Yoonhyung Lee and the art of asking people to care

A spacesuit has a peculiar advantage as a fundraising subject. It can sit perfectly still and suggest a journey almost nobody will ever make. In July 2015, the Smithsonian asked the public to help conserve, digitize, and display the suit Neil Armstrong wore on the moon. Yoonhyung Lee, then its director of digital philanthropy, helped explain the invitation: people could contribute to a particular project and follow its progress. The museum offered more than a donation form. It offered a way into the work.

The campaign, called Reboot the Suit, finished with 9,477 backers pledging $719,779. A moon landing had become an undertaking for thousands of people with considerably more ordinary travel arrangements. There was room to participate without being an astronaut, a curator, or a person whose name belonged on a building. An object associated with one small step had acquired a rather crowded supporting cast.

Lee is now CEO and partner of M+R, the nonprofit fundraising and communications firm. Her route there passes through public media, museum audiences, and the practical decisions that determine whether an appeal gets a response. Read across those episodes and a recurring problem comes into view. An institution may have something worth caring about. Someone still has to make the invitation understandable, timely, and worth accepting.

The smaller experiment before the spacesuit

The less glamorous precursor involved a website splash page. At the Smithsonian, Lee tested a year-end donation request that appeared over the institution’s main page. It ran for the final three days of the year, and a visitor encountered it only on a first visit. The caution was deliberate. Asking for money could interrupt people who had come to look at something else.

The test generated $17,765 from 129 donors. The following year, a longer run brought in $23,548 from 172 people. These were separate campaigns, rather than a controlled comparison. Still, the episode shows Lee dealing with a familiar institutional dilemma: how to make a request without making the audience regret opening the door.

A splash page is a small stage on which to perform that negotiation. The visitor has arrived with an intention. The institution introduces another. A donation request has to earn its interruption; good intentions alone do little to settle the matter. There is something refreshingly concrete about measuring what happened after a cautious trial. The conversation can move beyond everybody’s confident prediction of everybody else’s annoyance.

Lee had previously directed online marketing at KQED. Her publicity credits also appear on its Jacques Pépin: Fast Food My Way and Check, Please! Bay Area. Public media and museums have different offerings, but both depend on people who value an experience enough to return. The audience comes for the cooking, the collection, the program. Supporting the institution is another decision. Her career has repeatedly brought her to that second decision.

A panda enters the conversation

The Smithsonian Summer Showdown gave participation a lighter assignment. In 2014, museums, programs, and research centers nominated contenders for a public bracket competition. The question was what counted as most iconic at the Smithsonian. Twenty-four institutional participants produced an argument that could accommodate art, history, science, culture, and a panda cub.

Bao Bao won. The competition drew more than 90,000 votes, while institutional social accounts traded playful challenges and fans joined the exchanges. M+R was credited as the campaign’s designer. Lee’s LinkedIn profile lists a June 2015 CASE gold award for Best Use of Social Media associated with the Showdown. The campaign made a sprawling institution easier to explore through the pleasantly unreasonable business of choosing favorites.

A bracket gives people permission to have an opinion before they have mastered the subject. That is useful in a museum, where expertise can sometimes make the visitor feel like the least qualified person in the room. Choosing a contender creates a reason to look closer. Explaining the choice creates a reason to talk. Even disagreement has a job to do.

The joke also carried information. A person could arrive for the panda and encounter another part of the Smithsonian along the way. There was no need to make every institution sound equally solemn. Play supplied a common language, and the voting supplied a next step. For a fundraising and engagement career, this is an instructive episode: participation can begin with curiosity and enjoyment, well before anyone reaches for a wallet.

Making the public part of the project

Reboot the Suit launched on July 20, 2015, the anniversary of the first moonwalk. The Smithsonian’s new Kickstarter partnership let backers choose a project and receive rewards at different contribution levels. The all-or-nothing funding arrangement gave the campaign a visible finish line. Its original goal was $500,000; the eventual total also supported a stretch goal involving Alan Shepard’s spacesuit.

“It is mind-blowing.”

Yoonhyung Lee, on the campaign’s response, 2015

The appeal connected preservation with access. Digitization and display gave contributors something to look forward to, and progress on the project gave them something to follow. A famous object drew attention. The proposed work explained why attention needed to become support.

That distinction matters when the object is already beloved. Familiarity can make an artifact feel permanent, as though surviving in the public imagination guarantees its survival in a collection. A conservation campaign makes the continuing work visible. It asks people to care about the next chapter of an object whose earlier chapter they already know.

There is also a change in the visitor’s position. Looking through a display case is a complete and valuable experience. Helping a project reach its goal adds another relationship with the museum. The contribution can be modest, but the action is specific. The backer can say what the money was for. That is a useful standard for any appeal, whether its subject has been to the moon or merely needs a better explanation.

The client takes the other chair

Lee first worked with M+R as a Smithsonian client. In her account of that relationship, she emphasizes high expectations and an agency willing to understand her organization and collaborate on improving its program. She later joined the firm. In October 2022, M+R named her and Matt Derby partners; she was leading Digital Fundraising & Advocacy, while Derby led Digital Advertising.

Moving from client to consultant supplies a useful memory. A recommendation has to survive the receiving organization’s constraints, questions, and internal conversations. The person across the table needs more than a clever idea. They need a collaborator who understands why a seemingly straightforward decision might be difficult to carry out.

M+R announced Lee as CEO on December 11, 2023. Its announcement credited her work on growth, management, and equity, and described a leadership approach incorporating service areas, the staff union, and leadership. It also made room for karaoke. An agency apparently needs both a decision-making structure and occasional evidence that its employees know the chorus.

Those two details belong together more comfortably than they first appear. Campaign work depends on people offering ideas, asking questions, and trusting colleagues with unfinished thinking. A leadership structure determines who gets heard. Informal time can help people feel comfortable speaking. Neither guarantees a good campaign, but both concern the conditions in which the work gets made.

The relationship after the appeal

Lee’s public teaching brings the discussion back to practical choices. A 2021 article coauthored with Sarah DiJulio examined mid-level donors, emphasizing audience identification, tailored appeals, and cultivation. Its questions included how quickly people increased their giving and whether they stayed involved. Revenue mattered alongside the development of a continuing relationship.

That emphasis changes the time horizon. A donation supplies an immediate result. Retention asks what happens when the deadline has passed and the next campaign arrives. A donor’s earlier response can inform a later invitation, rather than disappearing into an aggregate total. The work becomes a series of decisions about how to remain relevant.

Lee discussed digital fundraising for public media with Melanie Coulson and Jamie Siegel in 2021. At a 2022 webinar with Eric Rubin, she offered year-end tactics and stressed cultivation through mobile messaging. In 2024, she joined Anita Yankova at the Bridge Conference to examine Twitch, TikTok, Tiltify, and influencers. The session included the costs and suitability of different approaches, an admirably necessary question whenever a new platform arrives wearing the expression of a universal solution.

Channels change. The recipient’s freedom to ignore an invitation remains. That makes specificity a durable advantage: a clear action, a comprehensible reason, and some understanding of the person being asked. Lee’s career offers several versions of that work, from a cautious website interruption to a public conservation project.

Today, her leadership statement returns to colleagues and clients whose purposes she believes in. The appeal is still there, though its audience has widened to include the people doing the asking. A panda can win a bracket. A spacesuit can attract thousands of backers. An agency can put its former client in charge. Behind each is the same practical obligation: give people a reason to join in, then do the work their participation makes possible.