While Michael DeMarco was volunteering at the Faith Reformed Church Food Pantry in Lodi, N.J., he saw great need and knew he had to do more.
With demand for food increasing and supplies running low, DeMarco decided to try a different way to raise food for the hungry. He tapped into a web-based technology platform from YouGiveGoods to run an online food drive.
YouGiveGoods.com is a website that aims to make it easy to set up and run food drives. The e-commerce system empowers organizations to reach more potential supporters and allows people to buy food online. The online system eliminates collection boxes and handles all the deliveries, free of charge.
“Our core philosophy is to make it as easy as possible for people to help out so that more people do” says Pat O’Neill, CEO of YouGiveGoods.com.
DeMarco, a member at the Liquid Church, launched his online food drive on May 20 hoping to raise $500 worth of food. He met his goal in three days. He increased his goal for the food drive to $1,772 worth of food. When the food drive concluded on June 9, the total amount of food raise was a whopping $3,529.
“When we started, I thought raising $500 would be tough and that raising the goal to $1,772 in two weeks would take divine intervention! I am overwhelmed by the openness of people’s hearts to care about people who they may never meet or know,” DeMarco says.
“A lot of the success can be attributed to the YouGiveGoods drive model. Instead of just writing a check, people can go online, shop and purchase exactly what they would like to donate to the food pantry. People generously want to help others and when the logistics of giving are this simple the results are astounding.”
