It’s official! Congratulations to the ten states who placed in the Top 10.
- Oklahoma
- Vermont
- Oregon
- Idaho
- Connecticut
- Missouri
- Indiana
- Tennessee
- New York
- Wisconsin
In the coming week or so, we’ll be working with Tyson Foods and other partners to select the dates and receiving food bank for each truck.
In the meantime, we’d like to know how each state prevailed. Were you part of the team that led your state to victory? Let us know the secret to your success here in the comments.
89 Comments
How will you decide which food bank receives the food? I think it should be based on participation and promotion of the event! We did a lot of tweeting and facebooking in order to get cans donated to NYS. This was a lot of fun, thanks for putting it on!
A fellow co-worker sent the original message to our staff. I forwarded it to all our volunteers, posted it on GroveNet (a local town hall type electronic forum) and posted it on Facebook.
hurrah for Oregon
On behalf of all the hungry people in the state of Oklahoma, we want to thank you and all the supporters who donated a can of food during this promotion. The two Food Banks in Oklahoma can really use the help. We are experiencing about a 40% increase in need right now. And local food donations are down. This is coming at such a great time.
Foodlink from Rochester, NY did a lot of promotions for this campaign via Facebook & Twitter! A lot of our fans & followers participated by donating a can to New York Sate. And I was actually the first can for New York State! I think these promotional efforts should be considered when deciding where the food goes.
This campaign was a lot of fun! Thanks for putting it together. Surely a lot of people will benefit from this!
St. Vincent de Paul Food Recovery Network did extensive outreach via email, facebook, person to person and by telephone. We asked our supporters to help get a truck load of chicken for Oregon to feed hungry people. Here in Oregon 1 in 5 people suffer from hunger or food insecurity knowing this, our supports wanted to help. Tyson Foods made it easy for people to help with a very simple process. We are very excited to be one of the top 10 states that will be receiving a truck load of chicken.
I run a child care, and I posted a sign up on the door for all the parents to go to the web site and register for Oklahoma. I also posted on facebook to do it for friends and so did most of my child care parents as well. We got several hundred people between the day care and church to sign up.
When Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central IN received the initial email we started contacting our staff and friends. At first NY and IN were battling it out and I could tell by the tally someone in NY was working at the same time I was. We’d add a few and then they would and we went back and forth. Then OK came on board and we got busy contacting everyone we knew to help us by email, facebook, twitter. We asked the other food banks in IN to help as well to help share this truckload of food. It’s been fun and exciting and we love it that IN is in 7th place! Woo hoo!!!!!!!!
Wow – we had quite the time mobilizing Indiana! I sent the info out, multiple times, to each of our Indiana regional food banks and asked them to share it with all of their agencies and as many donors and contacts as they could. We here at Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana got our staff and board of directors involved in signing up and sharing the info with their circle of colleagues, family and friends. We put it on our Second Harvest FaceBook page and our personal FaceBook pages and Twittered to beat the band. We asked even our out-of-state friends to vote for INDIANA! We had a lot of fun with the hype and the thought of bringing in a truck load of protein. If we are selected to receive it, we will share it equitably with the Indiana food banks who helped win the prize! We Can End This! I look forward to the next steps in this exciting campaign!
I received an email from the Oregon Food Bank for this virtual can drive going on and ended up posting it on facebook. Way to go Oregon!
We’ve got the story on our blog about how Oklahoma won the Digital Food Drive. Here’s a direct link: http://www.regionalfoodbank.org/Food-Bank-Blog/?p=450
I did what Sasha did
YAY Oregon Food Bank!!
CT is Super Happy right now!!!
Our strategy was simple: Twitter, Facebook, Distribution list emails…ALL THE TIME. Hammer the message and challenge people to work as a TEAM!
I am a member of the Youth Leadership Board at the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma. At our March meeting I learned about the digital food drive, so I wrote an email giving the website link and asked caring citizens of Oklahoma to donate a “virtual can.” I sent the email to 4-Hers, my church’s email list, and to Dorothy Cassel the past president of the Silver Haired Legislature. The word spread quickly and Oklahoma retook the lead. Thanks to all of those who voted, Oklahoma is grateful to be a recipient of the donated food.
Will the food be distributed to other food banks in Oklahoma such as God’s Food Bank in Guthrie?
Hooray for Connecitcut! Foodshare here in Bloomfield is excited that Connecticut stayed in the top 10
Tried to get as many people to virtually donate!
