Beyond Endorsements: Unlocking the Real Potential of NIL 🚀

Anyone who follows college sports knows how much NIL has changed the game since 2021 — both literally and figuratively. On the upside, it’s allowed incredibly talented student-athletes to financially benefit from brand collabs and endorsements, which is an amazing stepping stone for their futures. On the downside, the NIL economy has created a pretty significant imbalance in who actually gets to enjoy these financial perks, which leaves a lot of very deserving athletes (not to mention smaller brands) in the dust.

While most of the high-profile NIL deals we see in the headlines are of the 7-figure variety, those deals make up the minority of what’s actually happening in the marketplace. And not only that, but with the sobering reality that fewer than 2% of college athletes will ever go pro, it’s critical that the other 98% have a plan — financially and professionally — for where they’re headed next.

This dual challenge — limited access to the largest NIL funds and the need for long-term career readiness — is one of the reasons we created our NILi (NIL for Impact) program. 

At WIN | WIN, we believe every student-athlete should have the opportunity to use their platforms for growth, both on and off the playing field. Thanks to our decades of experience in the social impact and marketing spaces (along with being former college athletes ourselves), we’ve realized that the best way to make this possible is by creating another entry point into the NIL space.

Instead of deals being focused solely on rewarding top scorers and performers, we developed a program — NILi: NIL for Impact^(TM) — that financially rewards student-athletes for their character, their connections, and their dedication to creating social good in the communities around them.

NILi: A Strategy for the Impact Economy

The traditional NIL focus is often transactional, one-off, and limited in its ability to move the needle for any athlete that’s not already being eyed for a professional draft. Even if you’re the top scorer on a mid-major team, your endorsement opportunities are often limited to “product-for-posts” deals, which honestly, aren’t even that effective for the brands that are behind them. 

NILi, on the other hand, is completely changes the formula. Our emphasis is on building relational, long-term, and expansive deals that are focused on:

• Helping athletes at all levels build purpose-driven professional skills, and portfolios, that generate revenue while also laying the groundwork for a successful career outside of sports.
  
  
• Helping brands create more authentic, cost-effective, and relatable content that moves from “buy this” to “believe in us” by collaborating with purpose-driven athletes and organizations.
  
  
• Helping nonprofits generate more awareness and engagement for their work by leveraging the influence of student athletes, and the funding of brand partners, to get their content and missions noticed. 

It’s not an insignificant paradigm shift, to be sure. But for any athlete, parent, brand marketer, or nonprofit lead who’s thinking, ”I’m not sure how to prepare for what’s next,” NILi is a powerful opportunity to harness the momentum of sports-as-a-culture-catalyst to create sustainable social, financial, and individual impact.

OK, so what is NILi exactly? 

At its simplest, NILi is a program designed by WIN | WIN that brings athletes, brands, and nonprofits together to achieve a unique triple-bottom-line benefit — driving greater visibility, higher revenue, and longer-term impact for everyone involved.

There are two main ways that NILi drives this triple-bottom-line benefit:

1. NILi sponsorships: WIN | WIN connects purpose-minded brand sponsors with values-aligned nonprofits, then builds teams of passionate student-athletes who are personally engaged in driving interest and awareness across the partnership. The student-athletes become ambassadors for both the brand and the NPO, and receive a stipend for creating and sharing original, authentic, personally-resonant content. These relationships are designed to last an entire athletic season — and often longer — removing the instability of one-off, transactional deals for the brands, and providing the athletes with the roadmap to build a legacy, and a career, long after their final game ends. 
   
2. NILi educational workshops: We know that shifting mindsets and behaviors isn’t easy, especially in an economic climate that’s hyperfocused on scarcity rather than opportunity. Our workshops provide student-athletes, parents, coaches, admins, and program directors (at both high school and college levels) with a targeted curriculum designed to turn character and community engagement into tangible professional assets. We focus on key steps that help students earn revenue while they’re playing, and at the same time, build a resume (and personal platform) for life after the game.

A Legacy That Pays Dividends

The way we see it, the NIL era doesn’t have to just be about million dollar deals, or top draft-pick superstars, or even the latest trendy product promos. But in order to adapt the recipe, we have to include ingredients that center on more than just profit — namely, purpose, potential, and parity. 

By bringing nonprofit and social impact organizations into the mix, we’re rebalancing the NIL scale at every level of the ecosystem. NILi gives brands and nonprofits without astronomical marketing budgets more opportunities to connect with student-athletes, and gives the athletes themselves the tools to develop a legacy of impact and influence that has the power to last a lifetime.