St. Joe's Health Centre Foundation

The Challenge

St. Joe's was preparing the largest fundraising campaign in its history, supporting a new patient tower that would serve Toronto's west end for generations. The platform needed to inspire four very different donor groups, from major gifts to monthly contributors, and have enough depth to carry an eight-year campaign. There was also a bigger creative challenge. Dr. Tim Rutledge, then President and CEO of Unity Health Toronto, asked us to come back with a new word for hospital.

The Thinking

It was a tall task with a surprisingly simple answer. A hospital isn't somewhere most people want to think of as home. But for patients receiving long-term care, families spending countless hours at a bedside, and the physicians, nurses, and staff who show up every day, it often is. St. Joe's was also a place known for care given with heart. And if home is ultimately about the people who care for you, the idea started to feel true. St. Joe's had been home to extraordinary people, care, and innovation for more than a century. Extraordinary wasn't something the hospital was aspiring to become. It was already part of its story. That became Home of Extraordinary, a platform that gave that history a name while creating a vision for what came next.

The Outcome

Home of Extraordinary became the unifying platform for the Foundation's largest campaign to date, carrying the story from quiet phase through public launch. It helped support a $60 million lead gift from Peter Gilgan, the largest donation in the hospital's history, and gave the Foundation a platform for communicating the vision for a new patient tower with 340 private rooms, expanded surgical capacity, and dedicated mental health floors.

My Role — Creative Strategy

I led development of the campaign platform, translating the Foundation's brand strategy and fundraising ambition into a long-term creative idea that could flex across audiences, phases, and executions.