Genie is talking about The Hunger Challenge.
7 bloggers last year, 22 this year.
Tyson took interest last year in the Hunger Challenge and delivered food to food banks. Last week, they delivered 2K pounds of food to a food bank.
(My “b” key isn’t working well. This is not good. “b” is important in blogging.)
I always think I’ll try The Hunger Challenge, maybe next year I’ll do more than think about it.
Valerie talking about World Food Day. BloggerAid. Changing the face of famine. Buy their cookbook, proceeds go to school meals program.
“Is Martha in the room?” – Lydia asks. Apparently Martha is not here, darn.
She taught cooking to a women’s shelter, in Boston I believe. She never baked a cookie that didn’t come from the Tollhouse bag. She saw Martha decorating some cookies and a friend told her that she could do it – so they did it. Husbands made the icing, bad grey colored.
Some friends made new icing with great colors… double iced. She wrapped up the cookies and took them to a Latina Transition program. People saw these large colorful cookies and loved them. Friends said when are you doing this again… holidays came around, she baked cookies, people stopped by and decorated. Domestic Violence shelter took their cookies.
Kept doing this cookie decorating once a year. She’s now a blogger. Someone she didn’t know blogged about Drop in and Decorate – she understood the concept of connecting with the community. About serving more than basic human needs, making them smile when they see the cookies.
She contacted King Arthur Flour – how about a baking kit? They finally agreed in 2007 holiday catalog. She wrote to food bloggers asking them to talk about King Arthur Flour and Drop in and Decorate. 35 of the 50 food bloggers said yes. Magazines and other traditional media picked it up. In the 2 years since that happen she’s had events in 18 states. In December they’ll decorate their 10 thousandth cookie for donation.
Here’s the King Arthur Drop in and Decorate Kit.
Pim – Menu for Hope.
She feels funny talking about Menu for Hope because she feels like most of us have been involved in it.
If there’s one thing that we should remember when we walk away is the concept of community. We have a community of food bloggers and we work together – I started it but I couldn’t have done it without help.
“She’s an inadvertent fundraiser.”
They typhoon in Thailand drove her to do something. She didn’t have any experience with it – so “Hey, I’m just going to beg my readers. Give me $10… I’m just going to put out a bowl and hopefully people will drop ten bucks in it.”
We had menus with recipes and ask people to donate money to get the recipes. I think we raised $1500 in a week. She was amazed.
Second year I thought about doing it again and now it’s a yearly project. We raised a quarter of a million dollars in the last few years.
It’s more structured, from begging for money to getting gift donations for people to bid on. buy raffles for.
If you do fundraising on your blog, be transparent. Tell people where the money is going.
Make the giving process fun. Menu for Hope – prizes (like the naming of the first Ewe.)
They wondered why they were giving money to a giant organization, the UN you don’t really know where the money is going. We rethought it and decided we had to ask them where the money was going. Bloggers need to know the connection, so they got to choose the specific country and specific school lunch program.
If you want to do something, find a cause that fits your passion and your audience.
Genie – How did you choose the format for presenting your program?
Lydia – became an organization, she found as it began to grow there was more info that she wanted to put out not just the recipes for icing but list of agencies that have received cookies, how to find recipients, so I needed a place for the info but I also wanted a permanent home on THe perfect pantry (her blog) – she decided to start a separate blog but that she’d use a badge that’s always on her blog that links Drop in and Decorate.
She wanted it separate because she monetizes Perfect Pantry needs to keep that separate.
Pim has different point of view. Menu for Hope started organically on Chez Pim. We’ve thought about putting Menu for Hope on a separate site but for me activism is part of every day life so it’s important that I separate it from my life. I’m not going to be a full time fundraiser so I think of Menu for Hope as part of what I do within the community that I connect to.
Lydia – Menu for HOpe is once a year, Drop in and Decorate is year round. In order to keep DIandD has to be nurtured all of the time.
Val has a social network. We don’t want to just ask for money, they want to have fun in the network. View and review program, contacting publishers and companies who provide products for review – for fun within the network. If it isn’t fun, then people will leave.
Genie asks how they use social networking to increase visibility.
Pim says Menu for Hope was big before Twitter took off. Will be interesting to see what happens this year. Would like to break 100K, hopefully everyone will tweet and facebook it.
Lydia – all of you who tweeted yesterday about my flight, if you tweet about our project we’ll have great year. She wants to get better at using it. Personally she’s not a good tweeter but for the sake of her organization she wants to become better.
Valerie agrees networking is key.
Genie – has working on these projects changed how you feel about activism?
Lydia been an active volunteer for entire life. Started with people she knew in her kitchen, has evolved to people she’s never met in person.
Valerie she would not have found a BC organization that freezes food and ships without the internet – learned more about global projects and her own community.
Pim – she’s drunk with power, no no not really, she’s never been a big activist, she’s been in a few programs but not a big part of what she did.
Sam asking about charity fatigue. Been wary about doing too much. If all I ever do is charity stuff, will readers lose interest? How do you keep from feeling like you just can’t do any more.
Pim – it can be a problem. It’s fine to take a break. For me it’s 2 weeks in December, she tries not to get heavily involved in other campaigns. She’ll donate, personally but not on Chez Pim.
Valerie – delegating projects to members within the community so one person isn’t doing it all.
Pim – bringing in new blood, new volunteers who can keep it going when people burn out.
Genie – resources and links will be posted on BlogHer.
Lydia – Q&A – we are four people lacking in special skill, we aren’t uber talented have no training, nothing special but we’re passionate about something. That’s the only special skill we have. How many of you are using your food blogs to share things you are passionate about (show of hands) what will it take for the rest of you to do that?
Great session! Thanks ladies.