About Horsepower For Hope
Horsepower For Hope is a tightly knit community of passionate individuals who share a love of car culture and feel it’s the perfect way to raise awareness and donations to support the Kids with Cancer Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to the children and families currently battling cancer. No one person is responsible for the event, instead it is a large committee supported by over one hundred and fifty car enthusiasts. Our goal is to create an inclusive event centered around ensuring the maximum amount of money ends up in the charity’s hands, almost our entire events are funded by donations from businesses and individuals.
2019: The Inaugural Show & Shine
The planning of our first event was in fact intertwined with the creation of our organization as a whole. We learned of the Kid With Cancer Society’s precarious funding position when one of their large donors switched to a higher profile charity. It was decided to put together a fundraiser centered around the amazing car community present in Edmonton. With very little time to plan, we settled on a static show and shine and called on the various businesses and other members of the community to contribute to a “family carnival” atmosphere for the event. What we ended up with was nothing short of astonishing.
We had a very modest goal of raising $25,000 for the Kids with Cancer Society but through the amazing generosity of the car community, local businesses, and general public, we surpassed even our wildest expectations with over $86,000 raised!
2020: Hit The Streets Rally
2020 was a massive challenge. Due to the global pandemic, most fundraising events could not be held, and current donors were also facing their own financial challenges. This was coupled with the fact that our event format would no longer work with current health restrictions in place. For the safety of our participants a new format had to be found. Our “Hit the Streets Rally” was aptly named; we scrapped the static display and created a city-wide rally focusing on secret stops and challenges performed by multiple teams of cars.
The event was very well received by all the participating drivers, and against all odds not only was the rally a huge success, but over $286,000 was raised for the Kids with Cancer Society! The “Hit the Streets” rally was proof the new format could work and raised the bar for future events.
2021: Afterburner
Following the success of the Hit The Streets Rally in 2020, we could only do one thing, kick in the AFTERBURNERS! At the request of our H4H driver group, the city-wide rally returned, but this time, with an Aviation spin on it! We pulled all the strings and sent teams locations across the city including the Alberta Aviation Museum, as well as an exclusive opportunity to drive on the airport apron at Aurora Jet Partners at the Edmonton International Airport. As restrictions were lifted right before rally day, a public Tailgate Party wrapped up the evening.
Once again, the event was a monumental success, more than we imagined. With the amazing support of sponsors, drivers and volunteers, we smashed the $300,000 goal and raised $542,000 for the Kids with Cancer Society, with less than $5k in expenses!
2022: Amplified Tour
For 2022, our H4H team dialed it up to level 11 with the Amplified Tour with a morning call rally, autocross, and a live public rock concert show and shine. Drivers were sent across the city to participate in challenges in the morning, building their best poker hand, and ended up at the former Edmonton Municipal Airport for an afternoon filled with live music, family activities, and an opportunity to test their cars and take KWCS families on the iconic Edmonton Police Service autocross track!
Our Horsepower for Hope drivers, sponsors and general public helped us raise $560,000 for the Kids with Cancer Society!
2023: The Fifth Year of Hope
We had an amazing rally in the morning across our beautiful City of Edmonton, with stops including testing your ability to hit a target or spray a fire hose. As we continue to grow we moved our event to the Edmonton EXPO Centre grounds with great fun in the Kids Zone, 200+ car show & shine, food trucks, the ever popular EPS autocross track, special displays from the military and EPS and other guests.
Thank you to everyone that joined as a driver, sponsor, vendor, static display; you all helped in raising $526,000 for the Kids with Cancer Society!