About
Why we built the first agency for sports nonprofits.
Adem Rexhepi, Co-Founder & CEO
“I've spent close to a decade in digital marketing, across search visibility, paid advertising, and social content.
I came to it from healthcare.
I went into healthcare because I wanted to help people. In practice, that meant helping one person at a time, on a given day, in a given room. It mattered. But I kept thinking about scale.
If I help one business, and that business employs thirty people, those thirty people have families who feel it too. The work carries further than the room it happens in. That's why I moved into marketing. Same instinct, wider reach.
Then Rahman brought me the idea for Rally & Cause. Same instinct, this time focused on sports nonprofits and elevating their impact. We set out to build a new standard for what digital marketing looks like in this space.
Scaling a nonprofit is difficult enough on its own. According to the National Council of Nonprofits, 92% of reporting public charities in the U.S. operate on annual budgets under $1 million.
Many are trying to grow their impact without the digital marketing infrastructure needed to reach new audiences, attract supporters, and sustain that growth. Without it, even exceptional work can struggle to reach the people who need it most. The result is a ceiling on their reach and engagement that has little to do with the quality of their mission.
As Chief Executive Officer, I lead our digital marketing team, focused on stronger search visibility, audience reach, and clear measurement.”
Rahman Alsayegh, Co-Founder & CGO
“It started with an internship.
I was at Columbia pursuing a Master of Science in Sports Management, the only sports management graduate program in the Ivy League, when my placement brought me to a sports nonprofit. The work was excellent. The reach was not.
I saw the same gap extending beyond one organization. Sports nonprofits lacked a firm built exclusively around their needs. That became the premise for Rally & Cause.
Many of these organizations are already doing exceptional work. The gap is that their digital presence doesn't always reflect the quality or scale of their impact. We exist to close that gap.
The program at Columbia is taught largely by leaders who helped build the commercial side of the sports industry over the past 40 years. The commercial side of sports has spent decades refining the science of growth. The nonprofit side deserves that same rigor.
Before that, I worked as legal counsel, trained in Canada and the UK, with a Master of Laws in International Business and Commercial Law. My path has taken me across countries and disciplines, but the question has remained the same: how do you turn expertise into meaningful impact?
What keeps me coming back to sports nonprofits is how deeply sport is woven into society, and what becomes possible when the right people discover these organizations and understand what they're capable of.
As Chief Growth Officer, I lead Rally & Cause's strategy, partnerships, and growth, working directly with nonprofit leadership to understand their ambitions, identify opportunities, and develop strategies that help their organizations scale.”
Why sports nonprofits
We've both been around sport our whole lives. If you asked us to name one thing that brings people together and moves them in a way almost nothing else does, it is sport.
Now put that next to a cause. Research that gets funded. Kids who get to school. Families who reach healthcare they could not otherwise afford. Communities that get a way in they would not otherwise have.
That combination should be one of the most powerful things in fundraising. In practice it is one of the most overlooked.
When people think about sports, they think commercially. Teams, franchises, sponsorship deals. The nonprofit side of sport rarely enters the conversation. Yet some of the most committed people we've met are working there, often without the visibility their work deserves.
What we keep hearing
We've had conversations with sports nonprofits of every size, from small local programs to the largest in the country. The same three patterns come up almost every time.
Digital marketing is treated as optional rather than as infrastructure.
There is no system in place to run it, even when the organization wants to.
Fundraising rests almost entirely on a small number of large donors.
That last one is what quietly limits growth. Pursuing major gifts is necessary. Relying on them alone means the whole year turns on a handful of conversations.
What we do about it
We build the system that sits underneath the fundraising. A way to bring people to your mission consistently, and to reach beyond the small circle of donors most organizations depend on.
That means improving how people find you through search, strengthening your digital presence, building more effective paths from discovery to engagement, and using data to understand what works. We help connect those pieces into a system your organization can build on.
Bring another thousand relevant people to your site over a few months. Some may become donors. Others may become volunteers, advocates, sponsors, or partners. The point isn't traffic for its own sake. It's making sure more of the people who could advance your mission have the opportunity to discover it.
We work with your team, not instead of it. If someone there already runs social or email, we take on what is not being covered rather than replacing what is.
Current work: supporting USA Judo's digital growth. Read about the engagement
Where we are
Rally & Cause started in 2026. It's new, and we'd rather say so than imply otherwise.
What isn't new is the work behind it, or the conviction that this sector deserves far more attention than it gets.
Let's talk about your cause.
30-minute diagnostic call. No pitch deck. Just an honest read on where you stand.