Home / Center for Kidney and Dialysis Education / KDE 101
Please read this before you begin
Hope MetaVersity is not a medical provider. This course is about communication and marketing. Nothing in it is medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or a care plan, and none of it is specific to your situation.
Nothing here can put you on a transplant list, take you off one, or tell you whether you are a candidate. Those decisions belong to you, your nephrologist and your transplant centre. Never change, delay, or stop any treatment because of something you learned here. Take it to your own care team and ask them about it.
If you are having a medical emergency, contact emergency services immediately.
What You'll Be Able to Do
- Build a one-page hub site that holds your story, your photos, your channel links and your transplant coordinator's phone number in one place.
- Record and post a short introduction that tells a stranger who you are and what you are living for.
- Claim the same username across five platforms and clear out the old posts that could cost you a donor.
- Reshare one piece of content across every channel you own instead of trying to make five different things.
- Send a brief monthly email people can forward and carry a card that tells your story on the back.
- Walk into your next nephrology appointment with a written list of what stands between you and being transplant-ready.
If You're Waiting, and Tired of Waiting
For people in kidney failure or on dialysis who are looking for a living donor — and for the family, friends and church groups helping them look. No marketing experience is assumed and no technical skill is assumed. If you can hold up a phone and talk, you can do this course.
It is also for the person driving somebody to dialysis three times a week and wondering what else they could usefully be doing.
What this course is not
It is not medical advice and it is not a transplant programme. It is also not a guarantee. Good marketing raises the chance that the right person hears you; it cannot promise that they will, and nobody — including Dean Hope — can promise you a kidney. It is not a fundraiser either: nothing in this course asks anyone for money, and nothing in it costs you any.
Ten Short Lessons, In Order
Play them here — nothing loads from YouTube until you press play, and nothing asks you to sign in. Mark recorded these as “volume one” of his kidney class, and the order below is the order he teaches them in, not the order they were uploaded.
Why This Class Exists
Trouble with the player? Watch it on YouTube → · Dean Hope's channel
Mark had just received his kidney when he recorded this. He walks through the two-year wait, being taken off the list in the middle of it, the people who came forward, and the son-in-law who turned out to be the match. Then he explains the paired exchange programme — why a willing donor who isn't your match still matters enormously, because they can give to someone else while that person's donor gives to you. And then he makes the promise the rest of the class keeps: he is going to teach every piece of social media marketing he knows, ten minutes at a time, for nothing.
Do this today: Write down the name of every person who has already offered you a kidney, including the ones who were ruled out. That list is where this starts.
Get Physically Ready
Trouble with the player? Watch it on YouTube → · Dean Hope's channel
Chapter one isn't about marketing at all. Mark's point is blunt: don't do all the work of finding a willing donor and then discover something has taken you off the list. That is exactly what happened to him. So this lesson is about being ready when the call comes — knowing what your transplant centre actually needs from you, keeping under control the things you can control, moving every day, and going to your nephrologist and asking out loud what stands between you and transplant. He also says the thing he wishes somebody had told him: he tried to skip dialysis and go straight to transplant, his numbers fell off a cliff, and once he finally started dialysis he got strength back. He wishes he had started sooner.
Do this today: Ask your nephrologist, in plain words, “What would it take for me to be transplant-ready tomorrow?” Write down every answer.
Your Website — the Hub
Trouble with the player? Watch it on YouTube → · Dean Hope's channel
Everything you post on social media drifts down the feed and disappears. A website doesn't. This is the one place that holds your story, links to every channel you own, your contact details and your transplant coordinator's name and number — so that when somebody watches a video six months from now and wants to help, there is somewhere for them to land and somebody for them to ring. It does not need to be expensive and it does not need to be pretty. There are free builders and there are cheap ones. It needs to exist, and it needs to be linked from every bio you have.
Do this today: Claim a free site or a domain and put three things on it — your name, your story in one paragraph, and your coordinator's phone number.
