America’s Second Harvest: Attacking Hunger Through the Mail (No. 8)

By NICOLE LEWIS

How much it raised last year: $471.8-million

Its purpose: Through a nationwide network of food banks, America’s Second Harvest

distributes more than 1 billion pounds of food that is donated annually by food companies.

Where contributions come from: Most of the charity’s donations are in-kind contributions of food. About $17.8-million comes from foundations, individuals, and promotions in which the charity receives a portion of sales from certain products and restaurants.

Most notable fund-raising effort of the past decade: Expanding the number of individual donors through a national direct-mail program.

How it works: America’s Second Harvest has about a dozen annual appeals, including a fact-filled newsletter on hunger for regular donors, cards with a photo of a food-bank client for lapsed donors, and a mailing with a photo of colorful fruit crates to potential donors. The underlying message in all: Hunger in America is unnecessary. The most successful appeal, aimed at cultivating new donors, showed a photo of the Statue of Liberty holding a cardboard sign that reads: “Will Work for Food.”

Why it works: Few other national domestic hunger-relief groups use direct mail to reach donors.

Results: This year, a direct-mail donor who had previously given less than $200 annually left the charity a $1.6-million bequest, the largest gift in the charity’s history. In addition, the group this year raised $6-million from individuals, up from $250,000 in 1990. Of that $6-million, about two-thirds came from direct-mail appeals.

Potential pitfalls: When the charity changed its name last year from Second Harvest to America’s Second Harvest, contributions dipped, apparently because donors became confused. The group hopes to remedy the problem by using its old and new names on mailings for at least a year.

Where the money goes: Most of it is used for operating expenses. A small portion will pay for new programs, such as helping local food banks buy trucks to transport food and upgrading technology to support ResourceLink, a computer program that allows companies to post information about surplus food online.

The future: The organization has been slowly building the number of donors who have given at least once from 35,000 in 1991 to 175,000 this year. The goal is to reach two million in the next five years.