Librarian as candidate- EveryLibrary - pala2016 - 18 october 2016
FINAL Project Paper Story Bank Project Report 2.24.16
1. DonorStory Bank ProjectReport
Worcester County Food Bank
Shrewsbury, Massachusetts
Prepared by Susan M. Halpin, M.Ed.
Temporary Development & Communications Associate
October 2015 - February 2016
WCFB Contact – Naomi LeBlanc
One of three WCFB refrigerator trucks donated by partner agency, Stop & Shop. Trucks assist with the
distribution of the 5.8 million pounds of food donated annually to the WCFB.
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Table of Contents
OBJECTIVES ..................................................................................................................................... 3
Resources.........................................................................................................................................................................................3
PROJECT ACTIVITIES ....................................................................................................................... 4
Project Hours..................................................................................................................................................................................4
Monthly Summary of Project Activities...............................................................................................................................4
CURRENT COMMUNICATION PRACTICES...................................................................................... 5
KEY FINDINGS ................................................................................................................................. 7
CHALLENGES AND LESSONS LEARNED........................................................................................... 8
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................. 8
APPENDIX A PROJECT DOCUMENTS.......................................................................................... 10
Work Plan.....................................................................................................................................................................................10
Personalized Letter to Randomly Selected Donors........................................................................................................12
Telephone Script for Donor Calls with Questions .........................................................................................................13
Email Script for Invitation to Online Donor Communication Survey.....................................................................17
Survey Monkey Tool................................................................................................................................................................18
Invitation to Participate in this Project Through Food.org..........................................................................................19
Thank you Note to Donors for Participating in the Project.........................................................................................20
APPENDIX B VISUAL SUMMARIES.............................................................................................. 21
WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................................... 48
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INTRODUCTION
The Worcester County Food Bank (WCFB) website states:
Food is a fundamental right of all people and that hunger is an issue
of social justice. The WCFB mission is to engage, educate and lead Worcester
County in creating a hunger-free community. To that end, WCFB annually collects
over 5 million pounds ofperishable and nonperishable food and distributes it
through a network of 138 Partner Agencies,including food pantries,and
community meal programs; trains partner agencies in food safety; and advocates
for systemic and sustainable solutions to support children, families and senior citizens
in being more food secure and healthy.
“Worcester County Food Bank, Employment Opportunities.” Worcester County Food Bank, February 2016.
Web. February 2016 Accessed.
Without the financial support of generous donors, WCFB would be unable to accomplish its
mission to end hunger in Worcester County. The goal of this project was to better understand the
financial donors, specifically their motivation for financial giving, what they prefer in terms of
channels of communication and information content. Presently, there are 40,000 donors in the
database. Around 10,000 donors give annually and approximately 14,000 donors are considered
“active” because they have financially contributed in the past two years.
OBJECTIVES
To implement this project a Development and Communications Associate was hired as a
temporary staff member. The project began in October of 2015 and was completed in
February of 2016. The Development and Communications Associate worked alone, but had
access to the WCFB staff. The staff contact for this project was Naomi LeBlanc, WCFB
Director of Development.
Resources
The following resources were used to implement this project:
Interviews with key staff members and operational tour of the food bank and
warehouse
DonorPerfect Database
Current and past WCFB mailings and other written communication
WCFB Website (Foodbank.org)
Survey Monkey tool
DataCracker.com
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The project objectives were to answer the following questions:
1. What are the channels of communication our financial donors prefer for solicitation and
other information?
2. How often do financial donors prefer to be solicited?
3. Do donors want to hear from the food bank aside from solicitations? If so, what type of
content is of interest to them?
4. What can we improve on and what did we learn?
PROJECT ACTIVITIES
The following information provides some background and a summary of the activities
undertaken to implement this project. The activities are organized by month.
Project Hours
Approximately one hundred and sixty hours were used to complete the project. Most weeks the
associate spent about four hours in the WCFB office and an average of eight hours per week,
over nineteen weeks working on this project.
Monthly Summary of Project Activities
October 2015
1. Learned the basics of the WCFB, operations, staff, history, communications, website,
volunteers and advocacy
2. Learned key facts and figures through various WCFB documents.
3. Conducted interviews with key staff, participated in an overview of how the organization
runs its operations. Researched non-profit donor communication, learned about “story
banking”, researched donor retention trends, evaluated food.org website.
