Food 4 Kids Enough money was raised by ASAE to fill 12,288 backpacks with nutritious food for schoolchildren.
Cart for a Cause When ASAE sent out a press release on Aug. 4 announcing the increased fundraising goal for the North Texas Food Bank’s (NTFB) Food 4 Kids program, it gave members who couldn’t make it to Dallas a novel way to make an online contribution to the Annual Meeting’s community-service project: a Virtual Food Drive using game-like animation.
everyone to meet — the larger goal he had set. He directed participants to the donation drop boxes that had been set up at the back of the room. “He said, ‘I want everyone in this room to give a dollar. … A dollar will feed three people,’” McKenney said. Kidwai added: “John asked for attendees to open their pockets.” At least 60 percent of the audience put in a cash donation as they walked out of the session. About $6,000 was collected from those boxes alone. Two exhibiting companies, bXb
Online and Geico, announced that they would contribute $5,000 each. Throughout the meeting, additional monies were raised through six Dal- las Double Take Tours and ASAE’s 5k Walk/Run and Fun. Social-media efforts also helped
move the needle. “There were a lot of tweets going out for people to give a dollar,” said Mandy Stahl, ASAE’s com- munity manager. “Plus, there were a lot of tweets around the 5k race, so there was indirect engagement around the community-service effort.” While Stahl said that most of the
conversations had to do with ASAE’s education sessions, there was more tweeting going on around ASAE’s 2012 community-service event than the pre- vious year’s, which benefited a dog shel- ter. “We do believe that social media
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and Twitter, in particular, spread the word and encouraged more giving and participation in the events that con- tributed to the cause,” she said. “There were 119 tweets that had the words ‘food bank’ in them and that didn’t include the @NTFB references.” On Saturday and Tuesday, ASAE
volunteers sorted and packed food at the North Dallas Food Bank, which is limited in size to allow no more than 150 participants. They were joined by several members of the Dallas Cowboys and the Dallas Stars hockey team. By the end of the meeting, ASAE
attendees’ efforts benefited more than the 10,000 schoolchildren Graham had set as a goal in July. “At that closing cer- emony, John was able to say, ‘I asked, you listened, and you responded,’” Sidwai said. ASAE presented a check to NTFB CEO Jan Pruitt in the amount of $61,442 to provide 12,288 weekend backpacks “of nutritious food to chil- dren who often worry about going hun- gry over the weekend,” Pruitt said. “We all know that hunger impedes a child’s success in the classroom. There is no greater gift than offering hope, health, and a future to a young child. ASAE and its membership just did that.”
. Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene. PCMA.ORG
The site was created by NTFB specifically for ASAE, allowing people to shop and personalize their donations. “You could actually go through and push your shopping cart and ‘purchase’ canned goods,” said the Dallas CVB’s Renee McKenney, CMP, CTA. “Ultimately you were just making a donation of $5, $10, or whatever. But it was fun. It was an interactive little piece of flash.”
The virtual shopping site raised $3,265 — in addition to the large donations that were given directly. McKenney said: “It was cool that people went on and did this as a way to participate.” To view the site (which has been disabled for contributions), go to convn. org/virtual-aid.
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› For more on the North Texas Food Bank, visit ntfb.org.
ON THE WEB
› To learn more about ASAE’s 2012 Annual Meeting & Exposition, visit asae12.org.