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Three years ago, City Harvest was like a lot of other nonprofits – convinced that it needed to establish an online presence in social media, but uncertain as to how to go about it. Today, New York City’s renowned food rescue organization is a social networking star, with more than 27,000 Facebook fans, 5,000 Twitter followers and over 52,000 YouTube video views. How it got from there to here – in part by combining the power of the web with tried and true techniques of direct mail fundraising -- offers a case study that many other local charities might be wise to emulate. 
“We started because we began to see that it wasn’t just individuals using it,” says Heather Wallace, Senior Director for Marketing who has overseen City Harvest’s effort. “Companies and organizations were using social media very robustly to create a presence for themselves online. It was a way of getting in front of so many individuals.”
City Harvest began the way most nonprofits do. “We established a Facebook page,” says Wallace, who admits that there wasn’t much in the way of a formal strategy. “We did a little messaging about our page in our e-newsletter and our print newsletter. It really wasn’t going anywhere.”
Part of the problem was that Wallace then suffered from a malady still afflicting many of her colleagues: Social Media Resistance Disorder. “While organizationally, I knew we needed to be there, I didn’t have my own Facebook page and, personally, I didn’t want to be on social media. That held us back for a while,” she explains.
Overtime, however, people she trusted advised that in order to understand how Facebook would work for City Harvest, she needed to understand how it worked for the tens of millions of other people who are using it every day. “When I finally broke down and set up my own page, that really opened it up for me. I got a sense of how people actually use Facebook. You get a sense of what they talk about and the kinds of things they share. You have to be involved in that world yourself. I don’t think you can understand it otherwise.”
After about nine months, City Harvest had garnered a core of about 600 Facebook fans. It was a following that many CBOs would still die for, but not what seemed possible for a $50 million organization with thousands of volunteers and food donation partners.
“My background is direct marketing,” says Wallace. “We decided to try a proven direct mail fundraising technique, a ‘donor match’ campaign.” City Harvest approached a supporter who had committed to give the agency $20,000 and asked if they could use the contribution as an incentive to bring in new Facebook fans. “They loved the idea,” says Wallace.
City Harvest launched a month-long campaign based on the appeal that City Harvest would receive a $5 donation for every new fan on Facebook. “I used a $5 match because I never thought we would get enough fans to reach the $20,000 level,” says Wallace.
Within two weeks, however, City Harvest has garnered 4,000 new fans and blown through the donor’s $20,000 matching contribution. “We still had two weeks to go in the campaign and there was all this momentum,” says Wallace. So, the agency asked a second donor to commit to another $20,000 matching grant. “We got enough fans in less than two weeks to make that extra $20,000 and ended up with a total of 12,000+ fans in a month.” And, adds Wallace, without the match campaign as an incentive for the donor, City Harvest might never have asked for the second $20,000 in the first place.
Wallace was now a believer. “We were all completely floored by the response and how active the original group was and the new people who were joining,” she says. “It’s that power of spreading the word and getting your network involved that drives social media.”
Having a powerful message certainly helps. “We explained what they could help us achieve just by becoming fans of our Facebook page,” says Wallace. “It costs us a quarter to provide a pound of food. We were able to translate the $5 matching contribution into real impact against hunger.”
Suddenly, City Harvest found itself at the center of an online community of 12,000 friends. Keeping that community actively engaged takes work and resources of its own.
“We have a staff person who is our Online Marketing Coordinator,” says Wallace. “He oversees the website and all the social media. He had been onboard for several months when we did the match campaign. Having him on board was one of the reasons we were able to focus and strategize.”
City Harvests maintains a steady stream of postings on Facebook and matching tweets on Twitter.
“We try to focus on messaging about our work,” says Wallace. “We do a lot of messaging about big food deliveries; pickups that are quirky, odd or exceptionally large; or where a donor has really stepped up. These are the things we know from our other fundraising efforts that people love about City Harvest; it is why they support us and what gets them excited.”
