The Need
Canada’s Children’s Hospital Foundations (CCHF) is Canada’s largest paediatric hospital charity, with a mission to “accelerate recoveries, shorten hospital stays and get kids back to living the childhoods they deserve”. CCHF is fortunate to count some of Canada’s most recognized companies as its fundraising partners, signifying the active, strategic role it plays with those organizations. Rather than passively accepting charitable donations, CCHF believes it can make the most impact for children’s health by working alongside corporate partners to pursue social good. To achieve this, the organization needed an ESG strategy that spoke to its partners’ goals just as much as CCHF’s own. As the emerging business standard for corporate social responsibility, CCHF understood it required an ESG program to retain its partners and attract new ones.
The Outcome
As CCHF began developing a strategy that took the organization beyond fundraising, it engaged LittPark to add an ESG lens in planning the organization’s future. In particular, CCHF has a strong focus on cultural and operational excellence, and recognizes that ESG has a fundamental role to play in the organization transforming those pillars into values and behaviours that are lived out each day. By adopting an ESG strategy and incorporating sustainable thinking as a critical component of its organizational strategy, CCHF made a substantial shift in its organization’s culture and understanding of its role as a nonprofit.
While ESG is not new in the corporate sector, uptake has not been as rapid in healthcare, government and nonprofit settings. LittPark and CCHF recognized that in order for an ESG strategy to be successful, undertaking a period of education and change management would ensure the implementation achieved the intended results.
CCHF now sees ESG as an integral component of its pursuit of cultural and operational excellence. With an ambitious vision for changing the health of children, in order to change the health of Canada, adopting ESG has allowed the organization to recognize that its role is not just about raising money today, but about building a nonprofit that will positively impact the future of thousands of Canadians.