There are times in life where you’ve just got to take someone’s word for it. But how your last marketing campaign performed isn’t one of those times.
Jonathan Rice, Kara Hunkele, and Marvin Figgins work closely together to bring visibility to Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee’s (Second Harvest) work. And in return, they expect transparency from the marketing platforms and vendors they work with.
Together they find new donors and champions for the cause. Their work has a direct impact on how many people their organization serves. Success in marketing results in more food to share. It’s too important to leave these things up to chance.
And to put it mildly, the last couple years have been chaotic, especially for nonprofits like Second Harvest. But when lemons are in season, this team makes lemonade.
A curveball in funding
Like a lot of other food banks, part of Second Harvest’s food sourcing comes from the USDA. Every year, a certain amount of USDA food is committed to Second Harvest to help feed people across East Tennessee.
But in 2025, that commitment was slashed when 21 truckloads of USDA product were canceled on short notice. And the small team at Second Harvest was left with a huge hole in terms of what they could offer their community.
The fundraising timeline they were working with was too short to start the conversation with an external marketing vendor.So they decided to take matters into their own hands.
Kara says, "We had a major resource that canceled and we decided to run an impromptu campaign to replace that source. It was too last minute for us to ask our third-party vendor, so we did it ourselves in Feathr.”
Because the campaign came together quickly, the team also needed to be confident that every donation could be processed smoothly. With BBIP already integrated into their fundraising workflow, they were able to launch fast without worrying about payment disruptions or additional setup.
“That one email brought in around $12k in donations," says Kara.
Second Harvest had to scramble to make up for the lost USDA product. But because the team was comfortable with trying something new, and because they were used to running campaigns themselves, it was possible to turn a curveball into a home run.
When one email isn’t enough
Kara and the team like to talk about that single email because it was a sweeping success, but they know that more often than not donors and supporters need multiple touchpoints before taking the leap. And even the numbers on that email don’t take into account months of engagement before.
Jonathan says, "In Feathr, after a donor has been served an email or ad, we can then track when they land on our page and donate, and see exactly what took them there. That's not something we had access to two or three years ago. And with Luminate and BBIP on the back end, it’s easy for supporters to complete their gifts once they decide to give, and we see less donor dropoff as a result."
For Second Harvest, there’s no limit to where they’ll go to meet their people. Campaigns might start with a single email, but they’ll remind recent website visitors with retargeting ads, and then they’ll meet them on Facebook — all from within Feathr.
Kara says, “I've noticed a much better delivery rate in Feathr. I find myself running into more obstacles when I try to run ads directly in Meta, but with Feathr things just seem to work."
And that increased participation on social has really paid off, especially for younger audiences.
Marvin says, "Recently on social media, I've seen an influx of younger people following our page and engaging with that content. I do see a lot of potential there, and now we’ve got to figure out how to nudge them into becoming future donors."
Leadership buy-in
Nonprofit marketing is an essential part of pushing the mission forward. And even though the mission is the driver, having Leadership’s buy-in tends to help budgets materialize. And the mission happens more when there’s budget.
Kara says, "Being able to screenshot that report page on Feathr or send a direct link that includes everything our leadership needs to know— and one that I can customize — helps too, so that we're not over-exaggerating what we've raised, or duplicating."
Additionally, behind the scenes, BBIP helps simplify donation processing and reconciliation, giving staff more time to focus on donors and mission-driven work instead of manual administrative tasks.
Having the facts in hand helps the team find budget for the next campaign and build off past successes. It’s hard to spend money when you don’t know what you’re getting. And it’s really easy to find ad spend when you know how well things went last year.
In Feathr, Kara, Marvin, and Jonathan run campaigns in-house because it’s easy, and they don’t have to open up 10 different platforms. But even though they can do it on their own, they’re not alone. They have a team of people at Feathr who care about the mission and are thinking of new ways to help them find more donors.
Jonathan says about his contact, Calvin, at Feathr: "He's always excited, like, 'Okay, what's happening three months from now? Let’s make a plan!' It's just been really helpful keeping us on task, because with any nonprofit work, it's always the immediacy of the fire in front of you and not necessarily what's 90 or 120 days out."
The immediate results have exceeded Second Harvest’s expectations. But the good work at nonprofits doesn’t stop at the end of the year. And with Calvin and Feathr, Second Harvest is continuing to make plans for engaging and better serving their close-knit community in East Tennessee.