Surprising – or then maybe not so surprising for those who understand social media – is the response City Harvest gets to other, seemingly less serious postings. “We get strong response to little silly things like a slide show from the staff holiday party or a video of a volleyball game at the staff picnic,” says Wallace. “Six guys in the office will have plaid shirts one day and someone will take a picture and post it. People love it.”
It is this kind of insider’s look behind curtain that helps to build a supporter’s connection to the organization and the work it is doing, explains Wallace. It makes them feel a part of the organization.
“For me, it is about extending the brand. We do great work. We are out on the streets. Here are the trucks. Here are the drivers. Here is the food. Here are the people making it happen behind the scenes. That is a balance we’ve seen our audience respond to.”
Needless to say, City Harvest also uses social media to promote its events, food drives and fundraising campaigns. “We do promotions,” says Wallace. “But, I am very careful about not being over promotional. I want it to be about our work and the people behind the work. I think that is what makes our page different from some others where almost every post is like an advertisement.”
Following its initial round of explosive growth, City Harvest’s online community has continued to expand. “We did another match campaign a year later which bumped us up again. Then we continued to grow. We are at 27,000 in three years,” says Wallace. The majority of fans are from New York or at least the Tri-State area. “We don’t see a lot of attrition. They are pretty much sticking with us.”
City Harvest’s strategy also includes doing cross-promotions with their corporate and food industry partners. “We did a big Brooklyn event in September that involved food venders and restaurants,” says Wallace. “We posted about them joining the event and linked to their pages so they post about us. We are really proactive about getting those cross posting to tap into new audiences.”
And, at some point, the community itself starts to generate content. “There is a lot of interaction on our site,” says Wallace. “We put up a message about how we had picked up five pallets of sandwiches from an event that was cancelled because of the Hurricane. We got over 200 responses within a few hours.”
Is that a risk? “You can’t control what people are going to post on your page,” says Wallace. “Our page is managed, but not nearly as tightly as other things we put out. If someone wants to tweet about you or post something negative, you may not be able to take it away. We have been really lucky.”
City Harvest uses both Facebook and Twitter to post messages. “Twitter can spread quickly,” says Wallace. “We did a post right after the storm asking if anyone had donations of 50 pounds of food or more. The food blog Eater picked it up. They just found it on their Twitter stream.” City Harvest had just found their way to another 24,000 Twitter followers. The agency uses YouTube to post and store its video uploads, then links to them via Twitter and Facebook.
So, what’s the payoff? Are City Harvest’s 27,000 Facebook fans also donors? Wallace can’t say for sure. Facebook doesn’t enable corporate accounts to download lists of their fans for cross-reference with existing donor lists. “We haven’t seen a lot of donations come in through the donation button on the Facebook page,” she says. “This year, we added an option to our donation form, saying ‘I am a City Harvest Facebook Fan’. We are seeing donations through that. Is it through the roof? No.”
Yet Wallace is convinced that there is still a correlation. “I believe there has to be more cross-over between our donor pool and our Facebook and Twitter followers. I can’t give hard proof but I just think there has to be.”
“I don’t measure success in terms of dollars,” says Wallace. “I am not hearing anyone raising a lot of money through social media. I think it is more about cultivation and adding another touch point for your organization. A side benefit for us is that our food donors and corporate partners see that we have a robust social media presence. They want people to know that they have an association with City Harvest.”
Is social media right for everyone? “If you have a donor pool and people are supporting you, then people are interested in your work,” says Wallace. “It makes sense. To me, it is free, as long as you have someone who can maintain it. You are not paying for a lot of software. There’s no big start-up cost. I don’t see how there cannot be a benefit. Some organizations may have smaller niches and may not be able to get 20,000 friends. If you are a small social service organization in Queens, you could still have a presence. Maybe you will reach 2,000 fans. That is OK if it is in line with what your donor pool looks like and where you expect to be getting your support.”
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