How Voice in Sport Partnered with WNBA Changemakers to Support 50,000 Female Athletes
Partnerships are only worth as much as the follow-through behind them.
Brands write checks, leagues make announcements, and everyone moves on to the next deal.
Stef Strack saw this pattern and decided to break it—building Voice in Sport (VIS), a member-only platform connecting young female athletes with professional mentors and sports experts, and the Voice in Sport Foundation, which advocates for girls and women through research and Title IX advocacy.
Here’s how building with intention actually looks like in practice.
The Implementation Gap in Women's Sports Partnerships
The challenge facing sports marketers isn't securing partnership agreements—it's translating those agreements into programs that deliver real value to its intended purpose and audience.
While women's sport attracts only about 1% of global sponsorship investment—often leading to misaligned goals, under-resourced activations, and unclear partnership planning—studies show that when brands commit appropriately, 86% of women's sports sponsorships meet or exceed ROI expectations, frequently delivering $7+ in value for every dollar spent.
The gap becomes clear when examining implementation details. Traditional approaches often result in surface-level activations—logo placements, single events, or basic content partnerships that fail to create lasting athlete support or audience engagement.
Strack and VIS identified this pattern across the industry, recognizing that meaningful change requires systematic programming rather than isolated moments.
"Essentially what was happening and is still happening a lot across the industry is there'll be a one-off event for a group of girls, a one-off camp or a moment in time, and that's really not enough to change the issues that young women are facing in sport.”
This implementation gap is particularly significant given emerging audience data. The WNBA saw one of its highest ratings boosts from girls aged 12-17 last season—precisely the demographic most at risk of dropping out of sports, with 42% of girls leaving athletics by age 14. Programs that successfully engage this audience through comprehensive mentorship and career development create substantial long-term value for both athletes and brand partners.
The difference between intention and execution was costing brands their investment while failing to deliver the sustainable support systems promised to young athletes. Traditional approaches treated implementation as an afterthought, rather than the key differentiator between successful partnerships and those that fail to deliver lasting impact.
Building Partnerships That Scale With Purpose
Strack's thesis was straightforward: successful women's sports partnerships require implementation plans with clear stakeholder responsibilities, established timelines, and defined success metrics. Rather than treating operational excellence as secondary, this approach positions systematic implementation as the competitive advantage.
"Our partnership with the WNBA Changemakers is a multi-year partnership,” she notes. “So we're in year two, and after a very successful year one, we're proud to say we're moving forward for several more years together with this mission of keeping girls in the game.”
The key was creating a six-step implementation process that could scale across multiple stakeholders while maintaining focus on measurable outcomes.
The 6 Steps to Building Partnership Infrastructure That Delivers IMPACT
VIS didn't stumble into partnership success. They engineered it.
The six-step IMPACT process provides systematic structure to what's typically been an ad-hoc gamble. While traditional approaches can work, they essentially gamble on implementation—hoping for alignment rather than engineering it..
Each phase builds on the previous one, ensuring that partnerships deliver measurable results rather than empty announcements:
I: Investigate Athlete Needs Through Research
Strack emphasized that partnerships must start with understanding the target audience. For VIS that meant building from "the athlete point of view" to understand barriers young girls face in basketball and what support they need. They conducted comprehensive research with target participants to identify specific needs and challenges, documenting insights about barriers and creating a prioritized list of needs to address.
M: Mobilize Stakeholder Alignment
VIS worked directly with WNBA leadership and the Changemakers group—brands committed to driving systemic change like Ally, AT&T, CarMax, Deloitte, Google, and Nike. This phase involved identifying all stakeholders and their specific priorities, documenting the exact value each expected, and creating alignment around the core mission: connecting young female athletes with professional WNBA role models and mentorship to keep girls in the game.
P: Partner Experience Design
The co-design process ensured VIS understood what specific values the Changemakers wanted from the partnership, and represented those values in programming. For example, representatives from Nike wanted to focus on career pathways beyond playing, leading to a “Build Your Career in Sports Leadership” session featuring women executives from Changemaker brands. Meanwhile Phoenix Mercury’s Satou Sabally led body image workshops where she shared her personal struggles with self acceptance, a topic she wanted to discuss openly for young girls struggling with issues she has also confronted.
A: Assemble Operational Infrastructure
Strack’s team conducted extensive research on athlete mentors, interviewing and training them systematically. Mentor training is critical—without at least two hours of preparation, "they can do more harm than good," according to the CEO. This phase focused on recruiting program personnel while setting up technology systems for registration and engagement.
C: Community Integration Strategy
The VIS team met with every WNBA team to understand local community events and identify partnership opportunities. Rather than starting from scratch in each market, VIS embraced existing community infrastructure. They built relationships with local organizations and found ways to enhance programs already serving young athletes—a smarter approach that strengthened community ties while reducing startup costs for all partners.
T: Track Comprehensive Outcomes
Strack says they also measured everything from registration to storytelling feedback, tracking participation, outcomes, and mentor engagement. This final step established clear KPIs aligned with program objectives and created data collection mechanisms at key touchpoints.
50,000 Athletes, 85% Confidence Boost, Multi-Year Renewal
While traditional partnerships historically struggle to demonstrate ROI, VIS created a measurement system that satisfied both brand sponsors and league stakeholders. The comprehensive tracking approach enabled continuous optimization while proving the program's effectiveness to all parties involved:
Participation Metrics: VIS achieved its target of mentoring 50,000 young female athletes in year one, successfully recruiting mentors from all WNBA teams to create league-wide representation.
Experience Quality: 85% of participants reported increased confidence after sessions, with over 90% re-registering for additional programming. These consistently high engagement scores demonstrated the program's effectiveness beyond simple participation numbers.
Implementation Effectiveness: The partnership successfully established mentorship programs in all WNBA markets, integrated with local team community events, and implemented measurement systems to track all key metrics. Most importantly, the partnership's success led to multi-year renewal, proving the framework's sustainability.
The VIS-WNBA partnership isn't just a success story—it's a blueprint for radical change. Sports marketers who apply IMPACT can start building programs that create a lasting impact, especially considering that this tactical approach treats implementation as strategy rather than an afterthought.
Those who act now, will capture market share. The demand is proven.
The impact is ready to be made.