November 2015
4. Created work plan, defined key tasks.
5. Randomly selected forty five donors from a donor subset list of 9000 (active financial
donors from 2014 to the present.)
6. Wrote script for the telephone interviews.
7. Sent personalized letters to the forty-five donors chosen for the project explaining the
project and asking for their help.
8. Identified missing telephone numbers for donors participating in the project.
The majority of the forty-five donors chosen did not have telephone or email contact
information. Used internet sites such as Google, WhitePages.com and ZabaSearch to
identify telephone numbers.
9. Researched various online survey tools to use for this project. Created the survey using the
WCFB free Survey Monkey account.
10. Created a hardcopy Data Collection Form to record donor feedback.
Interview feedback was handwritten on the form and later entered into the Survey Monkey
program so that the focus remained on the donor conversation.
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December 2015
11. Began data collection using Survey Monkey. All donors were called two times in an effort to
reach maximum number of participants. More than two thirds of the total number of donors
chosen did not participate in the project for various reasons, for example, incorrect contact
information, no interest, insufficient time, diseased, and no follow-up by donor with
promised call back or with email response. Phone calling was suspended from December
16th phone through January 6th due to the December holidays.
12. Solicited project participation through the Food.org website and the December issue of
Nourishment. With the help of Sally Hodgerny, (staff member in charge of WCFB website),
an online request page was created and posted.
January 2016
13. Revised the Work Plan
Work Plan dates were revised to reflect the suspension in the donor phone.
14. Closed the survey on January 21, 2016. Online survey was available for about 4 weeks.
Donor Feedback data was collected for a total of about seven weeks. The last interview was
conducted on January 20th.
15. Began analyzing data and methods to communicate this information
February 2016
16. Final Project Report Written
Data Cracker, a free tool was used to interpret and present a visual summary of donor data
collected through the Survey Monkey files. Personalized thank you notes to participants were
written.
CURRENT COMMUNICATION PRACTICES
The following is a list of current donor engagement methods. This information is helpful to know
as the donor feedback from this project is considered and analyzed.
Communication printed and distributed by postal mail:
Direct Mail Appeals
According to Naomi LeBlanc, Director of Development, Direct Mail Appeals are currently
are done three times per year, in late October through Thanksgiving, early December with a
holiday card, in March as a general appeal and in June highlighting summer meal programs.
These appeals are distributed through postal mail.
Food for Thought Newsletter
The hard-copy newsletter, “Food for Thought”, is distributed through postal mail and
contains donation envelopes, newsletter is sent out 2-3 times per year (seasonally) to
approximately 12,000 people.
WCFB Annual Report – *Printed, but not mailed
The Annual Report is distributed at the Annual Meeting to about 120 guests. This report is
also made available to attendees at gatherings at various events throughout the year.
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Electronic Communication
Constant Contact
WCFB began using the email marketing tool, Constant Contact in 2015. There are 2,334
active contacts in their database, with 1,986 on the donor’s list and over 700 contacts
on the email newsletter list.
Email and “Nourishment “(the monthly electronic newsletter)
WCFB began using electronic mail in 2015 to communicate with donors. Currently,
“Nourishment” is the only type of email consistently used with donors. There is a small
amount donor communication such as acknowledgements for memorial gifts that are
sent out electronically. Recently, Sally Hodgerney tracked the total amount of money
given through the newsletter donation button. Since, the newsletter has been in
existence $1070.00 has been donated online.
Food.org Website
The original website was created in the year 2000 with the ability to donate online. The
most recent version of the website was created in 2014. About ten percent of the food
bank’s revenue is generated through the website.
FaceBook
WCFB has 670 friends, meaning 670 people have clicked that they “like” the WCFB page.
At a minimum, there are posts to FaceBook every other day. There are about fifty plus people
who see WCFB posts in their FaceBook newsfeed. FaceBook interactions are not frequent,
however, volunteer groups will post pictures from their food drives or benefit events. There
have been a few times when a particular FaceBook post has received comments from friends.
An article about the high amount of food waste in our country was one of those posts that
generated comments.
Twitter
The food bank has 171 Twitter followers. When time allows, at least one tweet per day is
posted. It is unknown how many Twitter followers are donors.
WCFB Events
WCFB engages with the public and its financial donors through the following events. This
project did not include questions about WCFB events, but this information is worth noting.
