Strike a Match

• 5 minutes: $25 supports the mobile app, where kids can download the app and find information they need in less than five minutes.
• 15 minutes: $50 will connect a child directly to a caring counselor by phone. The average length of a call is 15 minutes.
• 20 minutes: $75 can help kids use the online Bullying Safety Planner. Kids can take up to 20 minutes to create and print their plans.
• 30 minutes: $100 supports interactive games and tools — fun and engaging activities that offer information and support.
• 45 minutes: $150 connects a teen to a counselor on live chat, great for kids not comfortable calling. Chats average 45 minutes.
• 60 minutes: $200 gives a young person in crisis professional counseling and referrals to local support. A call could be one to two hours.

The donation page notes that “Each increment of time is symbolic, when you buy time, you are making a donation to Kids Help Phone, and your contribution will be applied to where the need is greatest.”

Also, there is a monthly giving option — a holy grail for fundraising — and all the requisite donation form information.

More updates include adding a clock to the logo, emphasizing the time element — a graphic that can move in certain media — a new French site for its French-Canadian supporters, and helping ramp up the campaign again to six e-mails beginning earlier November, coinciding with Bullying Awareness Week.

KHP also took advantage of an opportunity that popped up out of the blue, MacLean says, with advertising on local transit through the month of December.

“We’re hoping that will be seen like crazy, hoping people will see and react to the plea from a child,” she adds.

Ideally, MacLean admits, she would like to see direct mail and the e-mail campaign parallel one another to talk to supporters in multiple channels, but for the Buy a Kid Some Time campaign, it really is focused online and through mobile. Clearly, that digital focus is working, as Buy a Kid Some Time continues to buy youths in need time to talk, time to heal and time to improve their situations.