your next customer, success almost always comes down to three things:

• The Research
• The Storytelling
• The Ask

Those three lessons continue to shape nearly every campaign we create today.

The Research

Great marketing begins long before the campaign.

One of the first things I learned was that fundraising starts long before you ever ask someone for a donation.

My first challenge wasn’t scheduling meetings or making phone calls. It was figuring out who I should be talking to.

I opened a spreadsheet and started writing down everyone I knew who might be able to help. Before long, that spreadsheet evolved into separate tabs for team members, corporate sponsors, personal donors, silent auction contributors, and people who could simply make introductions.

At first, I thought I was organizing contacts.

Looking back, I was building a strategy.

As I reviewed each name, I wasn’t simply asking whether someone could donate. I was trying to understand the person behind the name.

• What motivates them?
• How are they connected to the cause?
• Who do they know?
• What role could they play?
• If they weren’t the right person, who could they connect me with?

Some of the strongest opportunities came from people I didn’t know personally. That’s when LinkedIn became one of my favorite fundraising tools. Instead of making cold introductions, I started researching mutual connections and finding warm paths into conversations.

That same approach eventually became part of how we help clients build referral partnerships, connect with media, and develop outreach campaigns.

The experience reminded me that research isn’t just about collecting information. It’s about developing empathy.

The more I understood people before I met with them, the better those conversations became.

That’s exactly how we approach marketing at Epic Notion. Before we ever discuss creative concepts or marketing tactics, we invest time understanding the audience. We research customer motivations, identify relationships, segment opportunities, and create a strategic foundation before launching a campaign.

The creative work comes later.

Research gives it direction.

Marketing Takeaways – The Research

• Research people before creating campaigns.
• Segment audiences instead of treating everyone the same.
• Relationships often open more doors than cold outreach.
• Great marketing starts with understanding, not execution.
• Organized research will become the foundation for the entire campaign.

The Storytelling

People don’t connect with information. They connect with meaning.

Research helped me identify the right people to approach.

Storytelling determined whether they chose to get involved.

When I first started meeting with potential donors, I relied heavily on statistics. I talked about the number of people diagnosed with blood cancers each year, the impact of the organization, and the campaign’s fundraising goals.

People listened.

But they didn’t always connect.

Over time, I realized people weren’t moved by statistics nearly as much as they were moved by stories.

Personalize Your Message

Before each conversation, I started thinking about the individual sitting across from me.

What experiences had shaped them?
Had cancer affected someone close to them?
Were they motivated by community leadership?
Did they simply want to make a difference?

The mission never changed.

The way I communicated it did.

I had a limited amount of time to make an impression. To create a meaningful connection, I needed to understand what motivated each person and align my message with their personal interests, experiences, and passions. I couldn’t rely on the same rehearsed speech for every conversation. The most effective communication came from taking the time to understand the individual and tailoring the story in a way that made the mission personally relevant to them.

That lesson has carried over into nearly every marketing campaign we’ve built since. Your brand story should remain consistent, but your messaging should adapt to the audience hearing it.

The most effective message is the one that feels personally relevant.

Test Your Messaging

The more conversations I had, the more I naturally started testing different ways of communicating the mission.

Without realizing it, I was doing conversion rate optimization in real life.

Some messages created immediate connection. Others fell flat.

Certain phrases made people lean in. I could see it in their expressions and reactions. Other talking points that I thought were powerful barely made an impression.

For example, I learned that many laboratory drug screening experiments cost only about $5 in direct testing materials. Suddenly, a $20 donation didn’t feel small anymore. It represented four additional opportunities to test potential treatments.

That simple explanation changed the way people viewed their contribution.

Instead of wondering whether their donation mattered, they could visualize exactly what their support made possible.

That messaged worked well for the individual making a small donation. That message did not hit the same for the larger corporations making larger contributions to the campaign. For that audience I had to think of different messaging that would impact them.

