Seriously ill children need the closeness of their families. The non-profit McDonald's Kinderhilfe (Children's Aid) Foundation offers families a temporary home near hospitals so they can stay close to their children during therapy.

People mainly donated to the foundation by putting their change into boxes at the cashier.

But due to less cash payments these donations were decreasing rapidly and younger families hardly knew about the foundation.

So how could we raise awareness and donations especially with families?

For our campaign we looked at the donation process and reinvented it. Away from cash donations towards a design object – adding an emotional layer to donating.

Our night light – the light of courage – resembles the logo of the McDonald’s Kinderhilfe (children’s aid) foundation, and its light stands symbolically for the hope and courage it brings in dark times. By purchasing the light, you could not only donate money to the Kinderhilfe but especially courage to sick children. An emotional aspect that became the center of our fundraising campaign.

The core target group were all family people: they want to do something good and other families are particularly close to their hearts.

How could we get them to actively donate instead of just putting change into a donation box?

1. With courage instead of pity: Anyone who meets the families of the Ronald McDonald Houses feels something magical: irrepressible courage. The idea: to carry the courage of the families and little heroes into the world and to turn the fundraising campaign into a real courage campaign.

2. With a glowing symbol that is also a new form of donating: A night light ("courage light") forms the center of the campaign. The light carries courage into all children's rooms, captures the hearts of families and turns them into supporters. Because when they buy a Courage Light, they donate not just money, but courage!

We developed a 360-degree campaign that did not leave any stone unturned. With our focus on emotional donations and a whole new process of donating, the light of courage was developed inhouse. In the end 200,000 lights were produced and sold in all restaurants in the whole of Germany. In our campaign the light was the key element and the aspect of donating courage was stressed in every asset. With success – we were able to touch people’s hearts and make the campaign on of the biggest social campaigns for McDonald’s Germany.

All the lights of courage sold out in only 11 weeks. Consumer were able to not just give money, but to own a talked-about design object. The McD Kinderhilfe in return received more awareness then ever by giving peole the opportunity to donate courage.

During the campaign period, we were able to generate 2,269,045 Euro in overall donations. Additionally, we increased awareness of the McDonald's Children's Aid Foundation in the relevant target group to 60% and convinced 67% of people that McDonald's encourages and supports families with sick children. Compared to other McDonald's campaigns focusing on social responsibility, awareness of the McDonald's Mutlicht campaign was up to 20 percentage points higher. And finally – we developed a new way of donating money to the foundation.