--- title: Your food bank needs two fundraising plans description: Food banks must create proactive fundraising plans for emergencies, ensuring rapid response and effective donor engagement during crises. image: https://blog.rkdgroup.com/hubfs/OG_Image.png --- [![](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/hs-fs/hubfs/210111-RKD-Groupthinkers-Rebranded-Logo-Blog-png.png?width=157&name=210111-RKD-Groupthinkers-Rebranded-Logo-Blog-png.png)](https://blog.rkdgroup.com) - [Solutions](https://rkdgroup.com/services/) - [Mid-Level Giving](https://rkdgroup.com/services/mid-level-giving/) - [Monthly Giving](https://rkdgroup.com/services/monthly-giving/) - [Lapsed Giving](https://rkdgroup.com/services/lapsed-giving/) - [Personalization](https://rkdgroup.com/services/personalization/) - [Connectors](https://rkdgroup.com/services/connectors/) - [Machine Learning](https://rkdgroup.com/services/machine-learning/) - [Marketing + Fundraising](https://rkdgroup.com/services/marketing-fundraising/) - [Audience Development](https://rkdgroup.com/services/audience-development/) - [Creative Services](https://rkdgroup.com/services/creative-services/) - [Data Management](https://rkdgroup.com/services/data-management/) - [Strategic Planning](https://rkdgroup.com/services/strategic-planning/) - [Analytics](https://rkdgroup.com/services/analytics/) - [Causes](https://rkdgroup.com/causes/) - [Animal Care](https://rkdgroup.com/causes/animal-care/) - [Food Banks](https://rkdgroup.com/causes/food-banks/) - [Health + Hospitals](https://rkdgroup.com/causes/health-hospitals/) - [Humanitarian](https://rkdgroup.com/causes/humanitarian/) - [Missions](https://rkdgroup.com/causes/missions/) - [Salvation Army](https://rkdgroup.com/causes/the-salvation-army/) - [Results](https://rkdgroup.com/results/) - [Acquisition](https://rkdgroup.com/results?cat=acquisition) - [Digital](https://rkdgroup.com/results?cat=digital) - [Mid-Major Programs](https://rkdgroup.com/results?cat=mid-major-programs) - [Advanced Analytics](https://rkdgroup.com/results?cat=advanced-analytics) - [Direct Mail](https://rkdgroup.com/results?cat=direct-mail) - [Multichannel Strategy](https://rkdgroup.com/results?cat=multichannel-strategy) - [Data Management](https://rkdgroup.com/results?cat=data-management) - [Media](https://rkdgroup.com/results?cat=media) - [Website Development](https://rkdgroup.com/results?cat=website-development) - [Resources](https://rkdgroup.com/insights/) - [Blog](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/) - [Benchmarks](https://info.rkdgroup.com/benchmarks) - [Webinars](https://info.rkdgroup.com/webinars) - [Ebooks + Research](https://info.rkdgroup.com/ebooks-research) - [Podcast](https://info.rkdgroup.com/group-thinkers-nonprofit-marketing-podcast) - [Field Guides](https://info.rkdgroup.com/field-guides) - [About Us](https://rkdgroup.com/about/) - [Leadership](https://rkdgroup.com/about/leadership/) - [Careers](https://rkdgroup.com/about/careers/) - [Let's Chat](https://rkdgroup.com/lets-chat/) #### Subscribe to our blog ### Subscribe to Email Updates ## Featured Post   [Dawn Opel](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/author/dawn-opel) ## [Your food bank needs two fundraising plans](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/your-food-bank-needs-two-fundraising-plans) Ask a food bank fundraiser to describe their plan, and you'll usually hear about the annual calendar. Appeals, the year-end campaign, Hunger Action Mont\[...\] [Food Banks](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/topic/food-banks) [Read More](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/your-food-bank-needs-two-fundraising-plans)   [Lori Collins](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/author/lori-collins) ## [Why fundraising's record first half doesn't feel like one](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/why-fundraisings-record-first-half-doesnt-feel-like-one) Our 2026 Mid-Year Benchmark Report is out, and the top line is genuinely good news: Mid-year revenue reached $1.86 billion—a 10-year high, up 51% over 2\[...\] [Fundraising](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/topic/fundraising) [Nonprofit Industry](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/topic/nonprofit-industry) [Data & Analytics](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/topic/data-analytics) [Read More](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/why-fundraisings-record-first-half-doesnt-feel-like-one) ## Recent Posts [Food Banks](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/topic/food-banks) # Your food bank needs two fundraising plans By [Dawn Opel](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/author/dawn-opel) ![Blog\_Full](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/hubfs/Blog_Full.png) Ask a food bank fundraiser to describe their plan, and you'll usually hear about the annual calendar. Appeals, the year-end campaign, [Hunger Action Month](http://feedingamerica.org/take-action/hunger-action-month), the monthly giving upgrade series. That plan matters enormously, but it's only half of what a modern food bank actually needs. Food bank revenue today runs on two distinct tracks, and they require two distinct strategies: Track 1: Always-On Engine. This is [the traditional fundraising track](https://rkdgroup.com/top-heavy-tower) built on acquisition of new donors, retention of multiyear donors, and a deliberate pipeline that moves people into monthly giving, mid-level and major gifts. It's the reliable, dependable support you use to grow steadily over time, and it’s what you can count on when everything else is unpredictable. Track 2: Always-Ready Support. This second track is built to respond to a sudden blast of public attention around an emergency, whether natural (hurricane, tornado, earthquake, wildfire) or more human (a pandemic, a government shutdown, federal funding cuts). The goal here is to have a proactive strategy already sitting on the shelf, ready the moment the news breaks. Most organizations are constantly thinking about and planning for Track 1. Few have a long-term strategy for Track 2. Let’s dive into how to move from a reactive to a proactive plan for when disaster strikes and your community needs you most.   ## Why a surge plan is necessary You already have a contingency plan for your warehouse and a crisis communications plan, because Feeding America requires both. You know who calls the trucking vendor, who talks to the media, how you'd distribute the food if the building lost power, and so on. But is there a similar document for a fundraising plan — the function that pays for all of it? Reacting in the moment to send an email appeal or put up a lightbox is not the same as a plan, and reacting is always too slow. Surge attention has a short shelf life, so every moment counts. In the [2025 government shutdown](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/5-ways-food-banks-can-adapt-messaging-during-the-government-shutdown), giving began spiking as early as Oct. 1. Some food banks surpassed typical monthly totals by two or three times, and a handful saw record-breaking single days. Food banks that spent those early days waiting to see what might happen next or if the shutdown would end soon simply missed the window. The donors were there. The ask wasn't.   ## **Thinking about a plan isn't the same as making one** A real surge plan has pre-made decisions on execution, along with a folder of finished assets and templates. Our [20 do's and don'ts for disaster preparedness](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/20-dos-and-donts-for-disaster-preparedness) covers this in depth, but the key elements look like this: - Nominate a single decision-maker. If approvals normally run through a committee, name one person who can green-light disaster fundraising. Committees create bottlenecks exactly when speed matters most. - Understand your audience. You know your community best, so stick to the messaging that resonates most with them. This isn’t the time to alienate your supporters. - Build 3–5 email templates now. Keep them simple and basic. Write everything except one variable paragraph you swap depending on the event. Leave space for one hero image that fits the moment. - Create a disaster image library. Stock photos and past-event images for every scenario that could plausibly hit your service area, plus a few generic options for things you've never considered. - Build a separate disaster donation form. Don't alter your main form. Build a copy-heavier version with an ask array bumped roughly 20%, since donors give more in these moments. - Plan for the other channels. A short "give now" lightbox and homepage treatment. Urgent update inserts that you can drop into the mail. Altered paid search and Google Grant keywords so people searching for how to help actually find you. Peer-to-peer texting. - Simplify everything. A/B testing, deep segmentation and dynamic content are strong practices in normal times. In a surge, they slow you down. Authentic beats polished. Critically, preparation includes the channel execution itself. This is the piece organizations most often underestimate. You cannot get a digital message in market within 48 hours if you don't already have the tracking, creative pipeline, media relationships and donation-form infrastructure in place. You cannot capitalize on a traffic spike with paid media if you've never run evergreen campaigns. The organizations that convert surge attention into revenue are almost always the ones that invested in advanced digital and paid media *before* the emergency, which brings us to the proof that this works. And you cannot send the right messages to the right people if your data segmentation is in accurate or incomplete. The last thing you want to do, for example, is to ask someone impacted by a crisis if they would be willing to give.   ## **What success looks like in action** Let’s take a look at how [North Texas Food Bank](https://current.rkdgroup.com/result/multiyear-strategic-planning-leads-to-incredible-long-term-growth-across-channels/) (NTFB) built a long-term plan for surge sucess. RKD began partnering with NTFB in 2018. They had a stable direct mail program but hadn't refined their approach or expanded into digital. In the two years *before* the COVID pandemic, the work was behind-the-scenes engine-building: - Refining mail through testing and analytics - Expanding into digital media with evergreen and integrated campaigns - Optimizing the donation form for conversion - Implementing digital tracking for visibility - Building a full-year content calendar Then, the pandemic hit. But because the always-on engine existed, they moved quickly. Digital messages were in market within days of COVID being declared a global pandemic; direct mail within weeks. NTFB brought in 77,258 new donors across FY20 and FY21, and executed a plan to convert them, growing their multiyear donor base 70% in FY21. What happened after the surge is equally important. Giving slowed as the emergency faded, as it always does, but giving levels stayed well above pre-pandemic. NTFB kept going: CEO thank-you text series for COVID donors, refined segmentation, heavy sustainer promotion, renewal-focused efforts, new channels like MMS and voice broadcasts, SEO optimization, and an 846.2% increase in digital investment in FY22 over FY19. ![A 168% increase in direct mail gross revenue over FY18, and a 480% increase in digital net revenue ](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/hubfs/food-bank-stat-row01.png) ![A 57% year-over-year lift in core donors, along with a 28,923% rise in sustainer revenue over FY20.](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/hubfs/food-bank-stat-row02-1.png) Today, North Texas Food Bank continues to build upon this work, reaching new heights in their direct response program in FY26. A strategically built and optimized program captured increased donor engagement during the government shutdown at the end of 2025, growing the number of active donors by 23% and revenue by 29%.  