Running head: Virtual Food & Fund Drive with Utah Food Bank 1

Virtual Food & Fund Drive with Utah Food Bank

Strategic Communications Plan: Final Submission

Kyler Buckway

Alyssa Drage

Britni Gaertner

Jose Munoz

Salt Lake Community College

Bus-2200

April 25, 2019

Penny Bivens
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Virtual Food & Fund Drive with Utah Food Bank

“Food is a fundamental human requirement of survival that deeply influences a variety of

outcomes for individuals, communities, and the natural environment” (Carbaugh Associates,

Inc.; VODA Landscape & Planning, 2013). In Utah, 382,000 individuals, or 1 in 8 people, are at

risk of missing a meal today (Utah Food Bank, 2019). By choosing a service-learning project to

start a food drive on behalf of Utah Food Bank (“UFB”), our group hopes to bridge the gap for

local families and individuals that otherwise would not have the means to secure a decent meal.

Purpose / Objective

The purpose of our service learning is to bring our community together in time of need to

help those less fortunate families or individuals. Just because we don't have the time to dedicate

our services to those in need doesnt mean we still can't help them. With a virtual food drive, we

are able to help needy families receive food and donations when we ourselves don't have a lot of

time.

Audience

The target audience for this communication campaign is Salt Lake Community College

students and staff, as well as people that donate to charities. Below is a demographic and

psychographic profile of this audience:

Demographics:

Salt Lake Community College Students:

● 60,000 students on 10 campuses and in online classes (Salt Lake Community

College, 2016-2017).

● The median age is 23 (Salt Lake Community College, 2018).

● The female to male ratio is 1.04:1 (Salt Lake Community College, 2018).
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● 67.35% identify as White, Non-Hispanic; 18.42% as Hispanic; 3.80% as Asian;

2.91% as More than one Race; 2.49% as Unknown; 2.12% as Black, Non-

Hispanic; 1.17% as Pacific Islander; 0.97% as Non-Resident Alien; and 0.77% as

American Indian/Alaskan (Salt Lake Community College, 2018).

Salt Lake Community College Staff:

● Faculty-to-student ratio of 1:20 (Salt Lake Community College, 2016-2017)

● Total female faculty is 145; and total male faculty is 183 (Salt Lake Community

College, 2018).

● 13 have less than 2 years education; 18 have a 2-year degree; 39 have a bachelor

degree; 190 have a master’s degree; and 68 have a doctorate degree (Salt Lake

Community College, 2018).

People that Donate:

● Millennials: 84% give to charity; donate 11% of total US giving; 40% of donors

are enrolled in a monthly giving program; 55% attend fundraising events; and

47% donate through an organization's website (Firch, Jason, n.d.).

● Gen Xers: 49% of donors are enrolled in a monthly giving program; 56% attend

fundraising events; made up 31% of online donations (Firch, Jason, n.d.).

● Baby Boomers: 72% give to charity; 49% of Baby Boomer donors are enrolled in

a monthly giving program; 58% attend fundraising events (Firch, Jason, n.d.).

● Greatest Gen: 88% give to charity; donate 26% of total U.S. giving; on average

give 25% more frequently than younger generations (Firch, Jason, n.d.).
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● Gen Zers: 30% have donated to an organization; 26% of those aged 16-19

volunteer on a regular basis; 50% are looking for a job in volunteering; 1 in 10

want to start a charity (Berg, n.d.).

Psychographics:

People who attend Community College:

● Many students want to take advantage of a cheaper tuition rate for as long as they

can. Student loans being capped at a fairly low amount for dependant students

plus other resources such as scholarship opportunities is why some students

choose to attend a community college (Bynon, 2015).

● Community colleges provide an opportunity to complete pre-reqs and general

requirement classes that will count towards a bachelor’s degree all for a fraction

of the price of what most 4-year schools charge (Bynon, 2015).

● 41% of people choose Salt Lake Community College because of the affordability.

(Salt Lake Community College, 2014).

● 71% are here to earn a degree/certification and 61% plan to transfer to a four-year

institution (Salt Lake Community College, 2014).

● 29% work full time while 45% work part-time (Salt Lake Community College,

2014).