Looking back, I realized I was essentially A/B testing messaging in real time. After each meeting, I would document which messages created a stronger connection, which stories sparked interest, and where I noticed people beginning to disengage. Those conversations became real-world data that helped me refine my approach, adjust my communication, and develop messaging that was more relevant and effective with future audiences.

The best messaging isn’t the message you like the most.

It’s the message your audience understands, remembers, and connects with.

Passion Is Contagious

One of the biggest changes in my fundraising journey happened naturally.

The longer I was involved, the more personal the mission became.

Early on, I relied on facts because they felt safe. Over time, I stopped trying to convince people with information and started sharing why I personally cared.

People could feel the difference.

I saw the same principle play out after I joined the leadership team and began participating in nomination meetings with prospective Visionaries. The more we talked about what an honor it was to be nominated, shared personal stories about how the campaign had impacted our lives, and expressed our genuine excitement for the mission, the more excited others became.

The conversation changed.

Instead of feeling like someone was asking them to raise money, people began to feel they were being invited to join something meaningful. They left believing they had been selected for a unique opportunity to make a real difference.

Our passion shaped their perception.

That experience taught me something I’ll never forget: passion is contagious.

It’s easy to connect with someone who already believes in your mission. The real challenge, and the real opportunity, is helping someone who has no personal connection begin to care.

One example has always stuck with me. Charity: Water once showed a simple baby bottle filled with dirty water. There were almost no words. Yet in a single image, the organization communicated the urgency of its mission.

You don’t have to travel halfway around the world or personally know a child without access to clean water to understand what that image represents. You immediately feel the problem.

That’s what great storytelling does.

It doesn’t simply explain.

It makes people care.

Businesses often spend too much time explaining what they do and too little time helping people understand why it matters. Facts may inform people, but stories and genuine passion inspire them to act.

The more I focused on communicating the purpose behind the mission instead of simply presenting information, the more people wanted to become part of it.

Marketing Takeaways – The Storytelling

• Match your messaging to your audience segments.
• Connect emotionally before explaining logically.
• Communicate why your work matters, not just what you do.
• Test messaging and learn from audience reactions.
• Find the simplest message that creates the strongest connection.

The Ask

The hardest part wasn’t fundraising. It was asking.

When I first started, asking someone for money felt uncomfortable.

I worried about making conversations awkward or putting people in a difficult position.

Eventually, I realized I was looking at it the wrong way.

I wasn’t asking people for money.

I was inviting them to become part of something meaningful.

That simple shift changed my confidence and completely changed the conversations.

Find the Win-Win

The biggest breakthrough came when I stopped focusing only on what the campaign needed and started thinking about what each person needed.

I became very open about this during meetings. I told potential sponsors that it was completely okay to want something in return.

Maybe they wanted community visibility.
Maybe they wanted employee engagement opportunities.
Maybe they wanted networking opportunities.
Maybe they simply wanted to support a cause they believed in.

The goal was understanding what success looked like for them.

Instead of selling sponsorships, I started looking for the win-win.

That philosophy has become central to how we approach marketing today.

Whether we’re creating sponsorship packages, developing referral partnerships, building public relations campaigns, or helping businesses form strategic relationships, the goal remains the same:

Create value for everyone involved.

When both sides clearly benefit, saying yes becomes much easier.

Marketing Takeaways – The Ask

Looking for the win-win has changed how we approach marketing. By focusing on creating value for everyone involved, we’ve helped clients:

• Build stronger referral partnerships.
• Create more brand advocates and generate word-of-mouth referrals.
• Increase B2B lead generation through relationship-driven outreach.
• Build trust through third-party validation and social proof.
• Earn more media coverage and increase brand awareness.
• Strengthen community connections through purpose-driven campaigns.

The best marketing doesn’t happen when one side wins.

It happens when everyone does.

Want to become a better marketer? Volunteer to raise money for a cause you believe in.

You’ll learn more about human behavior, communication, and persuasion than you ever will sitting behind a computer. Along the way, you’ll make a real difference in your community.

Fundraising changed the way I think about marketing, and those lessons continue to shape every campaign we build today.