What Nonprofit Content Actually Gets People to Care

I am incredibly lucky to say that my journey into marketing began in a beautifully unique way—a six-month internship centered on raising awareness of a rare, incurable brain cancer found in children. At Rivera Marketing and Media Company, I was the only intern assigned specifically to work with the Cristian Rivera Foundation, a nonprofit that raises money through events, donor relationships, and social media. My role went far beyond creating posts on Instagram. I interviewed celebrity board members, wrote copy, conducted outreach, and tracked how content performed. By the end of 2025, the foundation had raised over $1 million; the success displayed the impact of well-constructed strategy in nonprofit marketing.

During my time at the Cristian Rivera Foundation, much of my work focused on creating content about our celebrity board members and high-profile supporters. This ranged from working with MLB players to actors in projects such as Orange is the New Black and The Family Business. I interviewed them for feature articles, wrote social media posts highlighting their involvement, and crafted gala promotions that utilized their house-hold names. This content was important for building visibility and credibility to give these fundraising events and awareness campaigns the best chance possible. Working directly with these public figures gave our posts immense reach, but, interestingly, it demonstrated that celebrity involvement works most efficiently when it genuinely integrates the foundation's mission.

Similarly, the work I found to be the most interesting and, simultaneously, personally rewarding was learning about the stories of the kids themselves. One thing I can say honestly after hundreds of hours of work with the organization: the Cristian Rivera Foundation loves these children. For the foundation it's not a tagline or something to better their reputation; caring for the children is the center of everything they do, and they recognize that crafting posts about their treatments, their small victories against DIPG, and the real progress being made is more meaningful than any celebrity feature. Seeing a vulnerable population fighting something so horrible, and knowing our content could help get them the treatment they need, touched something deeper. Those moments even reminded me why the foundation exists in the first place.

This is exactly why prioritizing the kids and sticking to the mission proved to be the most effective social media strategy for reach and engagement: because it's human and real. The posts that performed best were not always the celebrity features. Many were simply real stories about treatments and progress in curing DIPG as well as the children we help. Celebrity content helped build the audience, but it was the emotional stories that stopped people from scrolling away. Nonprofit marketing works best when it leads with specificity: real faces and real struggles. When growing a nonprofit, the marketing team should always prioritize offering people something tangible to connect with and support.