Marketing Without Fear Tactics with Stephanie Bilinsky
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In This Episode
How do we communicate with care when marketing and fundraising often rely on urgency and pressure?
Today’s guest brings a thoughtful lens to one of the most overlooked areas in nonprofit storytelling: the words we choose and how they land. Stephanie Bilinsky is a trauma-informed copywriter who helps ethical entrepreneurs and organizations connect with their audiences through intentional, human-centered messaging.
In this conversation, we explore how trauma-informed storytelling practices can strengthen nonprofit leadership and communication ethics. Stephanie unpacks common copywriting tactics that unintentionally harm audiences, like scarcity, urgency, and pain-point marketing, and offers nonprofit marketing strategies rooted in clarity, choice, and consent.
About Stephanie Bilinsky
Stephanie is a trauma-informed copywriter for ethical entrepreneurs. She connects business owners with their dream clients through intentional, human-centered messaging.
Connect with Stephanie Bilinsky
Brandcendent.com | Linkedin | Instagram
Transcripts
Maria Bryan:
Welcome to the When Bearing Witness podcast. This podcast is an invitation to explore trauma-informed storytelling, a safe and healthy process of gathering and telling painful stories. It's hosted by me, Maria Bryan, a career storyteller. I have long believed that storytellers play a crucial role in making the world a better place.
I was introduced to the concept of trauma-informed storytelling, and it changed my life. Join my conversations with trauma-informed experts and social good storytellers as we help shape the intersection of trauma-informed care and the storytelling process. Stories are sacred, and we can create safe spaces to tell and share them.
Hello everyone. We have Stephanie Bilinsky with us today. Stephanie is a trauma-informed copywriter and co-owner of Brandcendent. Her work focuses on creating intentional, human-centered messaging that connects ethical business owners with their ideal clients.
I'm so thrilled to have Stephanie here because we talk about so many parts of trauma-informed storytelling and marketing, and the copy part of it is so crucial. Stephanie, welcome to the show.
Stephanie Bilinsky:
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
Maria Bryan:
I’d love to hear a little more about your story. What led you to specialize in trauma-informed copywriting?
Stephanie Bilinsky:
Thank you for that question. The short version is that I have always been interested in people and stories, and I followed that curiosity to a PhD in anthropology. But as you know, there's a lot of burnout in academia and not a lot of job stability.
So I decided to become a high school teacher. Maybe a little more job stability, but definitely still a lot of burnout. I did get a lot out of that experience. I worked in special education and high-need schools in New Orleans.
In trying to become better at that job and the kind of teacher those kids deserved, I consumed a lot of information about trauma-informed practices, in addition to what I had studied in anthropology.
Eventually—between the pandemic and having a kid in 2020—I decided to pivot my career and take what I had learned into marketing because I’ve always been a writer. Since I could hold a pen, I’ve been a writer. This was a way that I could do it and help other people.
I realized that people really craved marketing that they felt good about. People want their brand represented with strategies and words that put a net positive into the world.
Maria Bryan:
I deeply resonate with that. I transitioned from general nonprofit marketing to trauma-informed storytelling a few years ago and realized I had so much to unlearn.
Even with a good heart, there’s unintentional harm in copywriting. What are some of these practices that might unintentionally—but truly—cause harm to audiences?
Stephanie Bilinsky:
Before I name these, I want to say that because of capitalism, these practices are the air we breathe. It’s a constant process of unlearning and then learning new tools, as any trauma-informed practice is.
Two of the biggest ones are false urgency and false scarcity. You’ll see businesses say something is only available for a limited time, even when that limit doesn’t actually exist.
False scarcity is when businesses say there are only “two spots left” in a group coaching program, even when there are more. These tactics play on fear of missing out—FOMO has been around forever.
Underlying all of this is pain-point marketing, which teaches that you need to know what’s causing your audience pain that leads them to you. Understanding your audience’s needs is important, but pain-point marketing often teaches you to agitate the pain point—to raise anxiety before presenting your solution.
That agitation is deeply harmful for so many reasons.
Maria Bryan:
This touches so many sectors.
I studied journalism at Temple, and we were taught, "If it bleeds, it leads." As storytellers in the nonprofit space, we often feel like we need a megaphone to wake people up.
With pain-point marketing, we feel like we have to twist the knife to wake people up, even though donors likely know enough about the issue and will give as they’re able.
A lot of this comes back to the sentiments people associate with your brand. If every time they get an email or read your stories they feel dysregulated—you don’t want that association.
Even if they donate or buy, you’re building negative associations with your brand.
Stephanie Bilinsky:
Exactly.
If this dysregulation is consistently what you’re putting out, it will become your brand—regardless of what your website says or what your brand colors are.
As someone who lived in New Orleans through Ida and saw people lose so much—and taught in schools still feeling the echoes of Katrina—I’ve heard so many harrowing stories directly from people who lived them.
I don’t need to see images of a storm-ravaged city to be moved to care. We have to trust people to care. We have to trust people to come to the issue when they have space and capacity.
And I think we have an obligation to one another not to non-consensually trauma-porn each other.
Maria Bryan:
What I get from folks is: okay, so then what?
As both consultants and nonprofits, we are solving problems. I love that you have these pillars of clarity, choice, and consent. Can you offer some guidance on alternatives to pain-point and fear-based copywriting that are still effective?
Stephanie Bilinsky:
Yes! Clarity, choice, and consent can be very grounding. Anytime I feel myself heading toward FOMO or false urgency, I step back and reground in these pillars.
Clarity means making sure people know what to expect when they’re working with you, donating to you, or purchasing from you.