Food Movement Radio
On the local Worcester radio station, Jean McMurray (Executive Director of WCFB) and
Liz Sheehan Castro (WCFB new Director of Advocacy) host a weekly radio show. Each
week Jean and Liz host guests and conduct interviews with people who are doing
amazing food related work in the local community.
WSRS Food Drive is annual event that takes place in early December at PriceChopper on
Pullman Street. This past year about $37,000 or in terms of budget, approximately 1.5%
of revenue came from this event.
Ocean State Job Lot Annual Donation Day
This is an annual event that happens each April. Ocean State Job Lot donates one to two
truckloads of food.
Stop & Shop Turkey Donation Day
LeBlanc, Naomi and Hodgerny,Sally. “WCFB Questions.” Email Interview by Susan Halpin.,Feb 2016
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KEY FINDINGS
This section describes key findings during this project according to their respective objective.
These key findings are also visually represented in Appendix B – Visual Reports
Objective 1: To determine what are the channels of communication our financial donors
prefer for solicitation and other information?
A. Solicitation
Sixty-four percent of respondents prefer to be notified about fundraising campaigns
through postal mail only. Forty-five percent prefer postal mail or email. Eighteen
percent did not have a preference because they stated they are going to donate
regardless of the communication.
B. Other Information
Eighty-eight percent prefer to receive the additional information through postal mail.
Fifty-one percent prefer either postal mail or an email message with a link to that
information. It was noted by several participants that these email messages should not
long email messages, preferably just a link to the information and should not be more
frequent than once a month.
Objective 2: How often do financial donors prefer to be solicited?
Eighty-two percent would like to be asked for a donation two times or less per year.
Objective 3: Do donors want to hear from the food bank aside from solicitations? If so,
what type of content is of interest to them?
A. Receiving other information
Eighty-two percent want to receive information in addition to solicitations.
B. Type of content
Eighty-seven per cent are interested in hearing about the population served, such as
veterans, children, schools and the homeless.
Seventy-fivc percent in learning about advocacy efforts to solve the root problem of
hunger in the United States.
Sixty-three percent want to know specifics about how their donation is spent.
Objective 4: What can we improve on and what did we learn?
A. Improve
More news coverage in the local media to showcase WCFB’s good work being done
to address hunger.
Presence at community events to educate people about the problem of hunger and
efforts to alleviate it.
For monthly donors, reduce the number of thank you notes.
Reduce the number of postal mailings asking for donations.
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B. Learn
Twenty-five percent initially donated because they heard it was a worthwhile charity
from their religious leader. Half of those attended a Catholic church.
Seventy-five percent learned about WCFB from a respected person in their local
community.
Half said that knowing the charity is helping people in their local community is the
most important factor when deciding which charity to select.
Forty-two percent were unclear about how their donations were specifically spent.
They assume that the donation was spent on food for the hungry and that the
organization had low overhead or administrative costs.
C. Learn about Technology
Ten percent have FaceBook or Twitter accounts.
Twenty seven percent have visited the Foodbank.org website.
CHALLENGES AND LESSONS LEARNED
DonorPerfect database did not include telephone number or emails for many
donors, which hampered the start of the interview process. Tracking down contact
information took significant time.
Conversing with donors through a telephone call using a WCFB landline was more
effective because donors could see where the call originated and they would answer
the call.
December was a difficult month to contact donors. In the future avoiding this busy
time of year would be more productive.
A couple of the participants did not have sufficient time to talk and were not
interested in a follow up call.
The conclusions drawn from this project are based on a low number of participants.
Many of the participants were elderly and inexperienced with technology. The
survey questions about internet use, the website, and social media may not give an
accurate representation of the communication preferences of WCFB donors.
CONCLUSION
Even though advanced methods of communication that use technology are very
common, there still remains a significant role for reaching out through postal mail.
See Appendix B, Questions 7 and 13 for specific responses.
Donors prefer being contacted for financial help not more than twice a year.
See Appendix B, Question 8 for specific responses.
Donors do have interest in receiving food bank news and information about the
organization’s advocacy efforts.
See Appendix B, Questions 11 and 12 for specific responses.
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Donors learn about non-profit organizations they are considering donating to
through the local media and participating in their local community. Likewise donors
give because of a recommendation from a respected religious leader or community
member. Giving locally is an important factor giving decisions.
See Appendix B, Questions 2, 5 and 6 for specific responses.
Customized databases in which individual donors can select their communication
preferences could be an important tool to consider based on the following experiences
from this project.
