Give Big/Help Kids Everywhere: Big Lots Foundation & Nationwide Children's Hospital
In 2015, Big Lots Foundation teamed with Nationwide Children’s Hospital to create Give Big for Kids, a national point of sale donation campaign in which Big Lots offered customers and associates the opportunity to donate in-store and online to support the hospital, an organization that has been caring for sick and injured children and adolescents for 120 years. In
2016, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Big Lots grew the campaign and 
employed specific strategies to ensure it would have maximum impact.
Big Lots engaged its employees by unveiling the 2016 campaign at its annual all-associate meeting with a challenge to raise $3 million. The campaign lasted for 6.5 weeks (an increase over the five weeks of 2015) because employees were so enthusiastic. Big Lots celebrated associates who raised the most donations on a weekly basis, flew winners from each region to the Columbus headquarters, increased goals for average customer donations, developed compelling in-store marketing materials and signage, and extended the program’s reach through digital tactics, including a campaign webpage and online donation tool.
Big Lots, together with the Big Lots Foundation, took this program even further, and announced a $50 million transformational gift to support Nationwide Children’s Behavioral Health expansion. The relationship between Big Lots and Nationwide Children’s Hospital deepened as a result of the program’s success. The Big Lot involvement propelled the hospital further toward its mission of becoming a premiere center for pediatric behavioral health. The 2016 in-store campaign raised more than $3.6 million for the Hospital over six weeks, a $1.4 million increase over the previous year. Social media success was evidenced in the 3.7 million Facebook impressions and 1.2 million Twitter impressions for the in-store campaign, while the announcement of the gift brought 686,000 Facebook impressions.
All told, the 2016 Give Big campaign garnered more than 180.4 million media impressions, an 11.7 million increase over 2015. The campaign also received coverage from Foxbusiness.com, Cause Talk Radio, Columbus CEO, the Gainesville Times, and Giving News.