Content Creation
Trouble with the player? Watch it on YouTube → · Dean Hope's channel
This is where you decide what you are actually going to say. Mark's framing: you are not selling a product, you are helping a stranger get to know you well enough to make a decision. So talk to the camera the way you would talk to a person. Check in on the way to dialysis. Let your grandchildren talk. Use AI to help you draft, and to transcribe what you record, so that writing stops being the reason you never post. And if you are not comfortable explaining the medical side yourself, link to somebody who already explains it well — that is what the rest of the internet is for.
Do this today: Record one two-minute video on your phone. Don't edit it. The second one will be better than the first, and the tenth will be better than the second.
Trouble with the player? Watch it on YouTube → · Dean Hope's channel
Facebook gives you very little free reach in the main feed — its value is groups. The neighbourhood buy-sell-trade group, kidney and dialysis groups, church groups, the Chamber, the Boys and Girls Club. Join them and be an actual person in them. But before any of that, Mark wants you to go backwards through your own profile and delete the political fights, the cruelty, and anything a stranger would read and think twice about. You have a different job now.
Do this today: Scroll back through two years of your own posts and delete everything you wouldn't want a potential donor to read. Then put your website in your bio.
Trouble with the player? Watch it on YouTube → · Dean Hope's channel
Instagram is the daily check-in. A little bit every day: a photo, a short video, a real look into your life. The grocery store and why you are reading the label. The number that came back low and what it means. The nurse or the dietitian who helps you — Mark says he would like to see far more of those people in this community, because those relationships are the story. Keep a small, consistent set of hashtags. Keep your website in the bio. And don't measure this in likes; measure it in the handful of people who start checking on you every day.
A note from the school, not from Dean Hope: Always ask before you film staff or other patients, and follow your centre's own rules about recording on site.
Do this today: Post one photo from your day with a one-line caption, and make sure your website is in your bio.
Trouble with the player? Watch it on YouTube → · Dean Hope's channel
LinkedIn runs on second-degree connections: you connect with somebody, and suddenly their connections are visible to you and you to them. Mark is honest that it is a longer shot than the others — and it is also almost no work, so do it anyway. Fix your headline and your bio so they say plainly what is going on: dialysis, end-stage renal failure, looking for a living donor, website here. Then start connecting outward through the people you already know.
Do this today: Rewrite your LinkedIn headline and bio, and send ten connection requests to second-degree connections.
TikTok
Trouble with the player? Watch it on YouTube → · Dean Hope's channel
TikTok rewards short and relatable — but not the trending-sound, lip-sync, scrolling-inspirational kind of short. Nobody donates a kidney to the person who posts frog videos. Talk to the camera. Say what today is actually like as a patient in kidney failure. Put the ask in the first comment or in the hashtags, put your website in the bio, and caption everything, because more than half your audience is watching with the sound off at work.
Do this today: Post one talking-to-camera video with captions turned on, and put your website link in your bio.
YouTube
Trouble with the player? Watch it on YouTube → · Dean Hope's channel
YouTube is the permanent shelf. Every TikTok, every Instagram video, every live — it all goes up here too, on a channel named for what you need. You are not trying to go viral. You need one person. Fill out the description with your story and your coordinator's contact details every single time, so the video keeps working when you are not there to explain it. And Mark is direct about the energy this takes: before his transplant he was sleeping eighteen hours a day. Do it in chunks. Make the first one badly and make the next one slightly less badly.
Do this today: Create a YouTube channel with your name and your need in the title, and upload the video you made in Lesson 3.
Drip Email, Cards and Thank-You Notes
Trouble with the player? Watch it on YouTube → · Dean Hope's channel
The last chapter is the old-fashioned stuff, and Mark rates it higher than most people do. One short email a month — brief enough that nobody has to scroll, one photo, one link — because that is the email somebody forwards to their church list of three hundred. Personal cards with your name and number on the front and your story and your coordinator's number on the back, so that when a conversation happens you can hand the whole thing over. And handwritten thank-you notes to every person who helps you along the way, including the people taking care of you at the centre.
