Walmart Extends CMN Hospitals Fundraising

Walmart and Sam’s Club extended their “Miracle Balloon” cause campaign for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals this year.Usually a six-week-long fundraiser, the annual effort was originally slated to run from Aug. 29 to Oct. 10. Later, stores extended the end date and continued to accept donations at checkout through Oct. 16.An additional week may have been necessary to raise the usual funds due to a lack of visible large-scale marketing support compared to recent years, when the program involved a plethora of account-specific displays from manufacturer partners and a dedicated landing page within walmart.com that listed participating brands and detailed their contributions.This year, the sparse P-O-P materials spotted at some locations stopped short at upfront standees soliciting funds for regional hospitals and signs from Coca-Cola Co. and Red Bull GmbH touting purchase-triggered donations (the former for brand Tum-E Yummies). Within walmart.com, the only visible support was a banner ad that ran on e-commerce pages for children’s products offering a pop-up video of one affected child’s story.That annual fundraiser — which has raised nearly $1 billion since its inception in 1987 — regularly includes store-level efforts such as bake sales, craft sales and other fundraising activity staged to bolster checkout donations.On Oct. 4, CMN Hospitals helped promote the program by uploading a video of “miracle kid” Jessica helping fundraise inside a Walmart store. (See below.)In Canada, Walmart shone a spotlight on private label Great Value with a #GreatGiving social effort promising to donate $1 (up to $100,000) for each Twitter update shared with the hashtag throughout most of June.

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