Work Mighty Oaks Foundation
Mighty Oaks Foundation: from regional program to national brand
Marketing stopped being promotion and became organizational infrastructure — and annual revenue grew from $1.5M to more than $9M.
- Organization
- Mighty Oaks Foundation
- Role
- Chief Marketing & Communications Officer
- Years
- 2018 – present
- Sector
- Mission-driven · National nonprofit
6xAnnual revenue growth, $1.5M → $9M+ (organization-wide)
The organization, the market, the moment.
Mighty Oaks Foundation serves veterans, active-duty military, first responders, and their families through peer-to-peer recovery programs. When I joined in 2018 the programs were proven and the stories were extraordinary, but the organization was known largely within its own region.
The opportunity was to give a national audience a way to find the mission, trust it, and stay with it — and to build the revenue base that would let the programs grow to meet demand.
What I was accountable for.
- Brand & positioning
- Marketing & communications
- Media, film & publishing
- Paid acquisition
- Web & SEO
- Donor communications & CRM
- Executive communications
- Media partnerships
- Team direction
The root problem
“We didn’t have an awareness problem so much as a continuity problem. People met the mission in a single moment — a talk, a story, a broadcast — and then there was nowhere for that moment to go. Growth meant building the path from a first story to a lifelong supporter.”Michael Cameron
The moves that mattered.
Stories as the product
Treat every film, episode, book, and talk as a product with its own audience — and design each one to feed owned channels.
Owned audience first
Rebuild web, SEO, email, and CRM so attention we earned could be captured and kept, not rented again next quarter.
One integrated year-end campaign
Run fundraising as a single narrative across email, direct mail, paid media, and donor communications — timed and measured as one system.
Media properties as distribution
Documentaries, national syndication, and publishing turned the organization’s expertise into media that partners wanted to carry.
National partnerships
Streaming and broadcast relationships, including Salem Media Group, extended reach well beyond what paid media alone could buy.
Who had to align — and the tradeoffs.
The work meant aligning founders, program leadership, and development around one narrative — and making hard calls about where a lean budget went. The most consequential tradeoff was investing in owned channels and durable media assets rather than chasing short-term impressions.
I worked in close partnership with founder Chad Robichaux and CEO Jeremy Stalnecker, with program staff who carried the stories, and with outside partners in film, publishing, and broadcast.
What was built.
- Phase one
Foundation
Brand, web, SEO, and CRM rebuilt around a single, national story.
- Phase two
Content engine
Always-on content and paid acquisition feeding a growing owned database.
- Phase three
Media properties
Two documentaries, syndicated programming, and national bestselling books.
- Ongoing
Integrated fundraising
Year-end campaigns run as one system — culminating in $3M on $150K of spend.
Phases are shown in sequence; they overlapped in practice.
What followed.
Figures are drawn from internal organizational records. Revenue figures are organization-wide; the 20x figure is campaign-attributable. Supporting documentation is available on request.
- Mighty Oaks FoundationOrganization website
- The Mighty Oaks ShowPodcast archive
Reflection
The choices that mattered most were structural: own the audience, turn stories into assets, and run fundraising as one integrated campaign instead of a series of asks. When marketing becomes the way an organization listens, publishes, and grows, it stops being a cost center and starts compounding.
My role and collaborators
I led brand, marketing, communications, and media strategy as Chief Marketing & Communications Officer. Results reflect the work of the full Mighty Oaks team, its program staff, and external partners; revenue figures are organization-wide outcomes, not solely attributable to marketing.