Mission Possible Food Drive Challenge

In the Fall, 2020, the students in Hilbert College’s “Jesus in Early Christianity” course joined with the Buffalo City Mission to participate in its Mission Possible Food Drive Challenge. Using the Mission’s “Participant Manual” as a guide, we began our work in early October and finished four weeks later.

One of the first things that we did was create a Facebook page to help spread awareness for a drive. We were able to create and share an event on Facebook that detailed the times and locations at which we would be collecting canned goods. This was one of the main ways in which we got the word out about the food drive. Then, during a class period, all of the students constructed and decorated boxes in a fall aesthetic so that our community members would notice them and contribute.

We then placed the boxes in high traffic areas around our campus (and put a few cans in boxes before the drive started because people are more likely to donate when there is something in the boxes already!). In our view, the main challenge would not be convincing people to give, but making sure that they knew the drive was happening. It was at this point that we started our sort of “marketing campaign,” which was the majority of the work we did for the food drive. We wanted to get the word out about the drive to as many people as possible.

To do this, we advertised the drive in many different ways. We reached out to the campus employees in charge of the screens around campus that tell about different

events. We wrote a script for the campus radio station and emailed it to the creators of the show. We also created flyers talking about the drive with the Buffalo City Mission logo on them. Moreover, we composed an article for the school paper. We made sure to share the Facebook page and get others to share the page as well. We spoke with campus officials, such as the Dean of Students, and enlisted their help with ideas and spreading the word around campus. Communication was a huge part of this project. We made sure to use word of mouth communication to try and spread awareness and were in constant contact with members of the Buffalo City Mission. We also were active with the Buffalo City Mission through our Facebook page, answering weekly questions about the drive on Facebook. Another big contribution to our success was the student contributions that we had from our class, as many of them donated to the drive as well.

All of these efforts were effective, and we saw people start to donate to the boxes around campus. We were also fortunate to receive a very generous donation from a professor, which we used to buy additional cans for the drive. All of these strategies worked well: we received 145 cans of food and 180 total food items, exceeding our original goal of 100 cans. We feel that our efforts will have a positive impact on our community (we hope Can Man will approve!), and believed that our work aligned well with the Buffalo City Mission’s mission to restore hope and dignity to the hurting and homeless through the transforming grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.