412 Food Rescue, a non-profit organization based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, works with food retailers to prevent surplus food from going to waste. The 412 Food Rescue team needed to recruit more volunteers to deliver food from places with food surplus to people experiencing food insecurity.
With the new Google Analytics, they were able to look at data across platforms, web and app, to understand the full journey of their users and optimize their marketing strategy to acquire more volunteers. They’ve been able to cut their reporting time by 50%, which has freed up their already limited staff to grow their impact throughout the community and expand to new cities.
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Video Transcription
Lizarondo: In the United States, we waste almost half of our food supply, enough to feed everyone who is experiencing food insecurity four times over. So in a lot of ways, hunger is not a supply problem. It's a distribution problem.
Lizarondo: 412 Food Rescue was founded in 2015 and is the first organization that used the Food Rescue hero app. So our Food Rescue Heroes download the app, and become volunteers to drive food from those who have food surplus to those who need them.
Lizarondo: In Pittsburgh, we typically distribute around 300,000 pounds of food in a month, but during the pandemic that has increased to about a million pounds of food. Our challenge is that we need to inspire more people, every single day to step up, and rescue food.
Swaney: In order to recruit more volunteers, we needed to understand where people were learning about 412 Food Rescue. The information that we previously gathered was pretty time intensive because we're pulling data from a number of different sources.
Swaney: Bounteous has been our digital analytics partner, they came to us with Google Analytics to help look at information in a more cohesive manner.
Swaney: The new Google Analytics allows us to look at our data across platforms, web and app, to understand the full journey of our users. We’re able to track volunteer engagement, donations, or social media campaigns that were driving traffic to our website.
Swaney: Automated Insights also opened our eyes to a whole new set of data. For example, we learned that weekends tend to be a little bit slower in terms of volunteers and engagement. And now we understand more about our user experience and where those efforts need to be focused.
Swaney: We’ve been able to cut our reporting time by 50% and it’s freed up our already limited staff to grow our strategy and increase our activities throughout the community.
Lizarondo: We are wired to do good, and through the Food Rescue Heroes that deliver food everyday we can achieve the mission of ending food waste and hunger.
