Overview
Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health (LPFCH) is the sole fundraising entity for Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and the child health programs at Stanford University School of Medicine.
They first partnered with Media Cause for year-end fundraising in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. Two years later, we collaborated to promote their annual fundraising event, Summer Scamper, which returned to an in-person format in June 2022. We followed this successful effort with a year-end campaign that emphasized the importance of high-quality health care for every child.
Our challenge evolved alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. In our Winter 2020 engagement, our task was to explain how LPFCH was pivoting and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. By the summer of 2022, it was to mark their achievements through a fundraising event and in-person celebration, asking the community to attend a fun-run. Our final task was to launch a year-end campaign that could stand up to economic headwinds with a strategic, cross-channel fundraising effort.
LPFCH had a banner year-end campaign in 2020 with a messaging strategy centered on COVID-19, and the need for additional donor support to respond to the pandemic. We drew a through-line from the year-end campaign to Summer Scamper in 2022, celebrating both LPFCH’s accomplishments and the ability to gather outdoors to support the foundation. Finally, we worked against the post-COVID lull in year-end ‘22 with a cross-channel effort that spotlighted patient stories and leveraged critical days of fundraising to yield the greatest number of online gifts in five years.
Finally, we worked against the post-COVID lull in year-end ‘22 with a cross-channel effort that spotlighted patient stories and leveraged critical days of fundraising to yield the greatest number of online gifts in five years.
Media Cause and LPFCH collaborated on a year-end campaign in December 2020 consisting of 10 fundraising emails spanning from November 30 through December 31. With careful attention to key days—including those around Giving Tuesday and the final five days of the year—we pushed volume with proven fundraising tactics, including a match, and heartwarming patient stories.
We highlighted the campaign on the Foundation’s homepage with a lightbox that built cross-channel integration and ensured the campaign had visibility beyond the email list.
Finally, we deployed Facebook and Paid Search ads that reached new and existing audiences with LPFCH’s match for children’s health.
The 2020 Outcome: 68% YoY increase in online gifts + 49% YoY increase in online revenue
Summer Scamper—an annual, family friendly fun run—is a moment of celebration and among the biggest fundraising days on LPFCH’s calendar. 2022 marked the return to in-person Scampering with a “hybrid” model, and the Foundation set a lofty fundraising goal to support children’s healthcare and research.
We worked with the client team to design and execute a cross-channel campaign across email and paid media to raise funds, secure signups, and ensure high turnout on Scamper day.
With high-impact versioning to target previous Scamper participants, confirmed signups, and local Bay Area supporters, we maximized registrations and participation. We also recognized that a 5k is not for everyone and capped the effort with a matching gift challenge geared toward those not Scampering. This ensured every member of the community could pitch in to make Summer Scamper ‘22 a success.
We resumed our partnership in late 2022 to craft their year-end campaign in November and December. During our third year-end engagement, following efforts in 2018 and 2020, we were positioned to put past learnings into action and launch a strategic campaign across channels that showed the impact of LPFCH—and the importance of supporting them during the holiday season.
2022 Outcome: Despite economic headwinds and a post-COVID slump (in a season where 71% of nonprofits experienced a small YoY decline in giving), in 2022, LPFCH saw the greatest number of online gifts in the last five years (1,444), an increase of 100% since 2018.
