Food For the Hungry: Using Social Media to Save Lives

"They Die One at a Time, and So We Can Help Them One at a Time"

  

With thousands of children dying each day 

from hunger, in 1971 Dr. Larry Ward founded Food For the Hungry with the belief that just as children were dying one at a time, they could be helped one at a time. 

While not everyone may be familiar with them, they are a Christian nonprofit international relief and development organization with operations in over 26 countries.  Originally, they worked to help shelter, feed, and clothe survivors of natural disasters, but have since expanded in working on long-term development with the poor to transform impoverished communities.  
 
Although FH is active on a number of sites, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest to name a few, their main focus is on Facebook and Twitter.  At the same time, they have an awesome blog that they are extremely active on.  
 
One thing that stuck out to me was their target audience. Only one third of their followers are located in the United States, so they stay rather silent on many domestic issues, having developed much more of an international voice,  with topics ranging from clean water to human trafficking. Honestly, although I follow them on social media, I somehow managed to overlook that aspect, but going back, just by looking at the comments of their Facebook posts, you can easily see just how global their audience is. 

                                                                                    In August of this year FH went to Guatemala for their third blogger trip, giving their bloggers (many which have their own blogs in addition to blogging for FH) an opportunity to share their experiences with their audience on the work being done.  Each trip features a live tweet chat, and on each trip it has trended WORLDWIDE; this year there were 3,000 tweets sent out, and since then, there have been over 2.8 million unique visitors to the blog from that trip.
 
Have you ever received an email from or seen a post from a company advertising their online catalog? Well, FH uses the same methods (email, blog posts, social media posts) to promote their catalog during the Christmas season in what they call the “Twelve Days of Christmas”. The only difference, you’re not shopping for yourself, instead, you’re shopping for families in impoverished communities, buying them things that can provide them with sustainable food and income like goats and chickens.  Over $45,000 was raised last year in just eight days! 
 
With so many options for interaction of Facebook, how do you increase your Facebook likes by over 1000% in less than two years?...Just ask FH.  By focusing on their core audience, with only 8,000 fans in January 2012, FH currently has over 88,000 fans!
 
Beyond social media, FH launched an artist program in 1997 where artists take a few minutes out of their concert each night to share stories with their fans about the work FH is doing to help raise sponsorship for children around the world; this is how I first learned about FH. Always mentioning thier Facebook and Twitter pages, by FH being active on so many channels, it’s simple for fans to do a quick Google search in the days following the concert and easily connect with the organization. 

 Introduction to Food For The Hungry