Strenghening the Canadian Food Bank Network

Food Banks Canada is a national charitable organization dedicated to helping Canadians living with food insecurity. They support a network of Provincial Associations, affiliate food banks, and food agencies that work at the community level to relieve hunger.

After receiving a grant to improve collaboration amongst their network they turned to my agency, The Pixel Shop, to help them envision and create a solution.

We began this project with a robust research phase, including a network survey to determine the needs of affiliate members followed by a series of generative design workshops with representatives from the provincial associations and Food Banks Canada staff. This research helped us frame the needs of food banks and resulted in a series of key learnings. The primary insight regarded how network food banks often felt isolated, and that they rarely communicated with one another. This helped us focus in on ways in which we could bring members together to connect, share best practices and ideas, and form stronger relationships.

Workshops, surveys, and synthesis ensured that we were focused on the needs and concerns of network members.

A web-based knowledge sharing portal was proposed as the end deliverable. The aims of the portal included community building and collaboration amongst members, knowledge dissemination from Food Banks Canada, and knowledge contribution from the network. Using Facebook as a starting point, we introduced a feed of member activity that would greet users when they logged in. This approach helped signal the social aspect of the tool and encourage outreach. Since the organization and its members also indicated that they were interested in sharing documents, best practices and webinars, we ensured that these were also within arms' reach.

We worked extensively with the client and its members to ensure that Ignite would become a familiar and intuitive tool for its users.

The portal was built using the organization's existing CMS (Kentico) as a starting point - the most cost-effective and technically feasible approach. Leveraging their existing system was also beneficial because it allowed the client to ensure the most up-to-date affiliate member information - a true bonus for an organization that had difficulty in maintaining direct contact with idividual food bank staff and volunteers.

Ignite was built to be more than an intranet. We weaved familiar patterns such as the feed and reactions into this tool to ensure that the learning curve would be rapid.

Ignite became an essential part of Food Banks Canada's network strategy and effectively contributed to better collaboration between the charity and its members. Food Banks Canada staff, members, and affiliate members were enthusiastic about the increased transparency and connectedness that this tool brought to them.