People that Donate:

● Older people are more likely to donate than are younger individuals (Lee, Y., &

Chang, C., 2007).

● Females are more likely to donate than males (Lee, Y., & Chang, C., 2007),
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● People with one or more children have a strong positive association with the

likelihood of monetary donation (Lee, Y., & Chang, C., 2007).

● Marital status is also useful to differentiate between the individuals who donate

money/items than those who do not (Lee, Y., & Chang, C., 2007).

● Empathetic people are more likely to opt for donating money (Lee, Y., & Chang,

C., 2007).

Audience Analysis:

The target audience has been limited to the students and faculty that attend Salt Lake

Community College and people that donate in general. There are 60,000 students that attend

SLCC on the ten campuses or are taking online classes. Of those 60,000 students, the average

age is 23 years old, aka millennials. 84% of millennials donate to charity so the fact that the

target audience is mostly made up of millennials it will help assist us dramatically in achieving

our goal. As we started implementing our channels, it became clear that we were missing a major

audience that we could easily reach: Gen Zers. Although we didn’t initially consider this age

group to be a large part of our target audience, we found a lot of success in reaching this

audience by directing our text message, email, video and Facebook channels to them as well.

Messaging Goals

Considering the purpose and objective of this campaign, and the demographic and

psychographic profile of our target audience, our team has set the following messaging goals:

Think

● Understand the need for food donations in our community.

● Understand that every donation, small or large, makes a difference.

Feel
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● Satisfaction from making a positive impact in someone else’s life.

● Fulfillment from giving back to my community.

Do

● Help the less fortunate in my community.

● Donate food or money.

Key Messages

The main message we hope to reach to our audience is to bring awareness to UFB’s

virtual donation site. It can be difficult to donate food at times, because you either have to go

through food that you have at your house already or you would have to go out and buy the

perishable foods that they ask for and or that are needed. You would then have to drop it off at

bins at specific places in order to donate. The virtual site makes it so much easier and efficient

for people to access and donate. “No shopping, no lines, no lifting!”

● The virtual option makes it possible for everyone to be able to donate.

● Joining UFB, and our team in donating helps Utahan’s facing hunger. Which gives us a

feeling of happiness because you are using your hard-earned money to help someone else

in need instead of spending it on yourself.

● Giving promotes cooperation and social connection.

● Being involved in your own community and making a difference can be achieved with a

click of a button.

Channels:

There are many different channels that we are choosing to effectively get our message

across to our intended audience. For one, we will be creating flyers that will have a QR code,

which people can easily scan with their phones and get linked straight to a donation page for

UFB. We will be placing the flyers in strategic places where they will be easily visible and in
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areas where there will be a lot of people. The flyers will serve as a physical reminder to our

audience for more efficiency and will allow us to use colors and pictures to create a tone that will

best reach our target audience. Another way we will be going about getting our message across is

by word of mouth because face to face communication is a very rich and effective form of

communication. Speaking to people about the food drive that we are putting on for the UFB will

help us reach our intended audience very easily through synchronous communication since we

can answer questions and easily explain our goal. We will also use text message and email

channels, which will also include a link directly to our virtual drive. Texts and emails are some

of the easiest and most preferred ways to reach our target audience, as nearly all millennials, and

most all others within our target audience, check their text messages and emails regularly, so

these asynchronous push communications will be efficient forms of communication for this

audience. The use of social media will make a very large impact on the effectiveness of our

campaign. So, with the help of social media we will create both a Facebook group which will be

dedicated to our money and food drive campaign, and will serve as an asynchronous, preferable

channel to best reach our target audience. We all will be able to invite all of our Facebook

friends to the Facebook group which will give them a notification that many can’t ignore. On my

Facebook I have over 500 different people on my friends list so getting the word out to hundreds

of people at a single time will make a huge difference in the success of the money and food

drive. Lastly, we created a video that talks about the need for food donations in our community

and tells our audience how they can donate to our drive. This video can be shared on various

social media and online platforms, it is a preferred way for our target audience to access

information, it will have increased richness over other basic online articles, and it will be a good

pull communication for our audience because they can access the video on YouTube on their
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own terms if and when they’re interested. We chose to use these channels to communicate with

our audience because our audience is of the younger generations and they generally use their cell

phones to access social media as well as to check their emails and text messages as frequently as

they receive a notification.