It was difficult to initiate donor conversations by telephone with a large number of donors
of different age groups. This data from this project is based on the feedback of ten
participants out of forty-five randomly selected participants.
The donors who participated were in general, older, many were retired (eight participants
out of twelve either gave the impression or mentioned that they were retired. Age was not
asked as part of the survey).
Many participants used the words “fixed income” during the conversation. Many
participants referred to a lack of comfort with computers and the internet.
Although it is a well-known fact that the Worcester County Food Bank does have a large
donor population that is “older”, the small number of project participants and the lack of
variety in age, is certainly worth noting as the data from this project is interpreted or is
used to make decisions.
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APPENDIX A PROJECT DOCUMENTS
Work Plan
REVISED Work Plan
Story Banking Project
Worcester County Food Bank
Purpose of Project – To have a conversation with our random sampling of 45 donors and
hear what they have to say about:
5. The channels of communication our donors prefer for solicitation?
6. How often do they want to be solicited?
7. Do our donors want to hear from us aside from solicitations? If so, what type
of content is of interest to them?
8. What can we improve on?
Work Plan Deliverables and Dates
Revised information is in Red
Task Date Comments
1. Create Work Plan for StoryBanking
Project. Send to Naomi for Review
Mon 11/16/15
2. Develop questions for donor
conversation about method of
communication and content of
communication. Outline script for phone
conversation.
Mon 11/16/15
3. Donor questions and phone script to
Naomi for Review.
Tues 11/17/15
4. Create a draft for a handwritten letter to
the 45 randomly selected donors from
the DonorPerfect database, letting them
know they will be receiving a phone call
or email inviting them to engage in a
telephone conversation about their
communication preference.
Wed 11/18/15
5. Send Script to Naomi to Review 11/18
6. Meet with Naomi to incorporate 11/20/15
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feedback on
Work Plan Schedule
Donor Questions and phone call script
Draft Handwritten Letter Content
7. Incorporate changes to project
documents
8. Write handwritten letters
9. Mail handwritten letters
10. Verify email addresses for donors with
no phone number.
11. Look up phone numbers in
Whitepages.com for those donors with
no phone
11/20/15
11/23 - 11/27/15
11/28/15
11/20 - 11/27/15
11/20 - 11/27/15
12. Create hardcopy Data Collection Page to
use to record donor conversation results
13. Start Donor
Conversations/interviews/collect data
14. Create and Design website page and
button requesting donor feedback , as
well as link to survey on website
15. Input interview data into Survey Monkey
11/20 – 11/30
11/30 – 1/16
12/7-12/18
11/30 – 1/16
16. Analyze interview data, develop outline
of Final Report.
17. Draft Final Report outline to Naomi for
Review.
1/4 - 1/22
1/25
18. Write final report as a Word document
19. Submit interview data and report to
WCFB
1/25-29
2/1-2/5
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Telephone Script for Donor Calls with Questions
Hi. This is Susan Halpin. I am calling on behalf of the WCFB. The reason for my call is NOT
to ask for a donation. Do you have a few minutes to talk with me right now? If not, can I
arrange for a time to call you back that is more convenient?
First, I want to thank you very much for your (continued) support of our mission to create a
hunger-free community right here in Worcester county. Because of your donation (or
continued financial support), the WCFB was able to feed over 101,000 people in our
community in the past year.
Because we value what our donors think, we would like to ask your advice about how we
can improve our communication with folks like you. We took a random sampling of our
donor database with the intent to call those people chosen to have a conversation about
what we are doing right and what we can improve on in terms of our communication with
you. Your name was chosen and your feedback would be very helpful for us as we look at
the methods and the content the WCFB uses to reach out to donors.
Would you have time right now to help us improve how we communicate by answering the
questions we have prepared? This conversation will take about 20 minutes.
LEAVE AVENUE OPEN FOR FACE TO FACE CONVERSATION POSSIBLY TOUR OF WCFB.
If not, is there another time that would be more convenient for me to talk with you?
As you know Worcester County Food Bank (WCFB) is the region’s leading anti-hunger
organization distributing over 5 million pounds of donated food and grocery product in
partnership with food donors, financial supporters, and volunteers. WCFB provides this product
to a network of 131 Partner Agencies. These partner agencies have programs for feeding people
through food pantries, community meal sites, and shelters.
