SickKids is a children’s hospital in Toronto, Canada, founded in 1875. They are known around the world as leaders in research and treatment, but an aging building is currently holding back further advancements and limiting their ability to treat the growing number of children who need them.

Over the next 10 years, the entire hospital facility will be torn down and rebuilt, bigger and better than ever. But it will only happen with the continued support of donors. Past campaigns have raised large amounts of support, but this year we needed to raise more money than ever to guarantee the future of SickKids, and we needed to target more Torontonians than ever before.

The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) is Canada's most research-intensive hospital and the largest centre dedicated to improving children's health in the country.

Founded in 1875, this 143-year-old national treasure resides in a 69-year-old facility that is absolutely stretched to capacity. In order to keep pace with its own advancements in paediatric care and research, and to continue to deliver the highest levels of quality that the public has come to expect, SickKids desperately requires a new home.

While the hospital receives two-thirds of its funding from the government, the rest comes from donations. But the donation space has become very crowded. SickKids is literally across the street from 4 other major hospitals, each with their own aggressive fundraising goals. Aside from the big annual campaigns associated with diseases like AIDS, cancer, heart and stroke, diabetes and mental health, SickKids competes for attention with the hospitals across the street, across the country and against all the charities in the Greater Toronto Area.

In the face of these odds, SickKids set an audacious goal for itself: to raise $1.3 billion in donations across 5 years. October 2016 saw the launch of the boldest brand platform in SickKids history: “SickKids VS The Greatest Challenges in Child Health.” The commercial results were spectacular. For the period October 2016 to December 2016, SickKids reported $57.9 million in donations.

Now that the foundation for the VS brand was successfully laid, SickKids needed to shift its focus solely to funding the new facility, and to scale that effort across 4 more years.

While it identifies as a big city, Toronto is known for its several colourful neighbourhoods, each with its own distinct personality. This told us that there was a well of neighbourhood pride to be tapped into across the entire city. The creative needed to leverage the existing competitive spirit between Toronto’s neighbourhoods as we took SickKids’ fight to the streets. We issued a call to action for each neighbourhood to join us in this fight and communicated a subtle challenge to see which ones would lead the charge. The campaign theme was “All In”.

For the second round of a 5-year campaign, All In exceeded all expectations. At a total of $68.7MM in donations, it enjoyed a YOY increase of 19%. All In ran a campaign in conjunction with the mass media campaign with the objective of signing 5,000 new monthly donors. The campaign brought in 6,479 donors, with a net lifetime revenue of $12.1MM, exceeding the target by 30%. SickKids achieved 61% of its overall goal of $1.3bn – tracking well ahead of projections. And at an astounding 2147%, the return on marketing investment (ROMI) easily exceeded the goals set for the campaign.