Lancaster County Food Hub Virtual Food Drive

The Initial Desire – Create an Online Food Drive

The Lancaster County Food Hub came to me early in the Summer to talk about the possibility of adding a virtual food drive to their website. They had an event coming up with Long’s Park Amphitheater Foundation in which audiences and donors would be invited to bring tangible food donations to the Live Aid Concert on August 29, 2021.

Coming to me in plenty of time to ask plausibility, their hope was to offer an online food drive prior to the event that could bring in additional donations for the hub from Long’s Park Amphitheater Foundation donors and maybe lessen the load of tangible items bought to donate the day of the concert.

After some discussion and my offering various options, it became clear the most beneficial avenue for the Food Hub was to add e-commerce to their website and use it as an online fundraising platform.

The Work – WooCommerce Install & Product Creation

So I got to work for them, creating a robust backend platform where they could take virtual donations now, and ongoing. For the initial Virtual Food Drive, I created a short list of desired “products” with photos and captions to represent what each donation was providing for the Food Hub community. This website allowed the Food Hub to receive donations that they could stretch up to 6x as opposed to tangible food donations.  When it was ready to launch to donors, it was equipped with countdowns to the event, gentle animation for interest, information about how donors are making an increased impact by donating, and media to draw attention to the Live Aid concert itself.

The On-Going Benefits – Evergreen Uses

Now that the Lancaster County Food Hub has e-commerce on their website, they can keep this food drive going as long as they like. Information on the Live Aid concert was removed, and text was made to be evergreen. Not only does this give them the ability to raise more funds within their community, individuals from near and far can contribute making their reach boundless. Donors can add more to their virtual cart than simply making a donation directly into their PayPal account and feel the benefit of knowing what impact they are making with each food donation choice they make. Even more, the Food Hub can now create avenues for selling & fundraising even more – they can create tickets to their annual fundraising events, create special one-time fundraisers, and even tangible branded material if they like! The possibilities are nearly endless for how their choice to add a WooCommerce install to their already robust website will benefit them for years to come!

Visit & Support

Visit lancasterfoodhub.org/ to see their website I also built in full in 2019 and hop over to their Virtual Food Drive page under the donate tab to see this project. If you’re inclined to donate, please support their amazing work of feeding and clothing the food insecure in our Lancaster, PA community!