Do this today: Order a box of personal cards, and write one thank-you note by hand.
Twelve Cards, One Course
Tap a card to turn it over. Nothing is scored and nothing is recorded — these are for you. There is a printable set below if you'd rather hold them.
Ten Questions
Optional, ungraded, never a gate. Nothing is stored and you can retake it as many times as you like. Pick an answer and the reasoning appears.
In a paired exchange, what happens when your willing donor isn't a match for you?
Why does Mark put “get physically ready” first, before any marketing at all?
What is the website's main job?
What does Mark say the content is really doing?
What does Mark tell you to do on Facebook before you start posting?
What is Instagram for in this plan?
How does LinkedIn actually help you here?
What kind of TikTok content does Mark tell you not to make?
Why does Mark say you don't need to go viral on YouTube?
How often does Mark say to send the email, and why that often?
Print It, Write On It, Keep It
Free downloads, no email required. They work offline, they print on any printer, and you may copy them for anyone who needs them — a dialysis centre waiting room, a support group, a family member doing the legwork for you.
The Course Workbook
One worksheet per lesson with the questions worth answering in writing and the “do this today” action for each — plus a one-page Donor Outreach Plan that collects your website, your usernames, your hashtags and your transplant coordinator's name and number in one place you can hand to somebody. PDF, letter size.
Printable Flashcards
The same twelve cards, six to a page, ready to cut out. Print double-sided on the short edge and the answers land on the back. PDF, letter size.
Yes, really free
No sign-up, no email capture, no trial. 101-level material at Hope MetaVersity is free because the charity funds it, not because we are selling you the next thing.
Bring Your Questions to the Dean
The lessons are recorded, but the questions are live. Dean Hope said on camera he wanted to run about half an hour a week for this class — you turn up, you ask, he answers.
Bring the awkward ones. What do I actually say in the first video? How do I ask without feeling like I'm begging? What do I put on the back of the card? What do I do when somebody offers and then goes quiet? Those are the questions a recording cannot answer for your particular situation.
There is no fixed timetable, and that is deliberate. Sessions are called when enough people want one, and the people who signed up choose the time between them. Put your name down below and you'll be told when the next one is set.
- Free, like the rest of the course.
- No camera required — listening in is fine, and so is typing your question in the chat instead of speaking.
- Nothing medical is answered here. Questions about your treatment go to your own care team, every time.
- You pick the time. Tell us when you can actually make it and the session gets set around what works for the most people.
Dean Mark Hope
Mark founded his computer company in 1994, in the basement of his house, and spent the next thirty years marketing small businesses — search, websites, social media, drip email, and a great deal of what he calls guerrilla marketing. He is the founder of Hope MetaVersity and the Dean of its Office.
He teaches this course because he lived it. Two years waiting. Delisted mid-wait. A wife approved as his donor and then ruled out, a daughter who matched and was passed over for a larger kidney, and a son-in-law who turned out to be the one. He recorded the first of these lessons about a month after the transplant, and says plainly that the reason is a promise he made to the people who took care of him.
No certificate at this level
101-level courses do not carry a certificate — that begins at 200-level. What you get here is the teaching, in full, for nothing. How credentials work.
Tell Us When You Can Make It
No commitment and no cost. This tells the Dean a session is wanted and lets you vote on when it happens. You'll get an email when one is set — nothing else, ever.
Where It Goes Next
The Center for Kidney and Dialysis Education sits alongside the four Schools rather than inside one. What you learn here about telling your story and being heard carries straight into the rest of the Center — reading your own numbers, asking the questions that get useful answers, and advocating for yourself when you are exhausted.
If a 200-level course would help and money is the obstacle, request a scholarship — no proof of hardship required.