Soliciting Greetings for Sick Kids Gives Children’s Hospital a New Way to Find Donors

Thousands of people responded when Children’s Hospital Los Angeles made a plea for Valentine’s Day cards that would cheer up young patients.

By asking people to create electronic cards, the hospital got a bonus: new addresses from which to solicit gifts.

A page on the hospital’s website allowed people who gave their names and email addresses to choose a greeting-card design with a personalized note, like a joke or an uplifting message. On Valentine’s Day, every child in the hospital received a gift bag filled with cards, including a particularly popular one with a picture of a rabbit and the words “Somebunny Loves You.” The hospital also distributed cards at other local medical facilities.

The hospital ran similar campaigns last year for Valentine’s Day and Halloween, but last February’s effort got a striking response—nearly 39,000 card makers—after the hospital’s marketing department won news coverage for the effort. Spreading the word on Facebook was a big help, too, accounting for 40 percent of the cards submitted and 41 percent of the names added to the email list.

The campaign also sparked interest in the hospital; traffic to its website during February was 82 percent busier than at the same time last year.

“We were so amazed by the immediate outpouring of support from the community, and it meant a lot to our patients,” Hillary Freeman, director of direct response at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Foundation, wrote in an email.

Not only did the campaign introduce many new people to the hospital, she wrote, but it provided an opportunity for supporters “to help spread the proverbial love throughout the year with just a click of a button.”