Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals boosts fundraising with Dropbox

Every second, a child enters one of the 170 hospitals across the US and Canada funded by Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. The charity’s fundraising efforts have a massive impact. The support helps provide treatment for 10% of kids in North America — including many with serious conditions such as cancer or birth defects.

Since the organization’s founding in 1983, it has raised over $5 billion for member hospitals, through activities like celebrity appeals, corporate partnerships, and donation boxes at grocery-store checkouts. “In some cases, our fundraising may represent close to 100% of the hospital’s philanthrophic endeavors,” says Nick Ward, Vice President of Digital Marketing.

Many of the fundraising materials that Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals produces contain images and videos telling the stories of the children the charity is trying to help. The organization used to rely mainly on email to share these large files with fundraising partners and member hospitals, meaning deliveries often stalled due to slow connections and file-size restrictions.

Management decided it needed to create an “innovations department” focused on workplace improvements so that employees could stay focused on their important work. “We came together to think about the future of our organization, and how we can continually improve upon processes,” says Tony Rehmer, Sr. Vice President of Information Services. “And that’s where Dropbox came in.”

With Dropbox for Business, employees can now distribute campaign assets more quickly and easily with fundraising partners using shared folders and links. And they can do it from anywhere. As more and more employees are using iPads on the road and on site at member hospitals, being able to collaborate in real time with headquarters in Salt Lake City has been key. “We work from a shared folder and we can see when somebody else is modifying it, when it’s locked, when they have a new version up,” says Ward. “And it’s just made working with remote employees really, really slick.”

For a Spring 2015 fundraising appeal featuring its celebrity spokesperson Jennifer Lopez, the charity relied on Dropbox for Business to distribute all the campaign assets that were individually tailored to each of its member hospitals. “When you have 170 hospitals trying to manage this massive video file, the speed and ease of use of Dropbox is a big deal,” Ward says. Using Dropbox for Business, the charity’s fundraising teams are getting more done in less time.

While time is indeed money, in the case of Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, it means a whole lot more than just dollars and cents.