CauseConnect | Yuetonglu

How might we
turn a spontaneous idea into a validated MVP that transforms ad dollars into social good
—within 6 months?

As part of an Amazon Ads business exploration project, CauseConnect was a 0→1 initiative born from a spontaneous idea from sponsors: what if brands and nonprofits could co-create purpose-driven campaigns through one intelligent platform?

I led both the product design and product management efforts—driving user research, design strategy, feature prioritization, and cross-functional coordination—to turn this concept into a validated MVP in just six months.

My Role

Product Manager · Designer
Research Planning and Execution
Cross-Functional Coordination (Stakeholders, Engineering)
Roadmap and Feature Prioritization

Timeline

Sept. 2024 - Mar. 2025

Outcome

Received positive feedback from Fortune 500 and nonprofit stakeholders
Achieved 90% user satisfaction during testing
Secured continued development support from Amazon

Project Overview

Cause marketing is more than brand altruism—it’s a business driver. Consumers expect companies to care, yet nonprofits and brands struggle to connect meaningfully and efficiently.

Our goal was to create an intergrated AI-powered platform that simplifies value-aligned co-marketing partnerships between nonprofits and for-profits.

Quick Result Review

✦ Project Timeline

✦ Key Impact

4.5/5

User Satification Rate

30 → 3 Mins

Partnership Searching Time

Understanding the Landscape

✦ Problem Space

Despite growing interest in cause marketing, there’s a significant gap between corporate marketing budgets and what actually reaches social impact initiatives. While companies spend billions annually on advertising, many nonprofit partnerships remain underfunded, misaligned, or missed entirely.

At the Same time...

79%

consumers prefer brands that take a stand on social/environmental issues

90%

of nonprofits don’t track campaign KPIs

72%

rely solely on LinkedIn to form partnerships

Our challenge was to maximize the value of existing marketing budgets by transforming them into purpose-driven campaigns — built on real alignment, shared goals, and measurable impact.

✦ Research Process

To ground the product in real-world experience, I began by conducting interviews with experts from different stakeholders sectors who had been directly involved in cause marketing partnerships. I wanted to learn how co-branded campaigns actually work—from initiation and negotiation to execution and impact measurement.

✦ Problem Space

Nonprofits lack time, tools, and knowledge to execute effective digital ad campaigns
For-profits want brand-safe, mission-aligned partnerships but rely on inefficient outreach
Both sides rely on manual networking and fragmented workflows

Through these conversations, I decoded the hidden challenges and uncovered market gaps in how these partnerships are formed and managed.

After synthesizing the interviews, I led the effort to translate raw insights into actionable design decisions. We mapped the recurring themes into user needs and pain points, then prioritized them to define our core product features and design requirements.

✦ Prioritized User Needs

After mapping interview insights, I conducted thematic analysis combined with simple frequency-based data analysis to identify and cluster user needs. We then prioritized them based on occurrence across stakeholder types and impact on core user journeys, using a High–Medium scale. This process helped us define clear design requirements and shape a focused MVP aligned with both user pain points and product goals.

✦ Design Question

Ideation & System Design

✦ Design Strategy

I translated insights into features using design principles of simplicity, transparency, and scalability. I focused on:

Reducing cognitive load for nonprofits
Building trust in AI decisions
Providing structure for campaign management

✦ Key Features

User Flow & MVP Definition

✦ User Flow & Information Architecture

✦ Wireframing

To help make sense of the entire cause marketing and digital ads ecosystem and figured out the most necessary unmet need in this area, I created a big-picture blueprint of how the system could work.

Even though my engineers thought it was way too ambitious to build, I still sketched out every part of it in wireframes to tell a clear and complete story.

👇 Check this PDF for details of our entired system.

✦ MVP Prioritization

We had a bold vision but limited time, so we needed to focus on what mattered most. I led a MoSCoW prioritization exercise to identify the most critical user needs—grounded in insights from usability testing—and defined a focused MVP that balanced user impact, technical feasibility, and future scalability.

Must: Match engine, profile setup, Measureable Impact Insights
Should: Messaging, AI Ads Creation, KPI history
Could: Marketplace, campaign builder, dashboard
Won’t: Real-time bidding engine (phase 2)