North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) has partnered with community and corporate partners to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars with CauseVox since 2015.
We sat down with Ashley Vandenbush of their Corporate Engagement Team to get her advice on online fundraising, corporate partnerships, and using CauseVox to give fundraisers an easy and seamless experience.
About North Texas Food Bank
The North Texas Food Bank serves a 13-county area surrounding Dallas/ Ft. Worth, providing 76 million meals annually in pursuit of their mission to close the hunger gap in the region.
Corporate engagement is an important part of their fundraising strategy. Ashley works to find, build, and manage corporate and community relationships. She’s found that many partners are ready and willing to launch employee giving programs–they just don’t have the tools internally.
“We really like to use Causevox as a tool for corporate partners,” Ashley says. “We like to allow them to host their own fundraising initiatives.” In 2018, corporate and community partners raised $333,668.88. As of August, they’d raised $160,020.05 so far.
Why CauseVox?
Ashley chose to run more than 100 campaigns on CauseVox because:
CauseVox Makes Employee Giving Easy
Employee Giving is a great fit for many organizations. Even those who don’t have the budget for a large corporate donation can run an employee giving campaign to raise money for North Texas Food Bank. “Companies are made of people, and people do want to give back,” Ashley says.
She likes to pitch CauseVox to new and prospective partners, because it’s easy to be successful. “It’s an opportunity for folks to give back in a meaningful way that’s also very simple,” Ashley says.
Online giving campaigns, using CauseVox’s simple fundraising tools, are easier for corporate partners to manage than traditional food or cash drives. It’s much less work for the person coordinating at the company, and provides a better experience for everyone.
CauseVox Is Customizable For Corporate Partners
Community and corporate partners have their own brands and with CauseVox Ashley can create fundraising campaigns that reflect their identity. “We get their feedback, we set it up completely for them,” Ashley says. She sees it as part of providing customer service to these donors.
North Texas Food Bank offers online fundraisers as an option on their website, under Employee Giving. Companies and groups can request an online fundraiser be created for them, and Ashley gets to work. “It doesn’t take me more than 10 minutes to get them set up and ready to go,” she says.
CauseVox Is Easy For Everyone
Before switching to CauseVox, NTFB was using an old and outdated fundraising platform. “Trying to pull data was a lot of work, and it was not fun to navigate,” Ashley remembers. “It was difficult to use, both on the back-end and for the users.”
CauseVox’s fundraising tools are simple for Ashley’s corporate partners, and much more pleasant for her, too. “It was so easy to set campaigns up, pull data, and customize our sites with CauseVox,” she says. Instead of wrestling clunky software, she can spend her time building relationships and helping partners fundraise.
Tips From Ashley And North Texas Food Bank
Ashley’s run an astounding number of corporate campaigns on CauseVox, so she definitely has tips for other fundraising professionals.
1. Give Fundraisers An Experience
People raise money because they want to make a difference. Connect your partners’ support to the impact it has for your mission. Show them that their fundraising has a direct effect on the cause.
Ashley helps her partners see this by providing them with fundraising tools to tell the NTFB story. She gives them email templates, flyers, and other creative fundraising resources. “That’s where we see the most success, when we’re able to give them the opportunity for an easy way to give back.”
2. Lay A Foundation For Success
Before a corporate partner signs on, Ashley has already done a lot of work. She advises getting the back-end of your fundraising platform ready and learning how to use it in advance, so that you can make an ask without any scrambling. “Figure out your strategy, and how you’ll use the tools,” she says. CauseVox is easy to navigate with an intuitive dashboard, so this won’t take very long.
3. Good Tools Make Asking Easier
Making an ask is much more intimidating that using CauseVox, but Ashley advises fearlessness. “Don’t make the decision for the donor, ask!” she says. “Don’t be afraid to ask, especially if you have the tools that are easy for them to utilize.” Many companies want an employee giving option, and with CauseVox you can offer them a satisfying and low-stress one.
4. Go Mobile
CauseVox makes it easy for Ashley to be flexible. Partners can bring their own ideas to the table, and she can usually make it happen without much bother. A local Rotary Club ties their fundraising for NTFB to an annual parade. Mobile tech makes it a breeze to continue the campaign at peer to peer in-person events-. “CauseVox is so mobile-friendly, we can bring tablets to the event,” she says, giving new audiences the opportunity to give.
To hear more expert advice from Ashley on North Texas Food Bank’s corporate partner fundraising, watch our Nonprofit Leader Panel.
Declutter Your Corporate Partner Fundraising With CauseVox
Whether you’re planning 130 campaigns or just one, CauseVox is here to tidy up your corporate partner fundraising, eliminating unnecessary effort and time-sucking admin. Offer your fundraisers a smooth and simple fundraising experience with CauseVox.
