2018 was our most ambitious fundraising year yet - year two of the largest fundraising campaign in Canadian healthcare history, $1.3 billion over 10 years. We needed to drive significant donations and get potential new donors off the sidelines to help us build a new SickKids hospital.

For our annual integrated campaign, we focused our efforts on sub-cultures within the city of Toronto from runners to bankers to barbers and more to join the fight. We used influencers, social channels, online, 1:1 and contextual OOH to rally people together and pledge their support for SickKids.

Research into our donor base revealed many donor “sub-groups” had formed through common interests and experiences with the hospital. The “Lemonade Stand Kids”, “Ashley’s Angels” and other groups had naturally sprung-up to expand their impact beyond their individual efforts. There’s a powerful group-effect that attracts people to join and amplify their overall reach and impact as the group grows.

To capitalize on this behavior, we identified the groups and subcultures that brought the people of Toronto together around a common passion. People join running and cycling clubs, their profession (chef or barber) can bond them together or maybe they share a passion for fashion or dogs. Instead of looking at our target as a homogenous demographic (or even a psychographic profile) we divided them into existing subcultures giving us natural rally points to expand SickKids’ message.

We united the passion of potential new donors by organizing them into “crews”.

Our strategy was informed by recognizing that Torontonians are diverse: they come from various backgrounds, have a multitude of interests, lifestyles, and professions. To rally them all behind SickKids, we had to appeal to them in authentic ways, which inspired our campaign focus - influencers.

We identified a range of influencers (macro, mid-tier, and micro) assigning each a different objective. Macro influencers to drive awareness, leveraging their big following to amplify campaign message. Mid-tier influencers to keep the momentum going throughout the campaign. Lastly, micro influencers to drive conversions, leveraging the higher levels of trust they have among their followers.

Each influencer would lead their “crew” based on what they are famous for. For example: olympic sprinter Andre Degrasse can lead the “runners” crew, and Toronto Raptors’ Fred Vanvleet can lead the “ballers” crew.

The ultimate goal was to convert influencer followers to monthly donors by encouraging pledges.

We engaged 52 influencers to rally support within their “crew.” A range of macro, mid-tier and micro influencers took to their social platforms, over a 90 day period, declaring their support of SickKids and the need to build a new hospital. Custom content, from inspirational personal stories to provocative rally cries, went out across Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter as all influencers called on everyone in their crew to join the SickKids fight.

Influencers were integrated throughout the campaign. They were involved in the epic launch video showing all of the unique crews coming together. These same influencers then leveraged different cuts of that content to drive awareness and engagement on their social channels, followed by self-made content that drove conversions.

The influencer content generated conversations that ultimately drove to an online conversion experience where people could identify (and represent!) their specific “crew” by pledging their support for SickKids.

This campaign continues (and even beats) the incredible success SickKids has seen to date:

• Raised $48,354,389 in 90 days

- $10 million more than the same period last year

• Generated 155,268 new donors

- 19% gain vs. the previous year

• 53% increase in monthly donors since launch delivering a LTV (lifetime value) of $15.9

million

• Generated $1.4 million in on-line donations

- 10% lift vs. the previous year

• Social content generated an incredible 11,743,040 impressions

- Just under 3X the campaign’s in-going target or 161% lift over goal

- 44% of donors who joined a crew also purchased merchandise to show support of

their crew

- Email engagement with our existing monthly donors increased by an incredible 88%

during the campaign