Even before the global pandemic, operating within constant change and uncertainty were no strangers to the team at Swipe Out Hunger, which aims to end hunger for college students nation-wide. Working with students naturally means cycling through leaders on each campus every couple of years. Every day, teams are on calls with students, staff, and administrators, connecting on the best approaches to support each individual campus, and develop a holistic view of the school’s food insecurity efforts.
“We scaled from 150 campus partners to 450 in the span of 6 months thanks to the seamless onboarding infrastructure that HubSpot provides for our new volunteers."
The team needed a CRM that could track detailed records of conversations across multiple touch points, tracking not only the needs of individual students, but also the robust food security programming available on campus. HubSpot’s platform brought everything together into one place, empowering volunteers to have accurate conversations and allowing the team at Swipe Out Hunger to collect critical data on program efficacy. With richer 1:1 relationship building and more powerful program data to share in external communications, the organization has been able to realize an accelerated impact to the tune of 300% partnership growth. Plus, the team is anticipating a migration to Marketing Hub, which will further their ability to gather data and be pointed in both crafting specific narratives and targeting the audiences who hear them.
Though Swipe Out Hunger’s HubSpot journey began simply—with a focus on keeping detailed records that could provide continuity across so much flux—it quickly grew into a Sakari-integrated SMS engagement dream. In addition to existing program work, Swipe Out Hunger launched the Student Food Navigator Network within the CUNY system, powered by Sales Hub and our Sakari integration, to run its peer to peer referral network. Peers connect with others to help them understand their SNAP benefits and locate food resources in their communities. As a pandemic response program, the navigators have connected with over 3,500 CUNY students, via an impressive, semi-automated yet human-centered solution built on Sakari’s SMS technology.
Next up? An expanded suite of programming with a recent acquisition of the College and University Food Bank Alliance, which will require that the organization be even more connected than ever before with its CRM and technical infrastructure.
Critically, HubSpot hasn’t just enabled more seamless communications for staff and volunteers: Its also unlocked reporting capabilities and data-sharing across teams and campuses. The Swipe Out Hunger staff spends less time going back and forth via email, less time formatting and importing .csv files from Wordpress into HubSpot, and more time evaluating how to improve programs and services. They can now compare partner schools with one another using HubSpot’s filtering and reporting, allowing them to measure growth over time. And, of course, integrations with other tech systems allow them to track engagement beyond digital communications as well—an essential piece of any multi-pronged community program. Because maintaining data is much easier, the team is actually excited about data tracking and data-informed decision making: Now those are some of the sweet digital-driven words to our HubSpot for Nonprofits ears.
When it comes to stories of impact, Swipe Out Hunger’s is truly extraordinary, and we couldn’t be more proud that HubSpot and Sakari have played such a key role in the organization's careful growth. There’s more to do together—including improving our volunteer management tools and considering how we can better template data to meet the needs of partner programs—and we know we’ll get there, together. Learn More About Swipe Out Hunger.
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