#KindnessChallenge

We received a great phone call on Monday from Christie Garton, Kindness Reporter for USA Today. She was calling to tell us we won the USA Today #KindnessChallenge on Twitter.

For those of you who didn't hear about this, here's the quick run-down: USA Today invited anyone to log-in to Twitter and share their goal for their favorite charity during a four-day period last week. We encouraged our Facebook fans, corporate partners and other supporters to finish this sentence on Twitter: "My #USAToday #KindnessChallenge goal is to help @CMNHospitals by…"

And we were amazed by the tweets we saw!

We had Dance Marathon participants talking about how many hours they were going to dance "for the kids!" A lot of tweets talked about IHOP's upcoming Pancake Day. Corporate sponsors, including Rite-Aid and Food Lion, helped spread the word.

And we won! Wait, let's try that again… WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The three charities with the most mentions during the contest receive a feature in an upcoming issue of USA Today. Our Chief Marketing Officer Craig Sorensen already did the interview and we can't wait to see the piece. (Be sure to pick up a copy of Monday's paper before our moms buy them all.)

We can't thank you guys enough for helping us spread the word about Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. The more people know about us, the more likely they are to give, the more children we can help at our hospitals. So when we win, the kids win. And that deserves some more exclamation points.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!