Foundation before. Speed during. Investment after.   ## **Surge donors are not your core donors** Here's the trap. A surge delivers a wave of new names, and the natural instinct is to drop them into your standard fundraising calendar. The data says that's a mistake. Emergency moments mobilize people who aren't currently active on your file. They give larger gifts, and they're emotionally motivated. They also want different things. RKD ran market research that surveyed 402 food bank donors, including 255 who gave in Q4 2025 and 49 who gave for the first time. Those first-time donors look different and behave in distinct ways:   And finally, they have a different demographic profile. Compared with the prior year's Q4-acquired donors, new Q4 2025 donors skew younger (median age 57 vs. 66), more female (57%, index 106), and more left-of-center (49% liberal, index 131).Your surge donors walked in through a different door, and they're looking for a different room. Acknowledge the crisis that brought them in, then introduce the programs they care about (education, school meals, pantry staples). Then, test which message earns the second gift. If you drop them into the same calendar that serves your multiyear file, you'll spend the next year watching them quietly lapse.   ## **Communicating with surge donors** Knowing that surge donors are different is only useful if it changes what you send them. So how do you build a communication plan for this group once the emergency ends? Every surge follows a similar curve: surge, plateau, decline. Don't mistake a spike for a baseline, and don't let your leadership do it either. The revenue will come back down. Whether the donors stay is the part you control. As part of your strategy for the surge support track, you must focus on four areas after the crisis: - Stewardship: These donors gave quickly and emotionally, so match that speed on the way back out. Rapid thank-you emails, short impact updates ("here's what your gift made possible this week"), thank-you calls, donor shout-outs. Speed = connection = retention. - Messaging: This is where the research matters most. Acknowledge what brought them in, then introduce the ongoing programs they told us they prioritize: educational opportunities, school breakfast and lunch, shelf-stable pantry staples. Lead with child-focused creative where you can, and test which message earns a second gift rather than assuming your house favorites will travel. - Sustainers: Reinforce value inside the first 90 days, share exclusive progress and mission updates, send a personalized no-ask check-in at the three-month mark when drop-off historically spikes, and keep them out of your standard year-end cadence if it falls within that 90-day window. - Touchpoints: Aim for at least two meaningful touches over six months: thank-you within 30 days, then an impact report tied to the crisis. Remember that this group skews younger and more digital than your legacy file, so build the cadence around the channel they came in through. Meanwhile, never pause the core program. Don't cut acquisition simply because a surge brought in new donors. Don't scale back paid media. The organizations that grew most after emergencies are the ones that never stopped investing.   ## **The takeaway** Invest in two tracks for your fundraising program: the Always-On Engine and the Always-Ready Support. But remember that the two tracks aren't parallel. They feed each other. The Always-On Engine is what makes you fast when the crisis hits. And the surge, handled well, is what makes the core donor file bigger. North Texas Food Bank didn't just survive COVID, they grew their donor base 70% because of it. That's the real goal. If you can come out of an emergency with a larger, stronger, more committed file than you had going in, you're starting from higher ground when the next one arrives. Surges will come. You don't get to choose when. What you do get to choose is whether your fundraising team spends the first 72 hours executing a plan or building one. Write the plan today. Build the templates and the image library. Then, invest in the digital and media infrastructure that lets you move in days instead of weeks. Build the conversion plan for the donors the surge brings you. Every surge is a test of the foundation you built before it, and an opportunity to build a bigger one for next time. The next surge is coming. The only question is what it finds when it gets here. ### [Dawn Opel](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/author/dawn-opel) Dr. Dawn Opel is the Food Banks Vertical Lead at RKD Group, where she shapes fundraising and marketing strategy for the sector and works with food banks across the Feeding America network. Before joining RKD, she was President and Chief Innovation Officer at the Food Bank Council of Michigan. There she helped grow food-as-medicine programs and strengthen collaboration among the state's food banks. Dawn is a lawyer and researcher whose work connects hunger relief, healthcare and public policy. 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