Brackets For Good is on a mission to raise awareness of local nonprofits through its competitive fundraising platform, inspired by the March Madness basketball tournament. Over the past four years, Brackets for Good tournaments have raised over $1.3 million that supports hundreds of local nonprofits.

Change Better started working with Brackets for Good at a vital point in their trajectory. BFG started as a completely volunteer-run organization, managed by a group of dedicated people building a fun passion project. Then their founder made a huge leap of faith: he quit his day job and started working full-time to build the venture from a passion project into a full-fledged nonprofit. The decisions made in those first few months were going to be critical to their success. It was in this pivotal moment that Change Better infused the organization with the extra energy and strategy expertise that established a strong foundation from which Brackets for Good could really take off.

Brackets for Good had demonstrated early signs of success with their nonprofit tournament in Indianapolis and now they needed a model that would enable them to expand into more cities, answer a growing demand, and ultimately, to help more organizations. During our 4-month engagement, Change Better worked closely with Brackets to hone their business strategy, specifically:

• Identifying their competitive advantage and strengthening how they convey the aspects that make them stand apart from other charity competitions and giving-days.
• Designing the marketing and brand strategy that would enable the organization to scale into more markets.
• Developing their Nonprofit Business-Model Canvas that fits all the strategy puzzle pieces in place and identifies the resources needed that enable the organization to reach their goals.

With these fundamentals in place, Brackets for Good locked a new title sponsor, expanded their program into three new markets, and secured a marketing deal worth $100,000 of in-kind support.

Their most recent tournament launched in March 2016 in 5 major markets—engaging 320 nonprofits and ever-growing numbers of new donors.