your Story.
Our tellers.
Here’s another of the best-kept secrets in change-making: In addition to helping raise money, Small Change Fund tells stories in break-through-the-clutter ways. We work with some of the country’s most experienced, award-winning creative and strategic troublemakers to create videos, social media campaigns, ads, sites, emails and more for our partners and ourselves. And because people are approached every day by causes, we take hard-hitting, or humourous, but always unexpected approaches. We get results, all on ridiculously low budgets.
Check out our work here.
Unflood ontario
Centered on a series of award-winning animated videos, this first-ever campaign introduced the concept of natural infrastructure to Ontario as a way to mitigate the growing toll of climate change-fuelled flooding. The claymation videos were conceived in a fun way that highlighted the natural simplicity of the solutions.
Stick it to highways
We tell our partners that they need to be ready to jump on sudden opportunities, and you should always practice what you preach. So when the Ontario government chose to refund the licence plate sticker fee, we initiated a social media campaign suggesting that people take this found money and stick it somewhere it would do some real good: towards our battle against Ontario’s unnecessary, expensive and environmentally reckless Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass.
Hot Globe
Climate change isn’t funny. Yet sometimes we need humour to influence action. We engaged leading Canadian comedy talent to shape our vision into Hot Globe: a multi-episode comedy series in the guise of a “gotcha” investigative journalism show.
Season 1
Season 2
Greenbelt Radio Ads
When Doug Ford suddenly pulled the carpet — or more precisely, the Greenbelt — out from under the feet of Ontarians, Small Change Fund responded just as suddenly, scripting, crowd-funding, producing and airing these messages province-wide in just over a week.
The messaging deliberately deviated from the “he lied” message to plant a different truth in peoples’ minds, one the government chose to ignore: we actually have enough land for housing, but what we really need is more Greenbelt. These ads were a high-profile part of a concerted team effort that ultimately forced the government to reverse its decision.
Secret Sprawler
Humour is a road rarely taken in environmental campaigning, yet it can bring you to places that people really notice. The October 2023 Ontario provincial election was filled with hard-hitting political-sounding ads, so we took a different route to get the vital issue of sprawl on voters’ agendas. It encouraged people who cared about the issue to do one simple thing: find out if their candidate had a position on it.
Sprawling Lie
We have been helping several partners tackle urban sprawl in Ontario, and some of our messaging has been tied to dramatic municipal wins by anti-sprawl groups. This campaign equated sprawl to a creeping menace, surfacing the big lie that sprawl is necessary for housing. We deliberately tapped into a growing sentiment about the provincial government’s hidden intentions, which were soon proven by its Greenbelt grab: the ultimate sprawling lie.
Green Future Fund
The pandemic shuttered much of the environmental movement’s fundraising and on-the-ground activities. This was especially hard on grassroots organizations that already do wonders with little resources. Created entirely in-house with no budget, these stark social media videos were part of an effort to raise donations and deliver strategies to help Canada’s smaller environmental organizations stay afloat. Shared thousands of times, they helped raise over $250,000.
Saskatchewan Sidewalk Tax
In Saskatchewan, part of the price of gas goes to road maintenance. EV owners don’t buy gas, so the government charged them $150 each to make up for it. This bizarre penalty for making a positive environmental choice got our attention, and we responded with a campaign that compared it to charging people to do another healthy act: walking instead of driving. Our campaign got wide coverage, we learned that the government was genuinely embarrassed, and maybe best of all, some people thought we were serious.
Carbon Tax Stickers
The most effective campaigns give people something to do, not just think, and this one literally puts ‘what to do’ in their hands. When the Ontario government ordered gas stations to put stickers protesting carbon pricing on their pumps, we took advantage of a captive audience and created a memorable, benefit-driven message that made sense in any language (so we translated it into 7 of them) and leaned on our networks to distribute them. Over 40,000 were given out and helped reverse the Government decision.
