Digital marketing built exclusively for sports nonprofits.
Rally & Cause is the first agency of its kind. Sports nonprofits are the entire practice.
Sport might be your whole mission, or the reason people show up for a different one. Either way, your year runs on a season, not a fiscal calendar.
Your fundraising year
- Pre-Season
- In-SeasonYou are here
- Post-Season
- Off-Season
Four windows to raise in. Most organizations use one.
The perception gap
When people hear “sports,” they rarely picture a nonprofit.
What the word brings to mind
- Pro leagues and franchises
- Sponsor logos and broadcast deals
- Stadiums, ticket sales, TV rights
- Sport as a business
What it also means
- A youth league teaching kids the game
- An adaptive program getting someone on the field
- A community fitness nonprofit keeping people moving
- A foundation funding research through a charity ride
Those missions are real. Most people have simply never heard of them. That is not a mission problem, it is a reach problem, and closing it is the whole job.
The reach problem has a money problem underneath it. The funding gap between for-profit marketing and nonprofit marketing is wider than most people realize.
Marketing spend
Share of budget
For-profit companies
of revenue, invested in marketing
7.7-9.4%
Nonprofits that advertise
median share of expenses, on advertising
0.66%
The gap is the whole problem
The result is predictable: underfunded campaigns, inconsistent donor pipelines, and missions that don't reach the audiences they deserve.
Rally & Cause exists to close that gap. We're building a new standard for what digital marketing looks like for nonprofit organizations powered by sport - built around the calendar, the culture, and the way these missions actually grow.
Sources: Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey (7.7% of revenue, surveying 400+ CMOs at large enterprises). Deloitte/Duke CMO Survey 2025 (9.4% of revenue, surveying US companies of varied sizes). Whole Whale 2024 Nonprofit Advertising Benchmark Study with CauseIQ (median 0.66% of total expenses among nonprofits that advertise, from 7,000+ U.S. nonprofits studied). The for-profit figures measure total marketing as a share of revenue; the nonprofit figure measures advertising as a share of expenses, so the comparison is directional, not like-for-like.
Who we serve
Two kinds of organizations. One specialty.
For some, sport or movement is the whole mission: the leagues, clubs, and programs that put people in the game. For others, it's the hook, the reason a family shows up before the real work of education, health, or research begins. We build for both.
In practice, those two shapes show up as five kinds of organization. Each one raises money on a different clock.
The roster
Fundraising rhythmSwipe
Your calendar
We build around your calendar, not ours.
Generic fundraising playbooks run January through December. Sports nonprofits don't. Your year is shaped by registration windows, competition seasons, championship weekends, and planning months that determine next year's roster and budget.
And whether your clock is a competition season, an academic year, an athlete's career, or a program that runs all twelve months, the four windows below still exist. Only the dates move.
01
Pre-Season
Build the donor pipeline before the season creates momentum. Search, email, and ads running before attention peaks.
02
In-Season
Attention is at its highest. Amplify events, convert emotional moments, turn the people who show up into supporters.
03
Post-Season
Goodwill is fresh and fading. Lock in recurring giving and reactivate donors before it cools.
04
Off-Season
The quiet months. Build the sponsorship pipeline and the infrastructure next year runs on.
The play
Same play. Different field position.
Build the foundation, earn the attention, then close the partnerships. Each phase builds what the next one needs, which is why we recommend that order. Where you start is yours. If the foundation is already solid, we pick the play up further downfield.
Swipe to see the full play
The sector trend
Donor counts have fallen every year since 2020.
Down 4.5% in 2024 alone. Without a deliberate digital strategy, the trajectory continues. With one, it doesn't have to.
Donor count decline
-4.5%
2024
Overall donor retention (2024)
42.9%
Fifth straight annual decline (FEP)
New donors lost
-7%
Year over year in 2024
Sector line indexed to a 2020 baseline, illustrating the four consecutive years of donor-count decline reported by the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (Q4 2024 Report). The orange line is a directional example of what a managed donor acquisition system can produce, not a guarantee.
How we work
Engagements start with a conversation.
We're not here to replace your team. We're here to fill the gaps.
Most organizations we talk to already have someone posting and sending the emails. What is usually missing is everything that happens before the post: showing up on Google when someone searches for a program like yours, getting named when someone asks an AI where to donate, and the tracking and follow-up underneath that turns a visitor into a repeat donor. We find those gaps, we run them, and we leave alone what is already working. We don't take on work we haven't earned. Here's how it starts.
Diagnostic call
Thirty minutes on your organization, your season, and where you stand. No pitch deck.
No commitment
We get to work
The first month is research: your season, your donor history, what has already been tried.
Month-to-month or annual
If it's not the right fit after the diagnostic call, we'll tell you.