Marketing Students Help Recruit Lifesaving Donors

While working to recruit blood stem cell donors from Gen Z (ages 18–24), the global nonprofit NMDP knew exactly who to turn to—students at the Carlson School.

“We are Gen Z, so we have an insight into that,” says Kate Adams, a senior Marketing major who worked on the project as part of the Fall 2024 Marketing Strategy capstone course. The project was managed by Carlson’s Institute for Research in Marketing (IRM), which includes NMDP on its Industry Advisory Board.

Students in the course were divided into teams and assigned to create a six-month marketing plan for recruiting and retaining Gen Z–aged members of the NMDP (formerly known as Be The Match) blood stem cell donor registry.

Because of the genetic complexity in matching donors to patients, there’s often months or even years between when NMDP members register and when they’re called to donate. So, even though members are initially willing, they often don’t stay engaged over time and aren’t ready when they get the call to provide a lifesaving donation.

That’s where the students’ marketing solutions come in.

“I’m just blown away by their ideas and their work,” says Ryan Peña, senior marketing manager of NMDP member recruitment initiatives. “We are going to actually save more lives based on what we implement from this program, both in the near future and the very distant future, for years to come.”

Peña met with the students as they developed their plans, just as he would for any hired consultant, and IRM Director Michelle Champlin Bergner, who taught the course, guided the students through the process of working with a real client.

“We do a little bit of review throughout the course of some of the basic principles of marketing, and we look at case studies, but then we put it into action with the client,” Champlin Bergner says. “The students get this wonderful opportunity to use the knowledge and the skills that they have in a real-world setting.”

The students presented their proposals to NMDP at the end of the semester. Among the ideas Peña liked was an app to boost member engagement. “Every single team brought ideas to the table that we’re really excited to explore in the future,” he says.

For Adams, the opportunity to work on a team providing solutions to a real company made this project feel weightier than other coursework. “It’s definitely a shift from the hypothetical, knowing that our work has a real impact,” she says.

Rylie Rude, another Marketing senior who worked on the project, says this experience in consulting helped her envision her future career.

“Working with a client face-to-face and getting that experience of back-and-forth communication and collaboration has been super helpful. I feel more prepared for that going forward and confident about working with future clients in a similar way,” she says.