Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust

People are fragile

Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT) is the charity for Addenbrooke’s and its associated hospitals. ACT raises funds to enhance services, facilities and research, allowing the hospital to achieve some things sooner and to invest in projects to a greater degree than NHS funds alone might allow.

The strategy
One of the things the hospital desperately needed was a new mobile CT scanner. These are used to scan patients with severe injuries, where moving them from place to place can endanger their lives.
We advised Addenbrooke’s to produce a very focused appeal that mixed emotional and rational asks – featuring patient case studies as well as a doctor’s view.

The creative
People with head injuries are incredibly fragile. Moving and handling them can cause them severe damage. So we printed the letter on tissue paper, allowing the recipient to imagine how fragile an injured patient was. It’s a creative way to explain a medical necessity. It’s also incredibly visceral.
The medical case was backed by a case study of a woman who’d been lucky enough to survive a catastrophic brain haemorrage, and whose chances of survival would have been even higher had the hospital had a mobile scanner to hand.

What's good about it?

The appeal exceeded all targets, raising over £31,000 and generating an average gift of £46.00. Impressive for such a new charity and a relatively untried donor file.