How a Pittsburgh food bank is attracting new donors & securing larger gifts

The Opportunity

Founded over forty years ago, Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank is on a mission to eliminate hunger in southwestern Pennsylvania. They work with a large network of local partners under the Feeding America umbrella to source and distribute food to thousands of people across eleven different counties.

Like many food banks, they saw a huge increase in need during the pandemic, followed by transformational fundraising growth as their community responded to help. The food bank was able to go from distributing 35 million meals a year to more than 45 million, an increase of 28%.

To capitalize on this momentum and their reputation for impact in their community, the food bank began investing in resources that would help them attract new donors and increase their current donors long-term value.

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The Solution

Prior to the pandemic, the food bank’s fundraising team didn’t have the capacity to be proactive about planned and major giving. So after the increase in support, they brought on more gift officers, and signed up for a FreeWill Regional Feature in May 2021 to boost their giving programs.

With the Regional Feature, their organization’s name is placed front and center each day as thousands of people in their community go to freewill.com to make their estate plans and leave gifts to charity.

As a well-recognized name in their region, the network effect of the feature was powerful for them. They secured new legacy donors from freewill.com, as well as from the custom FreeWill bequest sites of other organizations, where they were suggested as an option for an additional gift to Pennsylvania nonprofits.

They also use FreeWill to integrate custom links into their website, which make it easy for supporters to start a will and create a gift, donate stock, or give from their IRAs (gifts called Qualified Charitable Distributions).

With 20% of their donations coming from online sources and a large audience of self-sufficient, digitally-savvy donors, they felt that the FreeWill tools were a natural fit.

Beyond their website, the team has also included links to their FreeWill tools in emails, mailers, donation confirmation pages, and more to increase awareness of non-cash ways to give.

Through these custom links and their Regional Feature, they’ve been able to attract new donors and retain current donors, raising more than $475,000 in bequest commitments.

Furthermore, the fundraising team uses FreeWill’s Partner Portal to easily track donations, see where gifts are coming from, and act on donor information, so that they can steward their donors for years to come.

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