Getting Social with the Food Depository

You know, this social media thing might catch on. So, the Food Depository has taken up residence in several of the most popular social networks.

After all, just having a Facebook page and Twitter profile aren't going to cut it anymore. You have to be engaged with your fans and provide them with relevant, useful information that is worth sharing with their own network. The Food Depository has a growing audience in both of these places (8,500 fans and 1,700 followers, respectively), but we cannot rest on our laurels and expect people to flock to us just because we exist in the social space. Competing for the attention of more than 500 million active Facebook users is a daunting task. The average user may have 130 friends, but getting them to share a link or even just like a photo is not always easy. (source: Facebook)

That's why we enlist partners to help spread the word about the Food Depository. We're only just scratching the surface, but already we've run a YouTube cooking demo campaign with Sears and LG, where each view of the video meant 50 cents to us.

Currently, we are in the midst of a "Like" campaign with Menuism, a social network for foodies where you can review restaurants and their dishes; it's also the web's largest aggregator of online restaurant menus. Their campaign is simple: just “like” Menuism on Facebook and they’ll donate $1 to the Greater Chicago Food Depository. We're now at about $2,000 raised of a possible $5,000.

It’s these types of campaigns that not only share our mission of providing food for hungry people in Cook County, but also they help us raise funds to continue achieving that mission.

We still have the more traditional communication pathways (mail, e-mail, website), but when Facebook claims that more than 30 billion pieces of content (links, blogs, photos, etc.) are shared each month, it’s hard to ignore the power of social media and how it could help share our mission and raise awareness of hunger relief. Even if we are the slightest fraction of that monthly activity, then we—at least this little corner of the Food Depository—are doing our jobs.

Getting Connected with our mission

It's kind of weird when people thank me personally for helping to feed hungry people in Chicago. After all, I work on the Internet most hours of the day. Sure, I help share our mission and help bring in funds, but I don’t have any illusions that the Internet itself can steer a truck into our loading dock or give a bag of groceries to someone. I don't witness people struggling with hunger, struggling to make the tough decision of rent or food this week. Our member food pantries, shelters and soup kitchens—as well as those working in our warehouse—witness this every day.

That's why we have a program here called Get Connected, to help get out from behind our desks and experience what goes into hunger relief.

I worked the “Salvage” line recently, just one of the many tasks offered through the Get Connected program. The Salvage area is where all the food collected from food drives comes in, is sorted by quality and expiration, repacked and then distributed to our member agencies.

Heading into this time of year, the food drives start to add up (more than 500 will have been hosted from now through the end of this year). That’s a lot of food to go through, and I’m happy to pitch in. But it can be quite the task.

A conveyor belt whisks by with everything from canned baked beans and boxes of pasta to jars of pickles and juice boxes. I happened to be on tomato sauce/paste and canned vegetables that day. Thankfully, the items going past me have already been inspected for quality and expiration date, otherwise, this task would be nearly impossible. It was three hours of standing, sorting and lugging 40-pound boxes of canned food onto another conveyor.

Your back and legs can’t help but be a bit sore after the job, but being able to get my hands dirty, get in there and do a little manual labor, it’s worth it. I’m working with the food that our community donated so others less fortunate can have something to eat today. That's not something to take lightly.

I’m writing this a few days removed from Getting Connected, and thinking back, having a sore back from helping feed hungry people—well, that actually feels pretty good.