Objective

The Hospital for Sick Children partnered with East Liberty in November of 2015. As our trial, their goal for us was to acquire 500 long-term donors over the course of four months. They wanted to ensure our field agents were well-trained and well-versed in the SickKids campaign, would protect their honorable reputation, and facilitate ongoing relationships between SickKids and potential donors.

Challenges

SickKids was in need of an alternative monthly revenue channel, as their current DRTV campaigns were declining in donor support. They wanted to broaden their scope and reach a new audience to gain support and spread awareness for the needs of patients within the Hospital for Sick Children. East Liberty was tasked with cultivating a long-term donor base to sustain the needs of SickKids on an ongoing basis while simultaneously promoting awareness for SickKids and their research initiatives. For this campaign it was imperative that donor quality remained high throughout with low attrition rates.

Solutions

In order to meet the donor quality standards for the Hospital for Sick Children, East Liberty strategically developed a qualifying verification script used by the HIVE. The purpose of this script was to ensure donors meet a specific criteria set out by SickKids and East Liberty to help ensure we could depend on their ongoing support. We changed the way donor direct debit information was collected to ensure accuracy at the first point of contact. Our teams were trained, re-trained, and overcame all challenges while remaining on budget and meeting deadlines.

Results

Over the first few months, we acquired 86% more donors than expected, exceeding expectations and each set target. The following year, SickKids chose to renew our contract and we developed a personalized business-to-business campaign which allowed us to meet their set annual goal of acquiring 3,300 long-term monthly donors. When asked if we could stretch this goal halfway through the fiscal year, we remained flexible and accommodating. We acquired 20% more monthly donors and continued to improve our attrition rates by noting a 4% drop and 3% drop respectively.