Georgia Mountain Food Bank (GMFB) is a nonprofit organization in northeast Georgia with the primary mission of addressing food insecurity and related issues in the five-county area it serves. As an affiliate of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, GMFB connects community-based partner organizations with food supplies from a variety of sources.

The Challenge

Georgia Mountain Food Bank (GMFB) is a nonprofit organization in northeast Georgia with the primary mission of addressing food insecurity and related issues in the five-county area it serves. As an affiliate of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, GMFB connects community-based partner organizations with food supplies from a variety of sources.

Although GMFB has an active base of donors, the organization wanted to expand its digital reach and connect with contributors, new and old to further support its mission. It had never utilized direct-to-donor digital advertising in the past but knew such a type of outreach could prove to be especially effective.

Thanks to an existing and positive relationship between Allegiance Group + Pursuant and GMFB focused on direct mail, we quickly began discussions about how to expand the existing donor engagement strategy to tap into digital opportunities more effectively. Through those discussions, a digital advertising strategy to support fundraising in November and December 2021 emerged.

The Solution

The new outreach effort for GMFB began with building the technical foundation of the campaign. That included addressing key needs like setting up ad accounts, implementing e-commerce tracking across GMFB’s Google properties, and ensuring advertising campaign tracking was in place as well.

Following a knowledge-sharing session, including our direct mail team and key GMFB stakeholders, we had a fully formed advertising strategy to both attract new donors and re-engage existing ones. The two-month effort incorporated paid search efforts through Google and Microsoft as well as display advertising on Facebook and Instagram. The work in these channels supported all other active GMFB marketing initiatives across the organization’s website, email campaigns, and direct mail.

Paid Search Results

The paid search campaign’s results are best exemplified by a strongly positive 200% return on ad spend (ROAS). That’s our goal for every paid search effort. Other notable achievements included:

• Attracting 142 total gifts.
• Securing a total of $36,592 across the two-month effort.
• Realizing an average gift of $257.69.

With Allegiance Group + Pursuant providing valuable support and sharing crucial marketing knowledge, GMFB achieved remarkable success in its first-ever digital advertising effort at this scale. This campaign connected with a wide variety of current and first-time contributors, engaging and motivating them through the digital channels they use on a daily basis. We know paid search, digital display advertising and much more can fuel food banks large and small with the donations that are so critical to serving their missions.