We printed and published a 150-page book, with content crowdsourced from real parents, outlining all of the things they didn’t expect during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.

While our healthcare in Canada is government-funded, hospitals are still run independently, and thus need to raise money for new equipment and more advanced facilities on their own. North York General Hospital needed to raise $32 million to completely renovate their labour and delivery department. Because they are not allowed to keep any of their patients’ information on file, they needed to build a database of email addresses of people with an affiliation to the hospital, so they could target them for donations.

In North America, the book “What to Expect when You’re Expecting” is an iconic pregnancy book that most people read when they’re pregnant. However, there are so many topics it overlooks- that’s because it’s missing the real human experiences that can only be learned firsthand. So we played off this iconic book to create our own: “What No One Tells You When You’re Expecting”. Written with crowdsourced anecdotes from real parents and brought to life with beautiful illustrations, we used the book as a way to solicit email addresses from the people who submitted and downloaded the book, as well as ascertain North York General’s leadership in the labour and delivery field- proving to both new and seasoned parents that we truly understand them.

In 2023, the North York General Hospital Foundation announced an ambitious goal to raise $32 million to build a new birthing center that matches the quality of care NYGH provides. This was especially ambitious given North York General is located in Canada’s most competitive fundraising city and most sought after donors.

Our task was to put North York General on the map as a leader in labour and delivery care, starting by growing our donor pool and generating a net new 1000 donation leads for the new birthing center. To do so, we needed a way to connect with parents who had an affiliation to our birthing centre by getting them to share their birthing experiences with us.

After its release, our book debuted at No. 1 on Amazon’s Pregnancy & Childbirth bestseller list and was the No. 1 Most Gifted book in the category. After 120 days and counting, it continues to be the #1 best seller in fertility, the #1 most gifted, and the #2 most wished for. And on the NYG microsite it has been downloaded over 4000 times.

The campaign also sparked interest among top-tier news and lifestyle outlets, even generating a 5-minute segment on Canada's largest broadcaster, CBC, as well as feature segments on CTV, The Morning Show, and Breakfast Television.

In the first month alone, we received over 2000 submissions. And most importantly, our book exceeded key objectives, delivering more than 15,300 net new leads for our donor pool- fifteen times more than the original goal- and increasing the donor email database by 300%. The book also drove more than 87MM impressions.