Foodlink: Fighting Food Insecurity More Efficiently

Introduction

Foodlink NY addresses food insecurity throughout their region by implementing “upstream” approaches to eradicating hunger in their community. Food Access, Nutrition Education and Workforce Development are a few approaches taken to alleviate the stress families face from food insecurity. By serving 10 counties there are numerous programs that operate within the organization. It is essential to have software that will allow you to effectively streamline your process while making an impact in your community. With Giveffect, Foodlink NY was able to save time from manually entering information and provide better reporting.

Tech Stack:

CRM – Your Cause
Volunteer – Volunteer Matrix
Email Marketing – Constant Contact
Online Donations – QGiv and Authorize.net
Ticketing – Impact Flow

Mission

Our mission is to leverage the power of food to end hunger and build healthier communities.

Vision

We believe that the fight against hunger and the fight against poverty are one and the same. We envision a future in which food is recognized as a human right and every person is able to feed themselves and their families in dignity. Together, we work to create a more nourished, prosperous region.

Goals

Foodlink’s online donations contribute to 96% of their anti-hunger programs. Ensuring donors are easily accessing fundraising pages and tracking online donations to assess their growth is essential. Implementing a software solution that provides accurate reporting and excels in donor relationship management was important to the organization.

Challenge

Prior to using Giveffect, accurate reporting and pulling donor information was not a simple task for Foodlink. The food bank manages multiple operations throughout the day and the ease of accurate reporting and mass imports has saved Foodlink hours of manual entry throughout the month. With the help of Giveffect’s software and its operations, Foodlink has amassed over $9 million dollars in online donations since 2017.

Solution

Giveffect Reporting and Metrics.

Giveffect’s user-friendly reporting feature allows users to create queries and canned reports. Gathering data and sending reports is much easier with Giveffect’s all-in-one integrated platform. Foodlink NY’s reporting experience has improved thanks to Giveffect’s custom queries and reporting feature. Moving from multiple software systems makes it difficult to pull accurate data for reporting and gathering important metrics needed to help your organization improve in specific areas.

“The metrics that Giveffect provides is really helpful for us to know what is working well. I’ve been trusting our reports a lot more.”

Krista, Development Coordinator

Tracking Donations

Foodlink consistently tracks their online donations with Giveffect’s donations database. Prior to using the software for tracking, Foodlink had different systems to support the data. There was not as much consistency with tracking donors as there is now. Now, there is confidence in tracking and reporting accurate information.

Leveraging Solicitations

Foodlink’s goal is to encourage more donors to transition from direct mail to online giving. With Giveffect’s solicitation canned report, Foodlink is able to see overall metrics for their annual appeals versus their direct mail initiatives. Foodlink can even view which donors contributed to specific appeals through the reporting tab and continue to build relationships and engage constituents.

Results

Effective Reporting

Serving over 10 counties with multiple programs can be a lot to manage at once. With proper reporting, Foodlink is able to streamline its current processes and procedures on a monthly basis. The staff is learning more about Giveffect daily, allowing them to trust their metrics to support new initiatives and events.

Increase in Donations and Retention

Each year, Foodlink is able to retain at least 50% of their donors and over 70% of their donations. By executing creative and effective campaigns, donors are able to easily access pages to help fight food insecurity. Foodlink is saving hours and reaching its community using Giveffect’s campaign and event management tools. On average, it takes 7 minutes to complete a campaign page. Foodlink took advantage of the feature and created customized peer-to-peer campaigns. As a result of their utilization of the campaigns tool, donors appreciate the opportunities to fundraise and user-friendly access Foodlink has provided on their website. Since 2017, over 200 new donors have supported Foodlink through online donations.

Conclusion

Foodlink continues to support its constituents by actively working throughout the community to address food insecurity. The capabilities of Giveffect’s reporting and donation database has allowed Foodlink to focus even more on the operation of the organization and leave physical documentation behind.