Challenges and Goals:

Right to Play’s global mission is to protect, educate and empower children to rise above adversity using the power of play-based learning. This mission is brought to life by educating children using four types of play – games, sport, creative play and free play. Inside the classroom, games help children to actively engage in their lessons, enhancing their learning. Meanwhile, outside the classroom, they play through performance, music or dance to gain critical life skills.

But despite almost two decades of incredible work helping children around the world, most people still think of play as something trivial.

While successful in fundraising among a small group of high-net-worth donors, in order to stand out from all the bigger and more established charities, Right to Play needed to show just how powerful play could be.

That was our task: to reintroduce Right to Play by showing people that play could change the world.

Insights and Strategy:

Research had told us that one of the biggest barriers to charitable donations was the belief that the donation wouldn’t make a difference. This posed a problem for us. There are countless worthy causes that are deserving of our hard-earned donation dollars, so why would someone donate to a cause they believed to be trivial. Given a choice between donating to a cancer charity and one involving soccer balls, most people would choose the former.

But for millions of kids around the world, play isn’t just for fun. It’s the catalyst to rising above their circumstances and reaching their full potential. Their futures are limited by exploitation, child labour, early marriage, illiteracy, and gender inequality. And while in recent years we’ve seen numerous social movements promoting the rights of other disenfranchised groups, countless children remain without a voice.

Our strategy was to create an idea that not only introduced people to Right to Play, but one that that gave our cause the gravitas and urgency it deserved.

Our idea was to create The Child Uprising.

Execution:

The Child Uprising needed to begin with a call to arms. So we created an anthem video that served as a mission statement that both shed light on the dire circumstances far too many children find themselves in, and also inspired people to join a movement helping them rise up.

The anthem was launched around the world using a combination of donated media and Right to Play’s network of athlete ambassadors. It was complemented by two additional videos, one telling the story of a child soldier and one telling the story of a child labourer.

The Uprising was also supported by out of home, a new website and more traditional donation appeals via direct mail, email, door to door and events. Facebook’s decision to use our Child Uprising to launch their ‘donate now’ button in one of our key markets added further fuel to our fire.

To complete Right to Play’s reintroduction to the world we developed an updated brand identity that included a brand new logo.

Results and Impact:

We needed to create an idea that not only reintroduced people to Right to Play, but one that conveyed the power of play itself. And that’s exactly what we did.

The impact of our campaign was significant and immediate – particularly in Canada which has historically been Right to Play’s largest contributing country. Within the first three months traffic to the Right to Play website increased by 412%. Right to Play saw a 40% increase in online donation size and a 42% increase in new donors. Total individual donation revenue increased by 21%.

Our campaign has already made significant contributions to Right to Play’s mission of helping children rise above adversity through the power of play-based learning. Worldwide in our first three months we raised enough money to give 40,000 kids a year of play.