Budget

The budget for us is low as we decided to do virtual donations which allows us to spend

less on materials and fuel, and more time to focus on managing our food drive. We planned on

spend less than $100 on materials which includes paper, ink and fuel to print and put up the

flyers. The $100 also includes fuel and time to put up the flyers around local businesses.

Although a minimal expense, we didn’t initially plan for tacks and tape to fasten the flyers,

which was necessary to implement this channel effectively.

Tactical Plan

As for how we are going to execute our plan, we are going to print flyers which include a

QR code that people can easily scan with their phones and get linked straight to our donation

page, and put them up around campus, as a good amount of people check the bulletin boards,

whether it's for school books or living arrangements. This is a good way to reach out to the

students and staff members that post on there to donate. Other ways we are putting our plan into

action is by doing a Facebook event page and a website that can be shared by anyone to reach

even more members of our community, as well as sending out text messages and emails. All of

these electronic channels will have a link to our virtual drive as well as include other ways for

anyone that sees it to make donations.

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Most importantly, we have decided to make a video for Youtube which will greatly

improve our ability to reach out to not only our community but other communities that want to

help out as well. With the video, we are able to spread the word of our food drive further through

facebook and other social media sites like Twitter and Instagram.

Audience Message Channels Timing

SLCC Students ➢ Help your local ➢ Face to Face March 25, 2019
& Staff community by ➢ Text & Email
donating food or by ➢ Social Media
volunteering.

Local ➢ Help your local ➢ Flyers April 1, 2019

Community community by ➢ Face to Face
donating food or by ➢ Text & Email
volunteering. ➢ Social Media
➢ Support local families
that need help.

Surrounding ➢ Have all communities ➢ Text & Email April 1, 2019

Communities come together to help ➢ Social Media
each other.
Mission Statement of The Non-Profit

Fighting hunger statewide (Utah Food Bank, 2019).

Sustainability

The food and fund drive will have high sustainability because once everything is setup it

will be upkept pretty much on its own. We will have to do little maintenance to our food and

fund drive to make sure that it keeps growing how we want it to. Some things we may do would

be replacing flyers that may have been taken down or continuing to share the UFB link to our

food drive page to new people.

Community Identified Need

Founded in 1904, UFB has operated under various names but has always remained true to

its mission of Fighting Hunger Statewide. Last year, they distributed 43.3 million pounds of
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food, the equivalent of 36.1 million meals, to people facing hunger across the state. UFB also

emphasises on ending childhood hunger. “It takes a village to raise a child, and sometimes it

takes a village to feed one.” 1 in 7 Utah kids are unsure where their next meal will come from,

but with the support of UFB and its commitment to the belief that no child should have to go to

bed hungry, Childhood Hunger programs will always be around to help with this (Utah Food

Bank). The main thing that we need from the community is their involvement in helping UFB,

our team, and community by donating.

Community Involvement

After deciding as a team that we wanted to join forces with UFB in helping with fighting

hunger in our community as our project, one of our team members found an advertisement from

UFB in support with Scouts hanging from a door outside to try and get people to place a bag of

food donations outside their door on a specific date and time for pickup from the local Scout

troop. This just goes to show how invested the community around us already is in helping the

fight and spreading the word. Growing up I’m sure a lot of people have witnessed donation

drives at schools, work offices, churches, all over the place because UFB has been around for

quite some time (115 years to be exact) (Utah Food Bank, 2019). As our very own form of

communication we hope to reach an even bigger audience and challenge people to take maybe

10-15 minutes out of their day to take a look at the virtual food drive on the UFB website and

“shop” for items under our team name to bring awareness to this option for donating. Before this

project, I didn’t even know that was a possibility. The virtual option lets you invite your

coworkers, friends, and family to participate and watch the impact grow. Although the virtual

option is what we are focusing on, UFB accepts donations through the following:

● Donation of Food
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● Donation of Money

● Believe it or not, through the donation of old cars. “It may be beat up, dirty, and hasn’t

been serviced in years, but if your vehicle has wheels, it could help Utahans facing

hunger.”

