[UPDATED: Apr. 18, 2023] The third annual Calves for a Cause fundraiser April 5 resulted in $285,00 in total sales and a donation of $65,000 to the Children’s Health Foundation.
Held in honour of Brooks Markus, the three-year-old son of an Ingersoll-area dairy farming family who recently underwent his ninth surgery since birth, Calves for a Cause raises money for the Children’s Health Foundation of London.
Dairy breeders from across Ontario consign calves and provide either 100 per cent of the proceeds or a portion of the proceeds to the Foundation. All commissions are also donated to the Foundation.
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Why it matters: The agriculture sector has shown that it can come together to raise money for larger societal needs, and Calves for a Cause is a good recent example.
Calves for a Cause has donated $106,000 to children’s healthcare in the London region through its first two sales.
The first Calves for a Cause was held virtually in 2021, followed by another virtual edition in 2022. An in-person consignment viewing was held in 2022. This year it was held in conjunction with the Canadian Dairy Xpo in Stratford.
This year, the two-day Dairy XPO and an expected 15,000 visitors returned to the Rotary Complex in Stratford for the first time since the pandemic. Organizers were able to host an in-person sale for the first time since the event’s inception in 2021.
Brooks Markus was born with Congenital Central Hypoventilation Syndrome (CCHS), a nervous system disorder that disrupts the brain’s control of “autonomic” functions like breathing but can also affect other functions such as sleeping.
His father, Darryl Markus, says approximately 1,500 people worldwide suffer from CCHS. Brooks has a version that also affects bowel function, a combination he shares with an estimated 300 others worldwide.
Brooks spent the first 120 days of his life in the Children’s Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Pediatric Critical Care Unit. Markus admits it was a “blessing in disguise” that his family had only recently returned to the Ingersoll area, where they can get to a hospital more quickly than where they lived previously.
Markus grew up on the well-known Markvale Holsteins farm and had purchased quota and a farm in the Belleville area when he originally struck out on his own. If the family had stayed in that area, they would have had to travel a few hours to the children’s hospital in Ottawa.
“Here, if the traffic is light and I really need to get there, I can get to the hospital in 15 minutes.”
With his wife, Sarah, they have five other children – all boys – and they have never posted much about the family on social media. But with word getting out about Brooks in the hours following his birth, “we probably had almost 40 messages in the first two days asking how he was doing.”
They began posting on social media in order to keep friends and family updated.
From there, as Markus describes it, a snowball effect eventually led to the first Calves for a Cause sale.
And the second. And the third.
Friends wanted to know how they could support Brooks.
“I’m all about cows. That’s my life,” Markus said. He posted the idea of a consignment sale and, almost immediately, offers flooded in to donate animals and provide business sponsorship.
Asked why they decided to donate proceeds to the hospital specifically, as opposed to research efforts into CCHS or other healthcare-related causes, Markus said the choice was obvious.
“Until you’re on this side of the walls, you really don’t get it,” he said. “The love and the care (hospital staff) showed for our son was just amazing … The first two months in the NICU, they made us feel like family.”
He laughs that the Children’s Health Foundation was so impressed by the sale’s success that they asked him to serve on a fundraising committee. But “it wasn’t us that” built the high level of donor commitment.
“Brooks had all of this support himself. They all want him to do well.”
Markus said it’s important that Calves for a Cause is a grassroots initiative because that makes some producers more comfortable jumping on board.
“This is ground-level dairy farmers doing it themselves,” he said of the fundraiser. “And it’s good for the industry. It’s good for us to be seen this way.”
The first sale donated $71,000 to the cause. Markus originally envisioned a fundraiser once every two years because he was concerned about donor fatigue. But coming up to a year after the first sale, he began receiving inquiries about a 2022 follow-up.
“I probably got contacted by 15-20 producers wondering if it was going to happen again and if they could consign calves,” he recalled. So, he and Sarah hurriedly arranged a second annual Calves for a Cause, which was also a success.
Dairy XPO organizer Jordon Underhill supported previous sales and, with the April 5-6 event returning to Stratford in 2023, he jumped on board in a bigger way.
“He’s been amazing, by giving us the space and giving us the visibility.”
“This just doesn’t happen without the consignors or the buyers,” Markus said.
“We want to make sure they are recognized.”
*Updated to include sale results.