We promoted the Digital Can Drive through our various social media: twitter and facebook; and even sent it out to our families and friends to get as much support as possible for Connecticut. As the drive was nearing the end we stepped up our tweets and asked people to do what they can to support the drive.
Thanks to Wisconsinites for making the effort, and thanks to all the sponsors who made this possible!
Our foodbank sent out two email blasts– one when the campaign was starting and another the Wednesday before it ended– calling on our supporters to participate. We also posted it to our website homepage. Some of the staff also sent emails to friends and family, and others posted it to their facebook page. One of our donors even posted it to an online bulletin board; encouraging her whole company (300+ people) to vote!
Jeff at Oregon Food Bank here. In 24 hours, we jumped from no-place to 3rd place thanks to our wonderful volunteers! All it took was a single email. Oregon thanks you!
Our organization shared this information to our facebook memebers and they forwarded the same information to their friends..and so on…that’s great that Indiana is one of the winners in the top 10!!! Indiana you rock!!! Thank you so much for the opportunity to allow our organization to get involved. God bless!
Metropolitan Oasis,CDC
Rev.Floyd E. Dumas, Community Outreach Coordinator
The coordinator of the Kiwanis Club of Tulsa’s “Done In A Day” project (Bob Piland) sent out the notice for us all to get involved. We worked this past Saturday at the food bank of eastern Oklahoma and along with a club-sponsored food drive this digital drive was part of the lead-up to the project. This has been a great experience for the members of the Kiwanis Club of Tulsa, Oklahoma!
thank you thank you thank you!
We used a lot of fwd emails. I sent out to several organizations I belong to. Plus several local TV news stations helped with a news story and a “click on” site on their web pages. Tulsa has always supported good causes with our votes.
I received a e-mail from a AT&T Pioneer to go to the site and I did just that and here we are the winners, you can’t beat OKLAHOMA giving even if we are a RED state.
We used our social media and foodbank staff members also posted on their Facebook pages. It went viral. I heard about it all over Boise.
We blasted information out via email, twitter and facebook and are thrilled to have been in the top ten! Thank you for this opportunity!
Wonderful News!!! Vermont #2. Way to go! I’m so happy for the food banks everywhere and the many that will benefit from them! My new years resolution was to make sure the food banks are full. This was an incredible opportunity to fulfill that goal. emails emails emails! Thanks to all of you who helped Vermont be #2 and for all involved in any way in making sure the food banks everywhere get the help needed.
People in Oklahoma are very supportive, and active with donations and calls for help. If you put it out there, with the request, they respond.
I was suprised that more states did not have a better response. It was surprising that some states had less than 200 votes….
We won because there are so many Oklahomans who are involved with social justice. Remember, social justice is NOT an evil code word!!!
Timothy Beauchamp
co-director of “Tables to Go”
member of Owasso, Oklahoma’s “Backpack 4 Kids” program
contributing writer of Gay AMERICAblog!
Pink Panthers Blog!
http://www.pinkpanthersblog.com/
Even though Vermont is a small state, we have a LOT of community minded people living here. As someone who worked in a foodshelf for several years, I can tell you that no matter how bad a Vermonter’s situation is, they are always going to think of family, friends & neighbors in need. That is one of the great things that comes from living in such a place as we do. Vermonters take care of their own.
Heard about this from my daughter on FB. VT is such a neighborly state. If the word goes out, it is carried forth. I think we’re used to doing things one can at a time. Adds up!
Hoosiers responded well to Facebook and Twitter messages. We posted and reposted including the updates as Indiana vied for the top ten. We put the message on many email lists, contacted the agencies that get food from Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana, urged all the food banks in the state to reach out to their constituents and asked everyone to vote and then pass it on! Our board members got involved, local college students and pretty much everyone we could think of. We had a great time and were thankful that it was more than a vote. People were connected to the We Can End It website where even more opportunites were listed.
This is the most wonderful news! Never underestimate the power of one…added all together, we can end hunger!
Our Food Resources Manager also sent out an email to his Tyson contacts to spread the word and vote for Wisconsin.
I work in the Northeast Kingdom Community Action Transitional Shelter. We had a link sent to us through our local Community Partnership group. I forwarded the link to everyone I knew and posted it on my Facebook page. All the other AmeriCorps Members in Vermont also posted on their Facebook, myspace, twitter…whatever accounts they had. Our Shelter Manager also sent the link to her daughter in Michigan. Instead of voting for Michigan, her daughter and everyone she knew voted for Vermont to get it. (She’s from VT, so she’s aware of how hungry people are in our state…which is the 6th Most Hungry State in the Nation!) Thanks! This was an awesome contest and I know everyone had fun trying to outdo Oklahoma. And for a while there, we were beating them. But just knowing that some of the people in our state won’t go hungry now because of this contest is a huge reward for me and other AmeriCorps Members in VT.
