Hospital Shares Publicity and Profits With Newspaper’s Special Edition

Harnessing the power of the press for charity, the Star Tribune, in Minneapolis and St. Paul, publishes a special edition that

raises hundreds of thousands of dollars and generates free publicity for the local Children’s Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota — while also aiding the newspaper’s own circulation.

The fifth annual “Helping Little Heroes” edition, distributed in September, contained a 20-page fund-raising section that wrapped around the daily newspaper. It featured stories about services at the 83-year-old children’s hospital, such as its neonatal intensive-care unit and its pediatric-epilepsy center.

By selling advertisements in the section, as well as charging a higher price for the special edition of the paper, the promotion has raised more than $728,000 for the hospital since it was first published in 2001, including $136,000 last year.

More than 522,000 people paid $1 for the most recent edition, double the normal 50 cents they would pay for the paper at the newsstand. Of that fee, the children’s hospital received 75 cents for each copy. It also received 45 percent of the proceeds from the sale of advertisements that ran in the special section.

Some of the most generous support has come from Border Foods (owner of Taco Bell and Au Bon Pain), Caribou Coffee, and Wal-Mart. Those businesses include coupons offering discounts to customers in their ads placed in the special edition.

And in addition to advertising, the companies allow volunteers to sell the issue at their locations throughout the Twin Cities.

A new sponsor this year, local television station KARE 11, devoted air time to the fund-raising effort, broadcasting announcements promoting the special edition of the newspaper and recruiting volunteers to sell it.

This year, more than 400 volunteers from the Star Tribune, the hospital, businesses, and the public fanned out across the Twin Cities to hawk the issue on street corners and at local businesses.

In a new twist, the newspaper also included the fund-raising section in all home deliveries to hundreds of thousands of subscribers this year. Home subscribers were not charged extra for the supplement. But the deliveries broadened the number of people receiving information about the hospital and its services.

What’s more, the hospital received an additional $10,000 from subscribers who read the articles and made contributions in response to them, says Jennifer Johnson, a fund raiser who handles corporate promotions for the children’s hospital.

“That was a great decision that got the paper into the hands of subscribers,” Ms. Johnson says. “It is a desirable audience for us and the advertisers. They are newspaper readers.”

The program is set up to cover the newspaper’s costs of producing, delivering, and coordinating the sale of the special edition, but sometimes the paper takes a bit of a loss, as it did this year, says Pat Adkins, a Star Tribune spokeswoman.

Ms. Adkins says the newspaper started the promotion after J. Keith Moyer became publisher and president. He formerly worked for The Fresno Bee, which has long had a similar arrangement with a children’s hospital in California. The Star Tribune also does two other special editions, one benefiting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the other for the local Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.