The Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation (MCHF) is a Canadian health charity that raises funds from donors to support innovative research, teaching and care at The Montreal Children’s Hospital, an internationally renowned pediatric centre affiliated with the McGill University Health Centre providing highly specialized healthcare. Their annual Caring for Kids Radiothon gives listeners a glimpse of life at the hospital as young patients, and their families share personal stories of how their lives have been touched by the exceptional care of the hospital’s dedicated staff.
MCHF sought to reach out to their past supporters about the upcoming radiothon and were interested in Stratcom’s PROMPT.io text messaging platform to complement their existing promotion and fundraising strategies for the event.
Step 1:
Planning & scripting
Stratcom worked with MCHF to develop the script for a series of bilingual (French and English) text messages from the mother of a patient at The Montreal Children’s Hospital, the first message to be deployed one or two days beforehand and a second text to be sent out on the day of the radiothon.
Step 2:
Roll-out
2022
The text messages sent out to past supporters of MCHF’s radiothon event. With the first message, recipients were prompted to reply with the keyword ‘CARING’ to receive links to tune in the next day. A reminder text was also sent out the next day, the day of the radiothon, which also had a secondary ask for past donors to give again in support of the event.
2023
In 2023, MCHF once again targeted those who had donated to the organization previously. Both the first message, sent a couple of days before the radiothon, and the second message, sent on the day of, were reminders about the event but also directly asked for the audience to donate in support of the radiothon.
Our
Work
Step 1:
Planning & scripting
Stratcom worked with MCHF to develop the script for a series of bilingual (French and English) text messages from the mother of a patient at The Montreal Children’s Hospital, the first message to be deployed one or two days beforehand and a second text to be sent out on the day of the radiothon.
Step 2:
Roll-out
2022
The text messages sent out to past supporters of MCHF’s radiothon event. With the first message, recipients were prompted to reply with the keyword ‘CARING’ to receive links to tune in the next day. A reminder text was also sent out the next day, the day of the radiothon, which also had a secondary ask for past donors to give again in support of the event.
2023
In 2023, MCHF once again targeted those who had donated to the organization previously. Both the first message, sent a couple of days before the radiothon, and the second message, sent on the day of, were reminders about the event but also directly asked for the audience to donate in support of the radiothon.
I am continually amazed at how text messages allow us to nurture our connections with our donors. Many of them have shared their personal stories with The Children’s and how grateful they are for the care their kids received at the Hospital. Text messaging has been a useful tool to have one-on-one conversations on a large scale.
Frédéric Brière
Director, Direct and Integrated Marketing
The Results
In both 2022 and 2023, The Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation raised a total of approx. $1.3 million across all channels for the Radiothon. Engagement rates for the text campaigns were fairly significant for both 2022 and 2023, ranging from 3-8%.
The team at MCHF also directly conversed with donors via text, which ended up being a thoroughly enjoyable and fulfilling experience. Some donors shared their personal story at The Children’s Hospital, while others sent good wishes to the mother of the patient mentioned in the initial message.
Bolstered by the success of the Radiothon text campaigns, MCHF is looking to explore ways they can use text messaging to further strengthen relationships with donors and steward them – how to best use text in a non-ask campaign, to share important news, inform them how their gift was used, and so on.
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