Feeding America
Activating young people to be advocates + donors
“DSS’s strategy work was invaluable. Their team’s data-driven insights illuminated the millennial audience for us, and their flexibility and responsiveness made it a pleasure to work with them. We’re grateful for their help.”
THE REALITY
Most nonprofit’s marketing and outreach strategies primarily target Gen X and older, only attracting the occasional young person. The tricky part: Millennials and Gen Z engage with brands, social causes, and movements in entirely different ways than older generations. So connecting with and leveraging this important younger demo requires a different approach.
OUR APPROACH
This wasn’t just a matter of putting Feeding America’s message in front of a younger audience. Feeding America needed to create entirely new programs and to establish a new way of working internally to ensure they could effectively engage and cultivate Millennials as the next generation of donors, volunteers, and advocates. We leveraged data-driven insights about engaging young people in hunger- and poverty-related issues and identified opportunities for Feeding America to stand out as a youth cause-of-choice. Armed with this crucial information, we created a three-year strategic plan to initiate and build youth engagement. This plan included disruptive strategies, a distinctive marketing narrative, short- and long-term fundraising plans, and internal resourcing recommendations all designed to drive greater engagement among young people with Feeding America and to ensure it stood out in a crowded field of nonprofits.
THE IMPACT
Feeding America now has a three-year strategic plan with that will guide the organization through its intended growth among young donors.