ALS Canada – Relentless – Fundraising Campaign
The Challenge
Year-end fundraising in the non-profit sector runs on emotional connection. For ALS Canada’s 2020 campaign, the challenge was building on the momentum of the previous year’s community-centered approach; deepening the emotional resonance rather than starting over.
The ask was the same as it always is: donate. The opportunity was to make people feel, before they were asked to give.
Visual Showcase
My Role
As ALS Canada’s client-side marketing lead, I was responsible for campaign strategy alignment, storytelling direction, and cross-channel execution in close partnership with digital agency Principles. I managed the agency relationship, internal stakeholder alignment, and campaign execution across all channels.
The
Approach
The campaign was built around a single word: Relentless.
It came from ALS Canada’s leadership; a word used to describe the disease, the fight against it, the people living with it, and the people working to have future without it. It was already true before it became a campaign. That’s what made it work.
As Canada began to cautiously reopen, this campaign marked a return to in-person production; new community members, new stories, new creative. Shot with physical distancing in place, it was the first opportunity in months to bring people together in the same space and capture something real on camera.
The campaign ran across paid and organic social media: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, supported by email, the ALS Canada website, and blog content. Every channel carried the same emotional thread: that the people living with ALS, the families supporting them, and the community rallying around them are, without exception, relentless.
At its core, this was a campaign that gave the ALS community a place to be seen. To name their experience publicly. To share their pain and their fight with the world — and to find each other in doing so.
The Outcome
The Relentless campaign was executed as part of ALS Canada’s 2020 year-end fundraising push. Specific revenue figures aren’t available to share here, but the campaign delivered something equally important alongside its fundraising results: a community that felt seen, heard, and reflected back to itself at a moment when that mattered enormously.
For people living with ALS and the families who love them, being relentless isn’t a campaign theme. It’s Tuesday or Friday. This campaign acknowledged that, and gave the community a word they could own.
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