CANADIAN CANCER SOCIETY
“ The data we collected informed our decisions on the type of information people needed to support them through the pandemic . That led us to create specific online resources , including webinars , to support people affected by cancer . But the data also informed our advocacy work , and that led to several campaigns that we have running nationwide .”
One virtual advocacy campaign is called ‘ Get Better ’, which rallies people across the country to call on the Canadian government to make cancer care better .
“ It encourages people to share their stories and cancer experiences through an online portal . Then , we ' re bringing those voices forward to our government and calling for more improvements for cancer care .”
O ’ Brien is also currently using digital and technology innovation in the Canadian Cancer Society ' s fundraising strategies .
“ Digital is such an important part of our fundraising strategy . Everything we do from a fundraising perspective involves some digital or social media component . So , it ' s always exciting for us to try new and innovative ways to inspire and engage people to donate or fundraise .”
During the pandemic , O ’ Brien had to transform fundraising events into an entirely virtual experience . For one of their signature events , the CIBC Run for the Cure , they offered participants virtual avatars which they could customise and share on their personal fundraising pages to help deepen engagement and increase participation .
“ To promote fundraising , we added more sophisticated gamification to unlock incentives such as sunglasses , t-shirts , balloons , and capes that you could add to your avatar when you reached certain fundraising milestones . We enabled activity tracking on our app and website that was integrated with smartphone and wearable technologies so people could record their training activities and their walk or run on the actual event day .”