The ways that we currently communicate are through appeal letters and newsletters as well as
enewsletters and social media.
Can I verify that I have your contact information correctly entered in our database?
Verify address, phone number and email address.
1. Do you mind my asking what was it -- that led you to make a donation to the
WCFB in the first place?
2. How easy or difficult was the process of donating to WCFB?
3. How well do we explain how your donation will be spent?
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4. How do you learn about the charities or non-profit organizations you’re
thinking about donating to? Some ways folks have told us they learn about
organizations they donate to is to:
Ask friends, neighbors or coworkers
Look for information contained news articles
Conduct internet searches
Visit the website of the charity or non-profit they are considering?
Other ways?
5. What is the most important factor for you in choosing a charity or non-profit
to donate to?
The next question is about the frequency of our solicitation communication. How often
a supporter makes a donation is a very personal preference. Some donorsprefer to give
multiple times/year while others prefer to give once a year.
6. How often would you prefer to be asked for a donation? For example, once a
month,
4 times/year?
2 times/year?
less frequently than 2 times/year?
We realize our donors can receive information about an organization in a variety of
ways. I am going to go through a short list of how we engage our donors.
7. Please rate the following methods of communication on a scale from 1-5 based
on how you would prefer to hear from us? 1 is the least preferred method and
5 is the most preferred method.
Postal mail?
Phone call?
Email?
Social Media?
Going to the website?
Text Message?
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When we communicate with our donors we want to provide content they are interested in.
The following are some examples of information we include in our quarterly newsletters,
monthly e-newsletters and on our Facebook and Twitter accounts.
8. For each type of content, can you tell me your preference using one of these
responses: NOT AT ALL, SOMEWHAT or VERY
Events that the WCFB is planning or has been involved with?
Current topics relating to improving the safety or availability of fresh food
?
Stories of people who have received food assistance through our partner
agencies?
Details about our partner agencies?
Specifics about or the process the WCFB has in place to help people who
are hungry in Worcester County?
The different populations who receive help from WCFB. For example, how
do we help children, schools, veterans, the homeless.
Financial information about how your donation is spent?
Stories about those who volunteer for WCFB?
WCFB relationships and connections to local leaders in our city, state or
national government?
What our local leaders are doing to alleviate hunger in Worcester County?
The kinds of advocacy work the WCFB is doing to solve the root problem of
hunger in our country, for example our recent efforts to make sure those in
need have availability to the SNAP or Food Stamp program?
All of our donors receive communication from us through the postal mail, but they have to
sign up to receive electronic communication from us.
9. Have you signed up for our monthly enewsletter entitled “Nourishment”?
If no,
10.Why not?
11.Do you use any social media accounts like FaceBook, Twitter or Instagram?
If they answer YES to Fb or Twitter, ask
12.Have you “Liked” our FaceBook page?
13.Do you follow us on Twitter?
If they answer NO ask
14.Do you mind my asking why not?
If donor does use social media FaceBook or Twitter ask:
15.If WCFB had an Instagram account, would you follow us?
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If no, ask
16.Can I ask you why not?
17.Is there any other form of social media that you that you use that you would
like to see the WCFB use to keep their members informed?
18.What would you like to see us improve on?
19.Is there anything else you would like to tell us?
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Email Script for Invitation to Online Donor Communication Survey
Invitation to take our Online Donor Communication Survey
Email Script for donors we’ve communicated with and have expressed a preference to take the
online survey rather than a personal conversation
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear
Thank you for your support of the Worcester County Food Bank. We are also very grateful for
your participation in our Donor Communication Survey
Your feedback will help us understand your preferences for the channels we use to communicate, as well as the
content of the information we communicate.
Click on the link below. This survey should take no more than 10 minutes.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KWFLYYN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Donors we’ve called once and have left a message for. No response.
There is an email address in their Donorperfect database profile.
Dear
Thank you for your support of the Worcester County Food Bank.
THE PURPOSE OF THIS EMAIL IS NOT TO ASK FOR A DONATION.
WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOUR FEEDBACK.
Over the past 6 weeks our efforts to connect with personally have not been successful.
As an alternative to a personal conversation, would you be willing to take an online survey?
Your feedback will help us understand your preferences for the channels we use to communicate, as well as the
content of the information we communicate.
The online survey will not take more than 10 minutes to complete.
We very grateful for your help!
Click on the link below.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KWFLYYN