That might be transparent pricing, terms, or even what client experience looks like. Your services page might list what's included, but what actually sets you apart is how you tell your brand story and help people see whether your experience is right for them.
If we lean into trauma-informed thinking:
Is pricing transparent?
Is client experience transparent?
Are we clearly communicating who this is for—and who it may not be for?
Maria Bryan:
That’s such an important lens.
Stephanie Bilinsky:
Exactly. It’s equally important to communicate, “This might not be the right solution for you if...”
Choice comes into play not just in what you offer, but also in the sales process. Give people options for how they want to communicate, or what the process will look like—within your capacity, of course.
And then there’s consent. Yes means yes in marketing and sales just like anywhere else. For example, in email marketing, I give my email list the option to opt out of specific email campaigns they’re not interested in—without removing them from the list entirely.
Nonprofits can do the same. Give people the option to opt out of certain appeals or updates while remaining connected.
In sales, I always ask, “May I tell you what this service would look like for you?” or “May I send you a custom proposal?” I always look for a yes because I’m not trying to sell to people who don’t really want my services.
There’s a level of trust that gets built when you ask. And trust is central to anything trauma-informed.
Maria Bryan:
I feel like we often believe that if we have a really good service or a really important mission, we’re for everyone. And in nonprofit fundraising especially, we feel like: you live in this community, you have money — this is a no-brainer.
But actually giving people choice, autonomy, and space matters. Some people may care more about other causes, or may be in a season where they’re supporting different work.
And while that can be hard for nonprofit fundraisers to hear, when you find the people who say yes—whether that’s donating, joining your email list, or taking any action—you’re building much stronger, longer-lasting relationships than through guilt or fear.
I love that pause of asking for permission: May I send you this? before pushing the ask further.
Stephanie Bilinsky:
Yes.
Maria Bryan:
What is your take on copywriting in times of crisis?
I think back to the pandemic, where there were heavy sales pushes as people shifted online. Or more recently, when we had the federal grant funding freeze—it was terrifying. The nonprofit space is being attacked on so many levels.
I saw two kinds of messaging:
Some people saying, essentially, “You shouldn’t have been relying on grants—hire me to help you fundraise differently.”
Others providing empathy and free resources, while some consultants were offering all their services pro bono, which scared me too because... I still need to feed my family.
How do you approach marketing during moments like this?
Stephanie Bilinsky:
It’s something I talk about a lot with my spouse, Theo. They’re a business coach who focuses on trauma-informed sales.
We both work with a lot of people who hold marginalized identities, who want to do right by their communities—and who often underprice their services or promise more than they can sustainably deliver, because they feel like it’s the ethical thing to do.
But we live in capitalism, which is an imperfect system. No one can be perfectly virtuous within it. We need to let go of that pressure because it’s impossible.
I truly believe: the more good people who have money, the better. The more you can take care of yourself and your immediate community, the more you can give.
If you don’t have the basics secured—your own food, shelter, stability—you can’t build community or offer real support to others.
So we need to find ways to sell and market our services, even in hard times, in ways that feel aligned with our values and sustainable for us.
In crisis moments, that might look like:
Acknowledging what’s going on
Not bypassing or pretending things aren’t happening
Speaking to the situation with honesty and humanity
Personally, I’ve felt alienated by people who just keep cruising along in business without acknowledging the collective trauma we’re all living through.
The more we connect with people on a human level and say, “Hey, this is hard — here’s what’s on our hearts,” the more people feel seen where they are. Not where they think they’re supposed to be.
And when people feel seen that way, they feel loyalty and trust toward your organization, your brand, your mission.
So yes, you can still market your nonprofit or services while holding space for what’s happening. You might even include a link to a fundraiser you feel good about in your marketing, if that feels right.
Maria Bryan:
Ugh. I feel a little lighter just hearing that.
Because there’s no perfect right or wrong—but if we lead with our values and humanness, that’s what separates authentic marketing from these extreme reactions of either “sell hard” or “give everything away for free.”
There’s so much you said here that I want to sit with and reflect on.
I’m just so glad that more people are embracing trauma-informed practices. It’s becoming more accessible. People are unlearning and relearning.
What do you see as the future of trauma-informed marketing and copywriting? Or what do you hope becomes normalized?
Stephanie Bilinsky:
A lot of the people I see embracing trauma-informed marketing and sales are smaller agencies and freelancers. But that’s how change starts.
Katie Kurtz said in a town hall call I was on recently that trauma-informed practices are essentially countercultural.
Change starts small and grows. Countercultures have the power to change broader culture—and I think that’s what we’re starting to see.
I think there’s so much potential for trauma-informed marketing to set brands apart from generic, dehumanized marketing.
My hope is that this work makes a meaningful, lasting change on the broader culture—where bigger agencies and brands start to shift toward it too.
And that ultimately, the world becomes a little kinder.
Maria Bryan:
I’m here for that. I am here for that future.
How can listeners connect with you, learn more about your work, and hire you? I know people will want to connect after hearing this.
Stephanie Bilinsky:
I would love that! My website is brandcendent.com — that’s B-R-A-N-D-C-E-N-D-E-N-T.com.
On there, you can sign up for my email list, where I share all my best content. My email list is where I put my heart into my work.
You can also find me on LinkedIn as Stephanie Bilinsky, and on Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, and TikTok under Brandcendent. But I’m most active and passionate about my email list — that’s definitely the best spot.
Maria Bryan:
Wonderful. Stephanie, thank you so much for your wisdom, encouragement, and insight. Thank you for coming on.
Stephanie Bilinsky:
Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.