Los Angeles Regional Food Bank leverages
data intelligence to swiftly pinpoint
high-priority donor prospects for major gifts

If Los Angeles County could be its own state, it would be the 10th most
populous state in America, with 10 million residents, many of them in need.
“LA is very affluent, but we also have lots of people who go to bed hungry,”
said Chief Development Officer Roger Castle of the Los Angeles Regional
Food Bank, one of the largest food bank operations in the U.S. “Even
before the pandemic, hunger or food insecurity was a significant problem
with 1 in 5 people in the county considered food insecure.”

With Blackbaud’s flagship cloud solutions for fundraising and online
marketing firmly in place, LA Regional Food Bank stepped up and into
the spotlight to answer the COVID crisis. Annual giving revenue jumped
358% in 2020 and remained 183% higher in 2021 than 2019 as the Food
Bank increased its reach of people helped from 300,000 to 900,000 each
month—a number that persisted through the pandemic.

An influx of new donors played a key role in making it possible. “We saw
62,738 new donors in 2020,” Castle said. “To put that in comparison, in 2019,
we acquired 4,271 new donors.”

Yet LA Regional Food Bank’s development team also saw an opportunity
for long-range impact by retaining large numbers of donors and identifying
those who were most likely to give major gifts, including support for a $165
million, five-year comprehensive campaign already underway. To make the
most of the opportunity, they needed the right set of data intelligence
tools—and they needed to act fast.

A Believer in Wealth Insights

The answer was clear to Castle: Blackbaud’s wealth insights, along with the
strategic guidance of Blackbaud consultants, would allow his team to move
swiftly and effectively and would integrate with the other cloud-based
solutions LA Regional Food Bank already relied on. “I’m a huge believer in
wealth analytics, and I’ve used Blackbaud products for about 20 years now.”
Given the LA Regional Food Bank’s size and easy opportunities to involve
entertainment superstars, Castle’s situation might not seem fully relatable
to everyone in fundraising. One favorite celebrity moment of his came
when Dave Grohl rallied other members of the Foo Fighters to stage a
rock show and barbecue in the Food Bank parking lot. But Castle, who
is originally from Tennessee, has also worked with muscular dystrophy
and cancer foundations, and before he joined the Food Bank as chief
development officer in 2017, he spent much of his career in nonprofits
working in database administration.

He encourages all nonprofits to consider wealth screening—no matter the
moment or the size of the organization. In fact, when he first started at LA
Regional Food Bank, he used Blackbaud tools to do wealth screenings that
helped green light and set the stage for their $165 million comprehensive
campaign, though the screenings were on a smaller scale than what the
Food Bank has pursued during COVID-19.

“Really, the prospects are already there in your database,” Castle said.
“Wealth screening is a great way to bring the cream to the top.”

Timing is Everything

LA Regional Food Bank implemented data insights from Blackbaud early
in the COVID crisis during June of 2020. Using predictive modeling with
guidance from Blackbaud’s seasoned consultants, the development team
soon created a list of 2,000 top major gift prospects, culled from a growing
database of more than 300,000 supporters, and as the pandemic continued,
they expanded the list to 3,000.

“Timing is everything in fundraising,” Castle said. “Using Blackbaud data
insights to prioritize who might need more than an invite to a Zoom call was
a top priority.”

Based on the “sheer volume and capacity” of those high-priority listings, and
the fundraising momentum his team gained before the pandemic, he made
a compelling case to the CEO to add two more development positions to
cultivate and steward major gifts. In 2022, the Food Bank also expected to
hire a planned giving director to cultivate and steward those who exhibit
indicators of planned giving propensity.

Castle was confident the return on investment would be well worth it, and
while securing major gifts can be a long-game endeavor, the move has
already yielded early results.

The Food Bank already had a major gifts program, but with their new use of
analytics and the new hires, major gifts revenue rose from $3.1 million in
2019 to an annual average of $17.3 million the next two years, including
11 $1 million+ gifts to the Food Bank’s $165 million comprehensive campaign.
Because of the all-around success of the campaign, the five-year campaign
will be completed in 2022, a full year ahead of schedule.

Thankful They Were Prepared

There’s a line in the 2001 film Spy Game that resonates with Castle in which
the character played by Robert Redford asks, “When did Noah build the Ark?”
and answers his own question: “Before the rain.”

Even before the pandemic, Castle pushed his team to make technological
advances that included migrating to the intuitive cloud-based solution
Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® from an earlier generation of Blackbaud
fundraising and relationship management software. And with his leadership,
the food bank fully implemented Blackbaud Luminate Online® to boost
engagement through online fundraising and marketing automation.
“We put all these new systems in place before this deluge of new donors
came in,” Castle explained.

Using Raiser’s Edge NXT in concert with Luminate Online and now
Blackbaud’s data insights has been a powerful combination for the LA
Regional Food Bank, allowing the development team to finely tune email
messages to giving levels and audiences, including volunteers. In fact, the
team increased the number of email sends to donors from five to almost 90
in the first year of the pandemic, “but we’re not sending to everybody,
every time.”

The impact of their overall fundraising success is tangible. In fulfilling their
$165 million goal for Building Hope: The Campaign for a Brighter Future, LA
Regional Food Bank could acquire a 256-square-foot building for expansion
of programs as well as increased efficiency and storage capacity—needs
heightened by the pandemic.

“This influx of money has changed the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, not
just for this moment, but for the future,” Castle said. “This new building that
we’ll be able to renovate will increase our capacity two-or three-fold, and
that means a lot more food getting out to the community and the people
that need it.”