SickKids is among the top three pediatric healthcare centres in the world, but it’s hard to practice twenty-first century medicine in a 1949 building. To raise funds for a new facility, the hospital launched SickKids “Versus”, a brand platform that has galvanized the entire nation over the last few years. Since then, the platform’s strength has become its weakness, as would-be donors believe the job is done.

Our brief was to rally the Canadian public to fund the fight once more, so the hospital could make history by crossing the 1 million monthly donor milestone. It was 5,000 donors short.

Monuments are built to honour the brave, yet none exist for the courageous young Canadians who battle doubt, discomfort and disease. So we collected thousands of Bravery Beads—tiny badges of honour in every patient’s SickKids journey—and built the first public symbol to honour their fight, raising much-needed funds for the hospital along the way.

Sick isn’t weak. It fights back. That’s why patients at SickKids earn Bravery Beads with every procedure they endure. Over the years, more than a million beads have been handed out, yet few outside the hospital have ever seen one. So we set out to create the world’s first public symbol to honour the strength of sick children. Our strategy was simple: use personal acts of bravery to inspire public acts of generosity.

Bravery Beads are colourful and curious, so we unveiled five larger-than-life replicas in high-traffic areas across Toronto. Each set the stage for sharing patient stories, arming media with exclusives and deploying influencers to sustain the conversation.

Over the span of three months, Canadians answered our two-fold call to action: the first was aimed at the public, urging them to become monthly donors... and the second was aimed at patients (past and present), asking them to donate their precious beads for the making of a monument honouring their fight.

We then commissioned Canadian artist Nico Williams, a beadwork specialist, to design and build SickKids Monument to the Brave using the very beads we collected from patients. The Monument will live at the new SickKids as an everlasting symbol of patient strength.

Monument to the Brave helped SickKids reach its goal of 5,000 new donors, crossing the one million donor milestone just halfway through the campaign. Real patients donated over 3,000 Bravery Beads. All are now permanently enshrined in a symbol that redefines how we see and honor strength.

? +15% YOY increase in monthly donors (over $8.6 million in lifetime value)

? +20% YOY increase in one-time donations

? Highest day 1 donor acquisition in VS campaign history

? 36.5 million impressions earned across traditional and social media