How the Greater Chicago Food Depository stewarded & cultivated COVID-19 donors inspired by AI

About Greater Chicago Food Depository

The Greater Chicago Food Depository is Chicago’s food bank. Founded in 1979, its mission is to end hunger. The Food Depository works in partnership with a network of community-based organizations and individuals. Together, they connect their communities with healthy food, lift their voices and advance solutions that address the root causes of hunger – poverty, systemic inequity and structural racism.

The challenge: Cultivate relationships stemming from an influx of COVID-19 donors

The increase in need and resulting spike in the number of people who sought emergency food assistance during the pandemic was unprecedented. On average, the Food Depository’s network of food pantries and programs saw an increase of 120% more people in need. At the same time, awareness about hunger in the community rose as the media drew attention to the increasing amount of people facing hardship in their communities. 

As a result, individual giving donors at the Greater Chicago Food Depository grew by 70% between 2019 and 2021. This influx of new donors created an opportunity for the fundraising team at the Food Depository: they wanted a tool that made it easy to strengthen relationships beyond the initial emergency response period.

This led them to Gravyty’s AI-powered donor engagement platform, a tool designed to help streamline stewardship and cultivation efforts. In the years since the pandemic, the Food Depository sought to continue their fundraising success by effectively cultivating new donors to become more engaged in their mission  and to sustain new giving levels for donors who increased their giving.

The solution: Use AI to streamline primary portfolio management & qualify prospective donors

The Food Depository fundraisers developed a strategy to streamline primary and discovery portfolio management. Their team of individual giving relationship managers use AI to help prioritize donor prospects they should reach out to and send customized outreach based on donor tier and past engagement. The platform assists the relationship managers by bringing their work directly into their inboxes so they don’t have to seek out information between multiple tools. 

Managing relationships with donors in Gravyty portfolios was simplified through bi-directional CRM tracking, so all donor actions and notes were recorded for whichever gift officer reached out. The team also kicked off a successful donor discovery strategy, assigning each gift officer a discovery portfolio, segmented by tier. Relationship managers pre-write their own messages and Gravyty learns modifications they make over time. To ensure they never miss a stewardship opportunity, the Food Depository team leans on Gravyty notifications when an unassigned donor makes a significant gift.

Solution spotlight

Gravyty’s AI-powered fundraising solution helps fundraisers personally engage 4x more donors, significantly improving outcomes. With Gravyty, create a sustainable, scalable pipeline through AI-powered donor discovery, integrated digital giving data, portfolio saturation and omnichannel donor outreach. Reach the right donors at the right time with smart prompts, video messaging, and AI-drafted donor communications.

_{*Numbers represent year-over-year dollars raised from Gravyty portfolio donors who received Gravyty-prompted outreach. Portfolio sizes, user distribution, strategic giving amounts, and other factors may play a role in the total increase.}