If you’ve been around for a while, you probably know us as Open Heart Magic. So if you’ve recently started seeing Bring Magic to Kids in Hospitals instead, you may have wondered what happened. Did we change our name? Are we doing something different? Is this a whole new organization?

The short answer is: yes, we changed our name. But no, we’re not changing the work.

After more than 20 years as Open Heart Magic, we’re now Bring Magic to Kids in Hospitals, or simply Bring Magic. The change is significant, but the reason behind it is pretty simple: we wanted our name to make it easier for people to understand what we actually do.

For years, we heard some version of the same question: “What exactly is Open Heart Magic?” The name meant something to the people who had been part of our work for years, but to someone hearing it for the first time, “Open Heart” could mean a lot of different things. Some people assumed we worked specifically with kids with heart conditions. Others thought we were connected to cardiac care or open-heart surgery.

The problem was that our work had never been limited to one diagnosis or one type of hospital room.

Our Volunteer Specialists bring bedside magic to kids across hospital settings, including pediatric oncology, intensive care, burn units, isolation rooms and more. The work was much broader than the name suggested. Eventually, we realized that if people had to understand our name before they could understand our work, we were making things harder than they needed to be.

Why Bring Magic?

The new name gets right to it.

We bring magic to kids in hospitals.

That’s exactly what our Volunteer Specialists do. They bring magic, humor and connection into hospital rooms, creating moments of joy and distraction for kids and families during some incredibly difficult moments.

Sometimes a child wants to figure out exactly how a trick works. Sometimes they want to learn one themselves. Sometimes the magic is simply an unexpected laugh in the middle of a difficult day. The trick is part of the experience, but it’s not really the point. What matters is giving a child a moment that feels different from the rest of their hospital day.

And that part isn’t changing.

So, what actually is changing?

The name.

Our people haven’t changed. Our Volunteer Specialists haven’t changed. The way we show up in hospitals hasn’t changed. The kids and families we serve haven’t changed. After more than 20 years, we’re still doing the same work in Chicago, Ann Arbor and Cleveland.

What has changed is the way we introduce ourselves to the world.

A clearer name makes it easier for someone looking for a way to volunteer in a children’s hospital to find us. It makes it easier for a hospital to understand what we do. And as we look toward bringing this work to more hospitals and more cities, that clarity matters.

We’re not leaving the work behind. We’re making it easier for more people to find it, understand it and get involved.

Open Heart Magic is now Bring Magic to Kids in Hospitals.

The name is new. The work isn’t.

And now, we’re ready to bring it a whole lot farther.