Harvesters Community Food Network (“Harvesters”) is Kansas City’s only food bank that, with the generous support of food and fund donors, and partnerships with more than 500 local not-for-profit agencies, moves food from where there is plenty to where there is need. For over twenty-five years Harvesters has distributed more than 200 million pounds of food to hundreds of thousands of individuals in need of assistance.
The dissemination and collection of organization and partner information is key to continually realizing and expanding Harvesters mission. One of the key challenges to Harvesters today is that traditional donors have a wide range of philanthropic options that are competing for their donor dollars. The ability to obtain and maintain mind share with an audience is paramount to ensure the ongoing success of Harvesters.
Harvesters wanted to re-launch its website and present an attractive, informational, affinity building, easily administered, and scalable presence that provided information to many differing constituencies, engaging activities and e-commerce features. Through these and other online initiatives, Harvesters wanted to ultimately establish a relevant, continuously reaffirmed and distinctly interactive relationship with its target audiences.
Digital Evolution Group built an online presence for Harvesters that provided the opportunity for enhanced education, partner participation, donations and additional revenue streams to the company. It was imperative that the website be implemented in a manner in which Harvester administrators could easily, intuitively, and quickly access all posted information such as food pantry locations and educational materials and initiate donor relationships with Harvesters and that Harvesters staff can easily update all website information easily and quickly. The online payment mechanisms developed by Digital Evolution Group helps Harvesters facilitate immediate receipt of donations, increase the frequency of transactions, and reach a wider audience.
Digital Evolution Group also developed a secure Virtual Food Drive application that allows Harvesters to operate online food drives within their own website or create private food drives for organizations and companies that support Harvesters. The Virtual Food Drive provides donors with the ability to choose quantities of commonly donated food items and “purchase” those items online rather than buying them at the store and bringing them to a central collection location. Harvester administrators have the ability to provision an unlimited number of Virtual Food Drives, each with a unique domain, and the company may track all reporting on a per domain level. This allows Harvesters to create and track Food Drives across organizations in order to support cross-departmental competitions.