● Gift of stock

● Time (VOLUNTEERING)

Style Guide and Guidelines:

Although UFB didn’t provide a specific style guide for us to use, our group decided to

create our own using UFB’s color palette which consists of red, black, white and some orange.

We also used professional, consistent fonts to look similar to the fonts that UFB uses.

Additionally, UFB shared their logos with our group which we implemented into our channels to

remain consistent and to also implement UFB’s marketing techniques.

As for guidelines, our group implemented deadlines to have our channels completed and

sent to each other so that we each had the chance to review each other’s work, implement their

ideas into our own channels, and to make sure that they were all consistent and helped to achieve

our objective and messaging goals. We also set guidelines as far as fonts, colors, and logos to use

as outlined in the above paragraph.

Debrief

The overall project we feel was a success. The channels that we created were tactical in

the way that they inspired and motivated our audience that we were trying to reach to donate and

fulfilled our overall objectives. We were also successful in fulfilling our objectives by obtaining

donations to our fund and making others aware of ways that they can help our community. Utah
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Food Bank has been easy to work with, and has given us all information and material that we

needed in order to run a successful campaign.

One issue that we ran into was getting our channels up and ready in enough time in order

to get as much donations as we could through our virtual team on the UFB website. Choosing to

do the virtual option instead of the traditional bins that people would bring food to was the best

choice for our group and this specific project. Another issue we faced was posting flyers on

SLCC campus and learning that we needed to go through an approval process, could only post in

certain locations, etc., so, due to lack of time, we had to change our plans and hang them around

local businesses instead.

While doing an extensive project such as this, I think we learned it’s always best to get

things done and completed ahead of time or on time because you have to make sure all team

members agree with everything, editing, and adding (if needed) is essential to any final product.

We also learned how to use communication channels effectively to spread information, and we

learned about positive ways to give back to our community.

Conclusion

In conclusion, just because 1 in 8 Utahans are at risk of missing a meal today, it doesn’t

mean it should happen. With only a little bit of time out of our busy days, we as a community

can come together and provide for those in need. Not only can it be food, but also money, time

and even old cars. Together as a community we can provide enough food and donations to

overcome hardships that others might be having.

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References

Berg, Alice. Gen Z: The Next Generation of Donors. Retrieved from Classy:

https://www.classy.org/blog/gen-z-next-generation-donors/

Bynon, Erica. “3 Reasons Why Students Actually Choose Community College.” 3 Reasons Why

Students Actually Choose Community College | American Honors, 7 Apr. 2015,

americanhonors.org/blog/article/3-reasons-why-students-actually-choose-community-

college.

Carbaugh Associates, Inc.; VODA Landscape & Planning. (2013). Salt Lake Community Food

Assessment Food System Analysis. Salt Lake City. Retrieved from:

http://www.slcdocs.com/slcgreen/SLC_Food_Assessment_Report_COMPLETE.pdf

Firch, Jason. (n.d.) The Ultimate List of Charitable Giving Statistics for 2018. Nonprofits Source.

Retrieved from: https://nonprofitssource.com/online-giving-statistics/#Charitable

Lee, Y., & Chang, C. (2007). Who Gives What To Charity? Characteristics Affecting Donation

Behavior. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal,35(9), 1173-1180.

doi:10.2224/sbp.2007.35.9.1173

Salt Lake Community College. (2018). Fact Book 2017-2018. Salt Lake Community

College. Retrieved from: http://performance.slcc.edu/Factbook/2017-

18/C_faculty_staff/index.html

Salt Lake Community College. (2018). Fact Book 2017-2018. Salt Lake Community College.

Retrieved from: http://performance.slcc.edu/Factbook/2017-

18/B_student_demographics/B_05.html

Salt Lake Community College. (2016-2017). About SLCC. Salt Lake Community

College. Retrieved from: http://www.slcc.edu/about/index.aspx

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Salt Lake Community College. (2014). The community college survey of student

engagement (CCSSE): Overview of 2014 survey results. Salt Lake Community College.

Retrieved from http://www.slcc.edu/ir/surveys.aspx

Utah Food Bank. (2019). Utah Food Bank: Fighting Hunger Statewide. Retrieved from Utah

Food Bank: https://www.utahfoodbank.org/