"INCENTIVE" CAMPAIGN

The General Idea

The Porch2Pantry programs have a great "Return on Investment (ROI)". What we mean is for every dollar spent to run the program the amount of food and the value of that food that comes in is a staggering ratio. It can be as much as $1 returns $250 in value. When compared to dollars given to a food bank that promotes $1 can turn to $4, it demonstrates how important it for these "porch to pantry" programs are.

There are many ways to find funding for your program, we prefer to make a business case. We believe the best funding source is an exclusive brand partner. The reason, they get two benefits;

Excellent Brand Promotion; not only to be seen as a community contributor but also the cause of something great, they will build customer loyalty. People will do business with them because they do good things with those profits. and
Great ROI: they are likely already funding other non profits with varying degrees of value. Most of those are "belief" oriented; the non profit has a great purpose and people just believe it. We offer tangible and measurable outcomes. We know that when we sign up a donor we are going to get a certain amount of food; 15 lbs 6 times a year, at 70-80% participation, and likely to remain for at least 5 years. And that one way to value these foods is the $2.80 that came from one study recently completed. This all works out to a value of between 1:40 to 1:200 of dollars invested to dollars gained. Most other non profits struggle to show they can do better than 1:3 in terms of ROI of dollars donated. In other words, when someone gives money to your program will do a lot more with it than most other non-profits.

Many financial donors, especially those seeking some brand advertising, are looking for this type of efficiency. We cover the topic extensively in "Brand Partner", click that link to read more. The good news is they don't need 1:200 ratio, anything above 1:20 is still five times more efficient.

Now comes the great part; because the ROI is so good, it is still great a fraction of that amount. This allows us to add two more components to the 5-year cost. 1) recyclable high visibility bags and 2) an "incentive program" to greatly speed up the rate to bring donors into the system.

Those bags may seem an unnecessary cost but there are two huge benefits;

These bags become the identity of the program. People talk about "Green Bag Day" and refer to the people driving around to pick up the bags as the "Green Bag People". Many chapters make sure the drivers wear matching t-shirts. People that work tabletops and other donor-drive events were the same colors.
They are a fantastic place to put a brand! Imagine in Ashland Oregon, where one out of every three doorsteps has this high visibility bag out front. Everyone knows it's going on, and that brand on that bag will get recognized. As you read about "Brand Partners" you'll see that we prefer to provide exclusivity. The advantage being that too many brands and no one see's any brand.

And in terms of the cost, it's actually a minor cost. They are strong and last a long time, the estimated cost is one quarter of a cent when compared to the food that is donated.

The summary of all this is; we are going to get that ratio down to 1:60. For every $1 spent, $60 in value. The difference being we've added about $5 for bags to cover one donor for 5 years and another $5 for the "incentive campaign".

Aerial view of a dense forest with a narrow path.

INCENTIVE CAMPAIGN: How It Works

This fee is what your program will pay to other groups to incentivize them to convince their network of contacts to be a donor.

To best explain, let's create an example. Let's say it's the Church on the corner. You approach the church to do 3 things;

Explain to them how the program works and its value to the community
Find out what they are doing, try to learn about some things they could benefit from if they were to receive a nice donation

There is a 3rd element for a church that goes beyond the example, so we will get into that further down the page.

What you're going to try and do is convince the church to actively promote your program. Perhaps they cover it in the sermon, or they send out an email to all members, or maybe in combination with these they let you set up a table outside for people to stop by as they exit the next service.

You then explain you have a strong financial backer that wants your program to succeed. Therefore they have agreed to provide a donation to whomever you deem, to show their commitment to your program. It's not a "thank you", it's more of a Win/Win. The church gets to help relieve food insecurity, they get a donation, and you get the significant benefit of their credibility supporting your efforts.

This same idea can be applied many ways, this page covers the ones we've done or thought of. Let us know your new ideas and we will get them listed here as well.

CHURCH

A Church is often receptive to getting involved for a variety of reasons. One of the best ways to approach a church is to start off by seeing if they have a pantry or have thought of having a pantry. If they are interested in having a pantry their going to benefit from associating with Simple Gesture since they can be a drop-off location for the recurring events.

Perhaps they don't yet have a pantry; you can offer to effectively pay for it if you have a financial sponsor behind you. Another page on this site is focused on how to get financial sponsors, click here to take look.

There are a couple ways to make the program work. One is the email campaign, which we covered above. The 2nd is to set up a Tabletop outside the church on the day the pastor explains to the program to the attendee's. If the pastor is effective you can expect people to stop at the table on the way out. You or one of your volunteers, or perhaps someone from the Church is manning the table. You might want to have handouts there which explain things more. You can find examples of handouts on the marketing page, click here for more information.

TABLETOPS are covered on another page, but the idea is you will want to have QR codes ready for people to scan with their phones. These should be on some type of display that makes them easy to see. To create the QR code you click on Admin then QR CODES, every event and campaign is listed. You select it and create the code. A great part of QR codes is that you can redirect where someone goes even after you've printed the code. Our QR code generator takes them to a special page that is redirected to the final destination. When you pick one for the Campaign its default redirection is the campaign page. But you can change that later to anything you wish.

SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL CLUBS

Many clubs have a primary target for their charitable work. For example, “Active 20-30 Clubs “ target youth issues. When a club has a specific target you should prepare your presentation to them relative to that target. We will add some tools to the site to assist, but meanwhile, an internet search is usually a quick way to do this. For example, if you search on “youth hunger statistics” you’ll find that 1 in 3 homes with a single mom suffer from some level of food insecurity. There are endless articles and data on this subject, so it only takes a bit of work.

From there, the idea is pretty straightforward; you ask them for a slot to speak at their next club meeting, or you ask them to send an email to their network.

If you are asked to speak, bring a stack of single page summary “information sheets” with that clubs QR code , printed from the Campaign Tool in the P2P Event Manager.

"INCENTIVE" CAMPAIGN

The General Idea

INCENTIVE CAMPAIGN: How It Works

CHURCH

SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL CLUBS

LOCAL BUSINESS's; Employee's and Customers

UNIONS

MEDIA

RETAIL LOCATIONS

Non Profits

Pantries

"INCENTIVE" CAMPAIGN

The General Idea

INCENTIVE CAMPAIGN: How It Works

CHURCH

SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL CLUBS

LOCAL BUSINESS's; Employee's and Customers

UNIONS

MEDIA

RETAIL LOCATIONS

Non Profits

Pantries

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