HonorBridge: Turning passive supporters into active donors
I helped develop a public relations campaign for HonorBridge focused on increasing organ donor designations among North Carolina college students. The strategy centered on a simple behavioral problem: many young people are open to becoming donors, but awareness, trust barriers, myths and registration friction prevent support from becoming action.
The core strategy: convert the “moveable middle” through trust, story and frictionless action.
The campaign targeted young North Carolinians who were not strongly opposed to organ donation but had not yet registered. Instead of treating awareness as the final goal, the strategy built a conversion path: address myths, make the decision feel emotionally meaningful and remove friction at the moment of intent.
Awareness
Reach students through paid social, influencer content and campus visibility.
Trust
Use testimonial storytelling and myth-busting content to reduce hesitation.
Action
Drive immediate registration through QR-enabled campus and digital touchpoints.
The goal was not just to make organ donation feel important. It was to move an already persuadable audience from passive approval to a completed donor designation.
The problem was an intention-action gap.
HonorBridge operates in a context where organ donation has broad moral support, but registration rates do not fully reflect that support. The campaign identified a major opportunity among unregistered people who were open to donation or not strongly opposed.
The sharper issue was behavioral: support alone does not create registrations. Young people needed a clearer reason to act, more confidence in the process and a low-friction path to complete registration immediately.
We focused on North Carolina students aged 16 to 24.
College students
The campaign centered on North Carolina students and recent graduates, especially those reachable through campus events and social platforms.
Parents and close networks
The strategy also considered people who influence student decisions, including parents and peers who could reinforce trust.
Empathy and legacy
The audience was framed around students who value helping others, respond to lived experience and want their choices to matter.
Trust and friction mattered more than basic awareness.
The research suggested that young people did not need to be convinced that organ donation was good in the abstract. The stronger barriers were uncertainty, misinformation, lack of process knowledge and hesitation around medical trust.
That shaped the campaign around three linked needs: credible education, emotionally resonant storytelling and immediate conversion opportunities. Each channel had to do more than generate impressions. It had to move students one step closer to registration.
The plan combined digital reach with campus-level conversion.
Education and awareness
Use paid social and influencer partnerships to reach the “moveable middle” with myth-busting content and clear explanations of how registration works.
Emotional resonance
Center the creative strategy on recipient stories, the “gift of life” message and imagery that shows recipients living full lives.
On-campus implementation
Convert attention into action through QR-enabled campus booths, incentives and immediate links to registration.
The campaign was built around measurable registration outcomes.
Unique visits to the organ donor registration page from NC college students
Target conversion rate from campaign-driven traffic
Target impressions through paid, influencer and myth-busting content
Target new organ donor designations over six months
These goals kept the campaign disciplined. Success was not defined by vague awareness or engagement alone. It was tied to traffic, conversion, reach and completed donor designations.
Each channel had a specific role in the funnel.
Reach and retargeting
Geotargeted Instagram, TikTok and Facebook ads would build awareness, reinforce myth-busting messages and retarget students who had already engaged.
Peer credibility
Student athletes, medical professionals and transplant recipients would make the issue feel more personal and trustworthy to the target audience.
Immediate conversion
Booths, QR-coded materials and simple incentives would move students from interest to registration while attention was highest.
The $25,000 budget was designed to balance reach, credibility and action.
$10,000
Used for geotargeted awareness, education and retargeting across student-heavy digital channels.
$10,000
Allocated to trusted messengers who could combine reach with credibility and personal connection.
$5,000
Used for QR-enabled materials, booth logistics and incentives that could convert attention into registrations.
Based on the 3,000-designation target, the projected cost per new donor designation was roughly $8.33.
The abbreviated deck shows the core campaign logic.
The embedded presentation includes the executive summary, opportunity, audience definition, goals, strategic plan and big idea behind the campaign.
Open selected slides in a new tab →I can connect message strategy to measurable behavior change.
This project required more than developing a sympathetic campaign. The stronger challenge was turning a broad social-good issue into a measurable conversion system with defined audiences, channel roles, budget logic and outcome metrics.
The final strategy combined PR storytelling with growth thinking: identify the persuadable audience, reduce trust barriers, create a clear path to action and measure whether support turned into registrations.
The strongest cause campaigns make action feel immediate.
The central lesson was that public support is not the same as behavior. A campaign can create real impact when it pairs emotional meaning with credible information and a frictionless next step.
More strategy and analytics work.
This project reflects how I approach behavior-change problems: define the audience, identify the barrier and build a strategy that turns intent into action.