Ronald McDonald House in Perth holds a special place in the hearts of Western Australians. Over the past two decades this largely volunteer-driven organisation has provided a home away-from-home to more than 3,500 families of seriously ill children while they receive treatment in hospital. It provides a strong, reliable helping hand to families at a time when they need it most.
When the WA State Government announced it would build a new children’s hospital, Ronald McDonald House (RMH) was confronted with an immense challenge. It too would need to relocate so its regional families could continue to be accommodated close to their child’s hospital bed. To ensure that the new House would be ready to open its doors alongside the new children’s hospital, building needed to commence by early 2014.
After establishing that the project would cost a minimum of $29 million RMH Perth engaged Xponential to undertake a feasibility study as to the potential of raising the required funds. RMH was able to allocate $9 million from investments and funds already raised and after a positive assessment of the charities ability and readiness to raise a further $20 million, Xponential were subsequently engaged to direct the ‘Stronger Together’ capital campaign.
Xponential appointed a campaign team, comprising a full-time Campaign Co-Ordinator with other members of the Xponential team providing various strategic or specialist skills as required. In conjuction with the development of the Case for Support, the campaign team developed a suite of quality campaign materials designed as tools to support the volunteers in their gift seeking. The campaign strategy was developed and clearly documented and an ‘Advocates Guide to Gift Seeking’ was developed for presentations to gift seeking volunteers.
The ‘Stronger Together’ campaign quickly built momentum and achieved outstanding support. Understanding the value of influential campaign leadership, the campaign team quickly moved to engage Dr Ken Michael AC and Adam Gilchrist AM as Campaign Patrons. Peter Meurs, Director Developments of Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) was then engaged as Campaign Chairman with Dalton Gooding, Managing Partner of Gooding Partners agreeing to take on the role of Leadership Gifts Taskforce Chairman.
Xponential put a great deal of time, resource and energy into coaching the influential volunteers or ‘campaign advocates’, ensuring that they were absolutely confident in the process of peer to peer gift solicitation and had the highest level of campaign management support.
The success of the campaign was made possible by the active engagement of a wonderful team of campaign advocates who felt they could make a significant difference to regional families bringing often critically ill children for treatment.
The active team of campaign advocates talked to a great number of very generous individuals and companies. The combination of a compelling case for support, influential volunteers and the RMH/Xponential partnership resulted in some outstanding gifts with $15 million being raised from the top three gifts alone. A number of other six and seven figure gifts fuelled the momentum of the campaign as the campaign team closed on its target.
Six months ahead of the campaign schedule and with more than $22 million pledged to the ‘Stronger Together’ campaign, gift solicitation was reluctantly concluded.
