When NIL opened up, I had three brand conversations in the first month. Two of them were good products with bad fit. One of them was NMDP. I said yes to NMDP. Here's why.
NMDP (the National Marrow Donor Program) runs Be The Match. They connect volunteer donors with patients who need blood stem cell transplants to live. Leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cell. Real diseases, real outcomes.
Black donors are dramatically under-represented on the registry. That math means Black patients have a much harder time finding a match. I'm a Black woman with a growing platform. Connecting those two dots wasn't complicated.
The other two brand conversations were a sports drink and an apparel company. Good products. I told them no. Not because the money was wrong, but because I didn't see myself drinking the drink in real life and the apparel didn't fit how I train. Audiences can tell.
If you're a high-school athlete reading this and your DMs are starting to fill up, the rule is simple. Promote things you'd recommend to your sister, for free, with no contract. Anything else, the audience clocks. And once they clock you, the next deal gets harder, not easier.
