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Minnesota’s Food for His Children (FFHC) fought their way through 4 tough rounds to finish as one of the Philanthropic Four organizations in the Twin Cities tournament. While the team was 100% volunteer-run in the US and one of the smaller organizations to participate in BFG17, they are likely the only organization to have board members and staff on the ground in Tanzania!
FFHC provides holistic community development to families living in material poverty in rural Tanzania. Since their launch in 2008, they have served over 225 families. Through their program, which costs about $21 per month per family, recipients learn new ways of farming, caring for livestock, how to run businesses, and about saving money and providing for their families. Often, this is done through a program of sustainable goat farming.
While they did have a valiant tournament run, and earned over $16,000 for their program, serving a community outside the local community did prove to be a challenge. Co-founder and Executive Director Kerrie Holschbach reflected, “I think it was harder for us to compete against organizations that serve locally because the people they impact are right here. The 1,500 people we are directly impacting are a world away.” Ultimately, their global status offered a differentiation from some of the other organizations. Kerrie added, “We have much to offer people who want to give locally, but impact globally. Many who know they have the ability to transform generations with just $21 per month are fervently passionate about giving and want to do anything they can to make an impact.”
Being a fairly new organization, the exposure provided by participating in BFG was invaluable to FFHC. They were featured in a BFG Top 10 Video, utilized the training tools provided, and their team in Tanzania learned creative ways to share their work via short video clips. They gained online fundraising experience and attracted new supporters, some of whom have started volunteering with them since the tournament. As a result, their confidence in fundraising has grown. In the pre-tournament survey, FFHC had stated that they felt they had been only ‘moderately successful’ in online fundraising to date. After their BFG run, Kerri stated, “Today, I would say that we have been very successful in online fundraising!” She added, “One comment we heard from our donors in the last rounds was that they were ‘pulling for the little guy’ because we were up against organizations that have million dollar budgets and paid staff who can focus on fundraising and communications. The nitty-gritty work for BFG was done with just three volunteers, which should encourage all nonprofits to give BFG a shot.”
While Kerri won’t reveal her top-secret tournament strategies, she said that upon reflecting on their 2017 performance, one thing she would change was the temptation to hold back asking for donations in the earlier rounds due to fear of exhausting their supporter base. She believes they would do just as well if they encouraged supporters to give from the beginning, not to wait until the end of the round or until the later rounds. Next time, she says, “we will operate from a different mindset and our opponent will be blessed by also raising more money in order to keep up with us!”
