SickKids Foundation is the largest charitable funder of child health research, learning and care in Canada. It raises around $250M annually towards its mission of making every kid and healthy kid. They also represent a best-practice example of high-performance marketing and fundraising.
What’s remarkable about SickKids is their bold brand-led approach to fundraising growth. At a time when most charities are scrambling to discover new fundraising channels and struggling to get digital channels working, SickKids have dared to be bold and seeing significant growth as a result.
Before outlining how SickKids transformed, take two minutes to watch the film that introduced their new brand in late 2016.
Challenge
It was imperative SickKids raise more money to support its mission to make every kid and healthy kid. It also needed a new hospital, which would cost over $1 billion. Oh, and they weren’t reaching their fundraising targets.
The problem is traditional advertising just reinforces what people already knew about the organisations.
If they did nothing drastically different, fundraising would, at best, grow incrementally. A more likely scenario is revenue would continue to decline.
A decision was made in 2014 to take a risk and transform the SickKids brand from the inside out. It was a risky decision but leadership saw that they had no other choice. They needed to fight.
SickKids set out to reposition the brand. Their objectives were to stand out in the increasingly crowded charity market and attract the support of new audiences.
Action
We know mindshare comes before marketshare and reputation before revenue. So brand — that is how your organisation is perceived by its audience — will directly impact fundraising.
A challenge in fundraising is brands are largely undifferentiated. They also all tend to adhere to the same advertising formula. Trust in charities is in decline (Edelman Trust Barometer) and fundraising growth is slow.
SickKids set out to disrupt the giving sector by transforming from a charity brand to a performance brand. Nike being a pinup example of a performance brand.
Becoming a performance brand meant changing its narrative, tone of voice, style, and applying this new way of communicating to everything it does. It’s the equivalent of setting out in high school to transform from the nerdy outcast to the most popular kid in school.
SickKids rebrand started with the driving insight that sickness seen as weakness. But sickness isn’t weakness. It takes strength to fight illness and injury.
SickKids Foundation would no longer focus on weakness. It would focus on the fight.
This insight informed their brand personality, plus look and feel. It was no longer about keeping up but winning.SickKids’ calls to action would go from help us to join us.
To communicate the new brand and attract new supporters, SickKids planned a multiyear campaign towards a $1.3 billion goal.
Titled VS (versus), SickKids’ multiyear plan focused on a different goal each each. It would disrupt the market, declare the need, demand support, and celebrate success over four years.
With each year representing a stage in the journey, SickKids would lead with a brand message that repositioned them and the challenge. They would then communicate the need in year two, and demand support in year three, and celebrate in year four.
The above the line campaign creative was carried through to online platforms and supported by a full suite of fundraising options.
According to veteran fundraiser and SickKids Foundation CEO, Ted Gerrard, “This is more than an advertising campaign. It’s baked into everything we do.”
In the last decade I’ve not heard of a single charity embarking upon a quest to conduct an integrated multiyear campaign. What I do know is marketing effectives research tells us the longer a campaign is in market the better the results.
Outcome
The outcomes for SickKids Foundation have been remarkable.
They have currently raised $917M to their goal of %1.3B. In fact, they raised $57.9M between October and December in 2014 following their Undeniable campaign, with the video earning over 200M views and significant mass media coverage.
An ageing database has been replenished with a younger demographic. Around 70% if funds raised are also unrestricted(“Unrestricted giving means unlimited impact,” is their mantra). But have they alienated their traditional supporters? No, say their CEO, “They are supporting us regardless.”
SickKids’ brand is stronger than ever. One in five people in Canada know who SickKids are, one in seven donate, with 96% unaided awareness. The organisation also has a net promoter score in the top percentile.
Also important is staff engagement is high along with retention. It’s a win, win, win, for the organisation, its supporters, and those it serves.
Lessons
Ted Gerrard says his three lessons to any charity looking to do something similar are:
- Match your effort to your ambition
- Assemble your army
- Stay the course
Looking forward he say, “In five years time I believe we’ll be a technology company, with a mission.”
From my perspective, I also believe the lesson for charities is to be bold, find new ways to tell old stories, and give people a reason to pay attention.