We had a great time with this offer! Hoosiers here in East Central Indiana responded and passed the opportuntiy along. We used Facebook – personal and food bank pages – and Twitter and many, many email lists. We invited all Indiana food banks to participate and kept the interest high by posting our standings and pushing for results. The last few hours of the contest saw even more emails go out. We are looking forward to sharing our Indiana load among all nine Indiana food banks!
I notified all my relatives, friends, facebook, and other on line chat sites. Hope we helped. looking forward to the next one. Thank you for the opportunity to do something good for someone else.
Hurrah for Vermont! We passed the email around to local food shelf volunteers and the area churches. Vermont is such a small state – we all have friends and neighbors in need. This is very personal for us and we thank you.
WE USED THE POWER OF FORWARDING EMAILS FACEBOOK AND TWITTER… I WORK WITH SOME GREAT PEOPLE WHO HAVE FRIENDS ALL OVER THE WORLD AND WE JUST KEEP SENDING EVERYONE REMINDERS…
As one who has worked at our local food shelf since its begining thank you to The Vermont Food Bank and Tyson Foods for helping our hungry. The VT Food Bank told us about the contest and we spread the word far and wide. It is truely amazing that such a small state could come out a winner but it shows our commitment to each other.
Great program!! Hope it continues until all the hungry are fed..I personally sent this to everyone in my contact list and also contacted our local radio station. Obviously it worked. thanks, michelle m
Thanks to Tim Cipriano, food service director for the City of New Haven for getting the word out to all New Haven, CT city employees and urging everyone to pass the word. Great job Tim!
We’re used to being #1 BOOMER !
We had a great time trying to be in the Top Ten. When we first got your email we started getting our staff and friends to help. New York was in first place and we were in second. I would get some people to post and we would be in first and then New York would get some people – there were two of us getting things going for NY and IN at the same time. We went back and forth for about an hour and then I think we both decided we needed to do some work. But we realized we had to keep this thing going. We contacted all our food banks in IN to help. We sent a plea to everyone we knew and asked them to send the cause to every one they knew. We also did Twitter and Facebook and kept our donors posted as to where we stood. We did an last minute plea that we needed to stay in the Top Ten and we did it! Woo Hoo!
The Notre Dame Club of Portland (OR) sponsors frequent volunteer efforts at the Oregon Food Bank along with many other local organizations. The Food Bank alerted us to the Can program and we, apparently, responded well!
I received an e-mail from Erin Rockhill at Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Indiana. I thought great I can do my part to help, so I e-mailed all my friends and told them to help too.
We did not come in first but we did a good job. Hopefully, we can do this again and feed more Hoosier families. Thank you!! Thank you!! Thank you!!
Our Girl Scout leader informed the girls of this drive. They volunteer every year at the Oregon Food Bank so this is great to finish in the Top 10! Way to girls : )
Thank you for doing this. These are tough times for a lot of people. As always our companies and citizens have stepped up to help their neighbors. We are all very fortunate to live in a society that values all of us.
I happened to be talking to the head of one of our food banks here in Madison. He relayed a story to me that really hits home for all of us. He decided to get in line with some of the folks at a mobile facility. The gentleman in front of him said, “Last year I was a donor, look at me now.” We just never know.
I kept posting on FaceBook, told co workers and family members. I am a nurse working in the emergency Dept of an inner city children’s hopsital in memphis, TN and we knew how much our local food banks could use this. These meals can really make a difference!!!!!!
I belong to a Lions Club in Idaho. We have had a District challenge this year to help end hunger in Idaho. This contest was sent to me by another Lions member and forwarded to as many Lions that I knew. With their help and the help of their friends, Idaho was in the top ten. Hope they do this contest again next year, hopefully Idaho will be in the top ten again.
I am a Nurse working in the Emergency Department @Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis ,Tennessee. We see a lot of patients and families who are living below the poverty level. I posted this on Facebook with daily updates and sent out to friends, family members, and co workers. I hope that the food banks in Memphis will receive some of these meals. theye are definitely needed nd woulod be greatly appreciated!!!!!!!!!!!!