For more than twenty years, the nonprofit organization End Hunger Network has provided a strong, efficient food-donation system in greater Houston—one that connects food donors and hunger-relief agencies in the most cost-effective ways.
FrogDog has worked with End Hunger Network for years in a variety of communications roles, including public and media relations, grant research and writing, Web site development, and internal and shareholder communications.
The Challenge
End Hunger Network’s community-wide “Building to End Hunger” campaign aimed to raise $5 million to fund the construction and operation of a new facility that would enable the organization to transform local food rescue and hunger relief systems. This facility, the Mary Barden Keegan Hunger Relief Center, would be a state-of-the-art, multipurpose logistics center and meal-processing kitchen that would produce significantly more meals for hungry members of the Houston community.
End Hunger Network needed assistance in raising awareness of the campaign and soliciting funding.
The FrogDog Solution
To help End Hunger Network quickly and cost-efficiently communicate with active and prospective donors, FrogDog designed a capital campaign newsletter that was distributed every two months. For the newsletter, FrogDog designed a bright, campaign-branded template that could be printed in large quantities on in-house printers—saving expense while still producing an eye-appealing newsletter. FrogDog then drafted and designed each issue of the newsletter during the course of the campaign.
FrogDog helped End Hunger Network apply for more than fifty grants from various foundations and organizations to help fund its capital campaign. FrogDog conducted research, developed grant templates and cover letters, drafted use-of-funds reports, and prepared individual grant requests.
Results
With FrogDog’s help, End Hunger Network rapidly met its capital campaign goals and fully paid for the facility’s construction within the same year the doors opened.
The Hunger Relief Center’s success enabled End Hunger Network to expand its services and add new ones. It now
prepares individual meals and multimeal packs for seniors served by Meals on Wheels,
cooks three hot meals a day for homeless military veterans through the U.S. Vets’ Veterans in Progress program, and
packs nutritious sack lunches for at-risk preschoolers served through its new Mobile Meals4Kids program.
FrogDog’s support of these new and expanded programs has included drafting grant requests, designing a new organizational brochure, and creating collateral material to support a popular corporate volunteer program.
