“Try to get as many different kinds of experiences as possible. I think a wealth of experiences is really valuable.”
Theresa Marchi was the Director of Strategic Marketing at the charity United Way of Greenville County. She takes a holistic approach to marketing, working to engage the community in different ways.
About
“When I was growing up and realizing I sucked at biology, I was just like, ‘What am I going to do with my life? I want to make something matter… I want to have a purpose, and I’m good at art,’” Theresa Marchi says. Now, as the Director of Strategic Marketing at United Way in Greenville, she’s found a way to use her artistic skills to help her community. Marchi graduated from Coastal Carolina University in 2017 with a degree in graphic design. She worked at an ad agency in Myrtle Beach and went from there to a company in Greenville that designed college athletic spaces. “At the time, that was my dream job,” she says, describing how enthusiastic she was about integrating brands into physical spaces. Her experience designing a museum exhibit with The Athenaeum Press, the student-driven publishing lab at Coastal, helped her get the job. “They saw that on my resume, and they were like, ‘You already have some of these skills that a lot of students don’t,’” she says. She went from there to United Way to try to help her community.
Marchi started as a graphic designer, but her current role involves planning out her whole year. She collects data about what marketing approaches are reaching donors and community members, and which ones aren’t. “A lot of the time we see that there’s a very high alignment that community members have with our work, they just don’t know it. They just don’t know what we do,” Marchi says. “So part of my role is really figuring out what’s the best avenue to reach them.” She says that marketing for a nonprofit is more difficult than marketing a product or service. “What we’re selling is not tangible,” she says. “So, it’s really laying into the storytelling, the impact, the strategy of how we’re doing this work that is most important in this space.” She says that seeing successful community events is the most rewarding part of her job. “The lives that are changed and the other resources that they’re connected to, that has been really special and really fulfilling.”
Marchi recommends that students who are interested in her role should diversify their educational and work experiences. “I think a wealth of experiences is really valuable,” she says, and describes that working in customer service helped her learn the lingo necessary for successful marketing. She says that the connections she made by being an active volunteer with the Rotary Club helped her get further than she would have otherwise. She also tells students to be curious. “It sounds overused, but I think curiosity, trying to understand why we’re doing these things that we’re doing, how is it going to further the mission, that is something that is really hard to find in others,” she says. “If you really want to be a standout, for me it’s that attitude.”
