Video Made the Donor the Star
Published Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Lindsay (middle left) and her wife Lenore on a hike with their twin boys.
Meet Lindsay Doran-Bonk, Manager of Digital Engagement at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation
A love of movies prompted Lindsay Doran-Bonk to take Film Production at Confederation College. After graduation, she moved to Toronto and took jobs related to film editing, hoping to catch her lucky break. What she caught instead was a huge case of homesickness.
"I really missed my family – my parents and both my brothers are here," Lindsay said. "Plus, I really wanted to own a house, which I felt I couldn't do in Toronto."
After Lindsay moved home, her mother passed along an ad for a Social Media Intern at the Health Sciences Foundation. She applied for the job, and was hired a few weeks later. That was 2013 when social media was still a new idea. Lindsay stayed with the Foundation and over the years helped grow the Foundation's Facebook and Twitter pages. Video was just starting to be possible on those platforms, so Lindsay got to use her film production skills in new and interesting ways. Eventually, the Foundation's YouTube channel joined the mix along with Instagram and LinkedIn.
"My experience in film editing was part of the reason I got the job, I think. We really started to delve into videos for donor events, impact videos, and so on," she said.
To measure the effect – for her own curiosity more than anything – Lindsay set a goal of $1 million raised at least in part by the team's social media efforts and tallied it all up on her whiteboard. It didn't take long to reach that milestone.
"We show donors and the community what a difference they're making by sharing all these great stories about projects they helped fund. They feel good, seeing how their generous donations make a difference in patients' lives," Lindsay said.
Lindsay said that any time she tells people she works at the Hospital, they think she's a nurse – and she's okay with that.
"Even though we don't see patients, we still get to help people."
Lindsay has also seen the impact from the patient and family perspective. Her father was one of the many who had to travel for heart surgery, so Lindsay knows how difficult it can be on the patient – and the family. It hit home again when she and her wife Lenore had their twin boys. Born prematurely, they had to spend three weeks in the NICU on breathing and feeding machines. It was a traumatic experience. Lindsay found some comfort when she saw items she had promoted in social media.
"I would say, ‘Hey, I remember taking a picture of this isolette.' There was all this equipment that we had helped fundraise for, and now they were all hooked up to my babies. This equipment was saving my babies. It was a surreal moment."
Those boys are now two years old and doing well. Lindsay doesn't have much free time outside of work, as anybody with just one two-year-old could understand. But the family enjoys hiking, travelling, and watching the Blue Jays together, and even road-tripped to Minneapolis earlier this month to see a live game.
Her role at the Foundation has evolved over the years, and she is now the Manager of Digital Engagement. The team is bigger, and video plays a larger part than ever. Thunder Bay 50/50 has taken it to a whole new level.
"If you want a smile put on your face, go check out some of our winner videos!" she said.
You can view the phone call to August's winner, Samantha Woods, here: bit.ly/tb5050aug