BC Children’s Hospital Foundation is heroing monthly donors, a target oft talked about by nonprofits though rarely targeted with creative.
The organization’s hero spot features a young patient narrator, and humorously puts neuroscience and congenital heart disease researchers on par with ordinary donor schmos in terms of importance.
“We recognized monthly donors represented our most loyal group of supporters and were unsung heroes who flew mostly under the radar because of the smaller nature of their gifts,” says Surina Sproul VP, brand strategy, BC Children’s Hospital Foundation.
Sproul tells strategy that, for this class of donors, their gifts, over time, really add up. However, monthly donors would sometimes sheepishly apologize saying they weren’t able to give more and felt badly that their gifts weren’t “big enough”.
As Sproul explains, the foundation wanted to make it clear that no donation is small, a positioning that ladders back to the organization’s “Small is Mighty” brand platform launched in 2022.
She says agency partner 123W believed that the monthly donor target represented a “narrow, magical space that leveraged the one place where humour made sense.”
“Over the years, we’ve kept a pulse on the brands we’ve really admired in the non-profit space and felt no one had cracked the nut yet on how to create a compelling proposition for monthly donors,” Sproul says. “We believed there was an untapped space no one had filled yet in re-positioning monthly giving as a primary ask and something people should be proud to consider.”
The foundation is targeting parents 30 to 55 who haven’t donated before and may have a connection to BC Children’s Hospital by one or two degrees of separation, a target which does not feel like the amount they can afford to give will make a difference, so they don’t give at all.
BC Children’s Hospital Foundation has run multiple campaigns that have built off of “Small is Mighty,” including a Mother’s Day effort harnessing the power of moms and a holiday campaign which “led to record-breaking results for the Foundation,” including a 40% increase in year-over-year donors and 14% book in year-over-year revenue.
The campaign runs until Halloween and includes streaming video, television PSA spot, radio, digital, paid social and direct marketing. There will be additional pushes throughout the upcoming year. OMD is the media partner.
The foundation activated in the fall because of a “modest” campaign budget, and because it wanted to avoid getting drowned out by the noise of the holiday season or directly compete with its own holiday messaging.