May is an exciting month for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals as Costco Wholesale hosts their annual register campaign. In 2022, 642 locations raised more than $31.5 million for 122 hospitals. Washington, DC is one of the highest fundraising markets for Costco, and DeAnn Marshall, President of Children’s National Hospital Foundation, shared a few strategies her team employs to achieve such success.

Strategy Meetings: Ahead of the campaign each year, members of their Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals team sit down with each warehouse to discuss successes and challenges from the previous year’s campaign, new strategies and resources for the current year, and specific needs and ideas for that warehouse. This has helped gather best practices that the team can roll out to all warehouses across their market, such as custom goal posters for the ancillary departments and individual cashier recognition. 

Weekly Visits: The team visits every warehouse, every week to thank every cashier and packer on the front end, as well as the team at each ancillary department across the building. These visits allow the team to energize, inspire, and show appreciation for everyone at Costco. 

Jumbo Balloons: Children’s National provides a template solicitation letter that the warehouses can use to solicit donations for jumbo balloons. The letter includes additional recognition the hospital can provide to businesses that give $1,000+, as well as ideas for how businesses can host their own fundraising campaign to generate the $500 donation for a jumbo balloon.

Regional Office Engagement: In collaboration with the CMN NE Area Director and the Regional Marketing Managers for the Costco Wholesale Northeast Region, Children’s National has helped develop new strategies to benefit all hospitals across the northeast, including:

• A region-wide kickoff for all 96 warehouses in the Northeast in conjunction with the monthly Costco NE Managers Meeting ahead of the campaign
• A thank you letter signed by Costco leadership to recognize the top 5 cashiers from each Costco District, which is also placed in the cashier’s employee file
• A form to collect the information of businesses that make a jumbo balloon donation, which will allow the hospitals to help steward these businesses while creating a prospect list for jumbo balloons the next year