What makes you give?
What stirs you to act?
The SickKids Foundation is betting a glimpse into personal stories of some of their patients will tweak your heart strings and open your wallets.
Today is the fourth day in a 45 day campaign to fund research at the internationally renowned hospital. Each story, shown online and in certain movie theatres, is a 30-second wonder, revealing an emotional moment caught on camera by a film crew.
It works for me. I’ve been in that place, seen their work even if we’ve been fortunate to escape the big health challenges that many families at the hospital endure. For most parents of young children, every illness is fraught with anxiety.
Peak freak time for parents seems to be middle of the night. Exhausted? Check. At your wit’s end? Check. When your kid is taken away for tests, leaving you a jittery mess in the waiting room, it is a tremendous comfort to have confidence in the care your child will receive. I wish all my experiences with our medical system worked as seamlessly as those that involved the late night traumas at that special place.
My kids are now healthy young adults.
But for these ads, I might have forgotten those angst-ridden days. Appeal to my storytelling senses and I’m there.
What about you? Does this kind of charitable campaign work for you?
For more information about the campaign and the families on film, read here.
6 Comments
I think it is an interesting tactic. It definitely works to get donations as people often need a face or a story that they feel they are donating too. However, I don’t think I would ever want to be in such an advertisement campaign.
A similar approach is one used by many humanitarian organisations. Starving children’s photos, refugee camp photos etc are all used to get people to donate. I think we have the tendency to have an “out of sight, out of mind” sort of approach to donations. So if you can’t see it, relate to it, and put a name to the cause, it is hard to imagine giving hard earned money away for it. It is a hard one though because it means that humanitarian groups and charities have to spend a lot of time and effort figuring out how to earn the money they need so desperately to survive.
The ethical questions that got asked in many of my lectures last year around these topics are muddy waters of confusion. But one thing stands very true: these campaigns are effective.
Out of sight, out of mind, yes. I wish it weren’t so but…cognitive dissonance?
Most moms cry when their child fgoes off to Kindergarten. When my forth child made it , I cried for a different reason. Ttears of joy knowing that perhaps my four had made it through the high risk age of getting childhood leukemia. It may sound morbid, but it’s true.
How do I know this? From the tearful videos that seem to pop up at 3 pm when you’re tired. The music is far to dramatic- but the stories are authentic.
I also know this having worked a decade as a nurse on the Pediatric Hrmatology / Oncolgy BMT units. If we did not see the stories and donate children’s lives would be shortened and lost.
If it weren’t for the donations the groundbreakingv research wound not continue.
I told my oldest- now 19 that there is now a long term follow up clinic for children with cancer. It may sound strange but there weren’t enough kids living before to have one. That’s what research dies from out donations.
I asked my youngest- now 15 what he thought of the videos and their strategy. He said simply that the hospital is merely showcasing the specialties that they cater too- just as adult hospitals do on billboards .
It’s funny we also have a Guide Dog. Fern passed but was rejected for friendliness. Too msny licked faces I guess. Each therapy dog costs $20,000 to train. Fern can appearrantly do laundry and transfer patients in/out of bed. I’ve yet to see this but she does her job at Bloorview Children’s..
Fern spends hours each week getting pretted and walked by kids who only wish they were home doing the same.
I agree the videos can have less dramatic music- but we need to know theat this world exists. It can be any of us who need their care and the doors are always open. Lucky for u$
Moms who cry? Kindred spirits!
Any way the HSK can share and put out their stories, I’m in.
It makes us pause and remind us of how truly fortunate we are to have healthy children and a stellar hospital that is second to none.
I so agree:any kind of pause in the circus of modern life is good.