Ronald McDonald House British Columbia & Yukon Celebrates 40th Anniversary and What It Takes to Be a Team

As of November 7th 2023, Ronald McDonald House (RMH) British Columbia & Yukon is celebrating 40 years of being a team.

But what exactly does this mean? To be a team, you don’t need a winning record or even a field to play on. It isn’t the hoop, puck, or ball that makes you a team either. What makes you a team is togetherness - people working together to achieve a common goal, each of them bringing their own strengths and looking out for one another. And that’s exactly what RMH BC & Yukon is.

Unfortunately, every year, RMH BC & Yukon is forced to turn away more than 500 families due to capacity constraints. So, for any RMH to help families in need, its goal - like any charity - is to raise more money. As such, in honour of its the big occasion, RMH BC & Yukon took a page from the book of sports and became 'RMH United' - all in a bid to galvanise supporters and incentivise donors. 

“Our challenge each year is to raise enough money to continue keeping families with sick children together,” said Stephanie Mosher, VP, philanthropy, RMH BC & Yukon. “What raised the stakes this year is that it marked our 40th anniversary, so, we needed a campaign that not only celebrated this milestone, but also continued pushing for donations to keep us going for another 40 years and beyond. This is how RMH United was born: by creating the team dynamic we needed to support donations.”

In partnership with Cossette, the new RMH BC & Yukon fundraising campaign launched on TV and social networks in October, with RMH United selling space on its team jersey to individual and business donors. The charity is already seeing success with sponsors like McDonald’s Canada, Coca-Cola, WestJet, RBC, and more.  

“What became clear to us early on in the campaign process was that behaving like a typical non-profit brand was unlikely to achieve our fundraising goal; the market is saturated with worthy causes,” said John Osborne, group creative director at Cossette West. “To truly disrupt, we needed a different angle. The idea of reimagining the RMH team as a pro sports team was twofold: to galvanise supporters and have the jersey represent the mechanic for sponsorship. This felt really fresh for the category.” 

To learn more and support the initiative, head to sponsorourteam.ca to donate.