What Happens
When
Strategy
Starts with
Truth?
Case Studies | Volunteer Woodworker Funding Campaign & Strategy
CLIENT
Curley Maple Productions
GOALS
Raise $100,000 in under 8 weeks to fund Season Two — without celebrity faces, traditional ad spend, or industry shortcuts.
Build early sponsor traction
Activate aligned, values-based brand partners
Create systems that extend beyond the campaign into future seasons and outreach
PROJECT
A strategic fundraising campaign and brand realignment for The Volunteer Woodworker, a PBS-aired series about identity, craft, and transformation.
Led creative direction, campaign architecture, outreach tools, messaging, and emotional story structure
Delivered emotionally resonant materials tailored to multiple stakeholders — funders, viewers, underwriters, and press
AUDIENCE
Primary: Potential sponsors and underwriters — values-aligned organizations seeking emotional connection over mass appeal
Secondary: PBS viewers and craft-lovers — people moved by legacy, transformation, and the value of making
Internal: Campaign team & participants, who needed story-aligned tools to speak to their audiences — ROI-driven executives and brand decision-makers
Stories That Shape Us
Project Overview
The Volunteer Woodworker is a PBS-aired series about transformation through craft. When the team needed to raise $100K to fund Season Two, I stepped in to lead strategy, creative direction, and the full campaign architecture.
Charles Brock, the host and creator of the show, is a lifelong artist and craftsman — and his heart is embedded in its foundation. That’s why it connects with people, whether they’re woodworkers or not.
This couldn’t be just a marketing project. It had to be as human and connected as its foundation, and that called for story, psychology, and systems thinking to work in perfect harmony.
My role: Strategic architect, creative director, and lead campaign builder
Goal: Raise $100K in 8 weeks
Result: Campaign currently live, with early sponsor traction and strong emotional resonance from key stakeholders.
The Challenge
Dig out the novel authenticity and turn it into a strategic roadmap to secure funding. It needed to move differently — deeper. We weren’t just asking sponsors to fund a show. We were inviting them to invest in identity, healing, craftsmanship, and legacy.
The problem was clear: if we pitched the project like any other, we’d lose what made it powerful.
My Approach
There’s a reason I ended up in this career.
It’s the sum of so many experiences and ventures, all of them held in orbit by a love, admiration, and curiosity for what it is to be human.
In my 10,000+ hours, I’ve learned and acquired so much that I now pull from to weave into new things. Like a chef inspired by a new flavor, I use the tools and ingredients in my pantry to make it sing — a melody that sticks, a taste you remember.
Before decks, emails, or materials, I searched for the emotional truth at the center of the show’s stories.
Every episode, every character arc followed a deep, human pattern:
Loss → Retreat → Creation → Rebirth → Legacy.
That emotional structure became the campaign’s heartbeat.
From there, I built:
Audience and participant-specific tools: Every stakeholder (from funders to viewers) had assets that spoke to their role in the larger story.
Layered narrative systems: The hero video, the sponsor map, the mailers, the outreach — all anchored to the same emotional throughline.
Story depth scaling: Surface elements for broad outreach, deeper structures for 1:1 conversations, and sponsorship deals.
The result was a campaign that behaved like a story and moved like a living system.
“If we shape our strategies and narratives like we did yesterday, that’s exactly where we’ll end up tomorrow.”
The Campaign Engine in Action
To keep the entire strategy aligned — across emotional tone, creative assets, and real-world application — I built a system we could see at a glance:
Every part of the campaign and strategy connected back to the emotional foundation and to the goal in sight.
Nothing was standalone. Each tool was tailor-made for the person using it — and their unique role in the story’s success.
Want a behind-the-scenes walkthrough of this Campaign Engine? Let me know
How the Campaign Worked
We translated emotional truth into action by treating every element as part of a larger arc — not standalone tactics. That means that everything had to point back to the core of the “Campaign Engine.” This approach allows you to see strengths and weaknesses quickly and adjust them to avoid problems.
Element Strategic Role:
🎥 Hero Video: Built around a 5-act emotional arc, crafted to mirror real human transformation, not just highlights.
📩 Sponsor Emails: Designed as story invitations, not product pitches. Each email opened emotional space before asking for engagement.
📦 Mailers Strategy: Options for hand-assembled story artifacts — Tailored and tactile reminders of identity, not branded swag.
🗓️ Content Calendar: Pacing modeled after public health communication — immersive at the top, expansive at the base.
📄 Press & Pitch Materials: Crafted with each audience in mind, visual language, and story resonance.
Early Momentum & Measurable Confidence
The campaign is live — and early traction proves that emotional clarity outperforms noise.
💪 First sponsorship spot secured within the first outreach cycle.
🏆 Endorsements from show leadership and funders validating emotional and strategic alignment.
🎥 Hero video actively used in outreach meetings and media.
📩 Story-first sponsor emails and personalized artifacts opening doors to national and regional brand conversations.
This isn’t just vanity traction — it’s resonance that sustains action.
What This Campaign Proved
This wasn’t just strategy that worked. It was strategy that mattered, and that’s why it worked.
People are hungry for something they can count on as real. We’re all hungry for that! It’s easier than ever for people to sniff out sales tactics and clickbait. What companies have to realize is that the reason people are sniffing isn’t because they don’t want to spend money. It’s because people are far past done with being sold shiny boxes full of empty promises.
When you root a strategy in something novel—something real, and build it into a system that honors not only the story being told, but the stories of each person it touches, you don’t need hype. Those roots hold strong, and you can watch the fruit blossom.
Volunteer Woodworker Season 2 funding campaign hero video. Outline and edit by Chris Daniels Works. Season One footage provided by Charles Brock and Curley Maple Productions.
Why Clients Call Me
When people work with me, they’re not just buying creative skills — they’re buying discernment.
I see the emotional architecture of a project, understand how it connects to your audience, and shape an intentional system that moves people.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Taste: Seeing the shape a story wants to take, and knowing how to honor it.
Structure: Translating emotion into creative systems without losing the soul.
Audience Fluency: Understanding how different people experience meaning — and crafting the tools that meet them there.
Narrative Systems: Campaigns and materials designed to evolve, resonate, and stay human-centered.
Adaptability: Intention drives choices you can stand behind. This makes it easy to adapt with purpose when new things are learned.
What does your own
custom engine
look like?
If you’re ready to move past marketing noise and build something lasting, let’s talk and find out.
“The new battleground is AI agent optimization (AAO), ensuring that a brand, product, or service is surfaced and selected when an agent decides on the consumer’s behalf.”
Included in this overview are;
The LinkedIn post/article that sparked my curiosity
Everything that AI agents look for when looking at websites
How I used ChatGPT to audit and help me rework my website data with this new knowledge in mind
An AI agent-ready prompt that you can use for your own website.