Shawn McGee, executive director of development for UHealth – the University of Miami Health System, is responsible for fundraising efforts with local partners. He and his team oversee small community events as well as larger ones, including Dolphins Cancer Challenge, which has raised $75 million for Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center since its inception..

Before coming to UM in 2018, McGee was a sports industry executive. He worked for FC Dallas of Major League Soccer and then for Southern Methodist University before returning to pro soccer with a women’s team, the Atlanta Beat. He moved to Miami in 2011 to run the business side of Homestead-Miami Speedway.

His latest undertaking is UCARE Community Fundraising, which concentrates on grassroots donations. We asked McGee about the relationship between sports and fundraising, and the different ways people can support medical research that can save lives.

When we think of fundraising, we often think of the people who give large donations to name a building or an endowment. But the reality is that most people can’t do that. We provide a way for those who want to give back but don’t have the capability to write a large check. Maybe that person is an avid fisherman or golfer or is passionate about something. Our job is to help them put on an event or a promotion. We’ve supported approximately 60 events over the past year. The other thing we do is peer-to-peer fundraising. If you don’t have time to put on a tournament or a 5K, we can help you create an online fundraising page. You send it out to your friends, and they can donate directly to that page.

Our challenge is to educate people that any support helps. You can cycle, run or walk in the DCC to support Sylvester. But if that’s not for you, then find what you love to do. If you have a heart for any of our missions, you can be a difference-maker. You can change someone’s life. We will work with you to learn what matters to you and then help you create a program through which you can support the mission you care about. It all adds up.

Selling in the sports industry is very similar to fundraising. Both are about relationship building and creating trust. You are sharing a vision. You are sharing a mission. It is our job to listen to people, get an understanding of what is important to them and then find areas within our organization they can get plugged into and support. At the end of the day, you must first earn their trust and then find a way to help satisfy their wants and needs.

I’ve been able to bring some marketing theories from sports into fundraising with the DCC and with UCARE. For instance, we are very proactive in our marketing of our events. We want to make sure that that we’re always out there so that people see our messaging. They say that it takes eight impressions before someone takes action, like purchasing a product. So, I’ve brought that mentality to what we’re doing here.

The DCC is our biggest event, with 6,700 participants having raised more than $12 million this year. But in the past several years, under the direction of the DCC board and Javier Sanchez, the event’s executive director, we’ve created ancillary events that support the DCC. Some raise money, while some are more focused on friend-raising or community outreach. We have also created a website called Faces of the DCC that shares patients’ stories. That’s been extremely valuable to us because that’s what the DCC is all about — saving people’s lives or helping people live with cancer for a lot longer. The DCC has truly become a year-round mission.