Expanded Resources for Fundraising
June 11, 2020As readers know, the National Reframing Initiative has been developing communications resources to make the case for funding human services during the age of COVID-19. The latest in the series is a sample message for potential donors around food and nutrition support that has become a dire need. To fulfill our potential, we all need access to nutritious food that represents the building blocks of health and well-being for people of all ages.
With so many unemployed due to the pandemic and schools and community locations that provide meals closed, hunger has been spiking. “Overall rates of household food insecurity have effectively doubled” and mothers with children ages 12 and under reporting “since the pandemic started, ‘the children in my household were not eating enough because we just couldn’t afford enough food’” increased 460 percent from 2018 to April 2020, according to the Brookings Institution Hamilton Project.
While some federal legislation passed in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis expanded access to food, we know that food banks are experiencing unprecedented demand.
To support hunger relief organizations in their development efforts, we drafted a sample letter to prospective donors. The letter opens:
[Organization Name’s] goal is to make sure everyone in [community name] has the nutritious food necessary to power their well-being because when people experience hunger, they’re missing one of the most important building blocks for being healthy and contributing to the vitality of our community. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, is driving up unemployment and underemployment, making it harder for many of us to buy nutritious food to keep us and our families healthy. The effects are intensified for people who were already on shaky ground prior to the pandemic because of conditions like low wages and a lack of affordable, nutritious food options.
Read the rest of the letter on page 4 of the Sample Messages. We hope this tool is helpful to you in your communications. Human service organizations and allies are welcome to freely borrow or adapt any language that meets their communications needs. Like the other messages in the series, much of the language in the Food and Nutrition sample can be adapted to suit other issues as well.
SPOTLIGHT: New National Community Action Partnership Video
The National Community Action Partnership has ”produced a customizable commercial that Community Action Agencies can use to raise visibility within their local communities during the COVID-19 national health crisis, so that customers and other community members know” agencies are open and are providing services. The video, designed for local television broadcast or social media uses Building Well-Being Narrative elements through language such as CAAs “ensure the well-being of every American family.” The imagery offers tangible examples of the types of supports that CAAs offer to people across the lifespan.