Twittering for Hunger

The San Antonio Food Bank took one step into the social-media world last fall and never looked back. Since the agency uses about 1,200 volunteers monthly to help distribute about 2.3 million meals per month to 40,000 poor and hungry families in the San Antonio, the real-time connection with helpers is powerful.

Erica Benavides, the food bank’s community investments manager, launched a Facebook causes page and Twitter account in September 2008. At first, the food-bank crew was tweeting and posting news updates and facts about the food bank. Then they started asking for help.

“One of the first calls to action for which we got a huge response was our 2008, 24-hour sort-athon,” Benavides says. “We were short on volunteers in the wee hours of night when we couldn’t get people to sign up for the shift. Our volunteers who were here started tweeting too, and it spread like wildfire. Before you knew it, we had volunteers coming in off the street. It was one of those late-night things you weren’t expecting, but it was wonderful.”

Over the last year, the food bank has become more strategic about its social-media use, putting together a team and hiring designer Martin Medina as its Internet marketing communications coordinator, and exploring other networks, such as MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, and Wordpress.

“We’ve identified a group of people within the organization who can tweet and post about the food bank. For example, our chefs are tweeting about the culinary program,” Benavides says.

To further boost the impact, the food bank has teamed up with other corporate partners, such as Security Service Federal Credit Union, local NBC affiliate WOAI, KISS-FM radio, and more to garner food donations. For example, last month, Security Service donated five pounds of food for every person who clicked on the food bank’s Facebook page and became a fan.

With the recession, the food bank’s demand is up 76 percent from last year, Benavides says, so reaching out to donors instantly is key. Last Thanksgiving, the food bank gave away 4,000 turkeys to needy families. This year, it purchased 5,000, and within six hours, they were snapped up—and the food bank needed 5,900 more.

“We were not expecting that,” Benavides says, so the team created a social-media campaign to help offset the costs of those $10 turkeys. The result: The Great Turkey Challenge, a 5K walk and run advertised on Facebook and Twitter to raise the money.

The beauty of social media for nonprofits is the ability to leverage word of mouth, says Luis Sandoval Jr., social-media director at Gray Web Technology and co-founder of the Social Media Club of San Antonio.

“Now nonprofits have a platform to market their message at a much quicker rate as opposed to television and radio,” Sandoval says. “With these conventional types of messaging and marketing, you have to hope that someone is listening to the broadcast message. Whereas, online networks allow you to push information out there when you want.”