Table to Table is Iowa’s original food rescue organization, aiming to address food insecurity for Johnson County residents. Their team achieves this by collecting directly from donors with an overabundance of food and delivering it to organizations that can dispense the food to their constituents.
In its early days, Table to Table was staffed and run entirely by volunteers, who were essential to carry out their critical mission of building vital connections between abundance and hunger. Today, volunteers are still the heart of their operations, with more than 100 volunteers per week donating their time to their mission.
Since beginning in April of 1996, Table to Table volunteers have rescued and distributed over 25 million pounds of food to area agencies.
Table to Table has responded to the community’s tremendous needs and grown at an unprecedented rate over the past five years - rescuing and redistributing over 200,000 pounds of food per month and 2.5 million pounds per year, while measuring performance by the value and the types of food they collect. In response to this challenge, Table to Table was searching for a comprehensive systems upgrade to improve their process efficiency and continue to scale for further growth.
Key solutions needed to focus on their food rescue program logistics included route building, mapping, and volunteer scheduling. Managing food-related data related to donations, distribution, and rescue programs were also key priorities. Finally, the team recognized they needed a system to manage their relationships with volunteers and all their many constituents.
In partnership with Passion Fruit Partners, Table to Table migrated from eTapestry® and implemented the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) as their centralized system to manage donor, constituent, and volunteer data. Salesforce with NPSP enabled Table to Table to synthesize their data and rapidly build a more comprehensive view of their total engagement with constituents across the organization.
The next phase was for Passion Fruit to implement Salesforce’s Program Management Module (PMM) to manage Table to Table’s food rescue operations. Combined with Table to Table’s existing processes to manage their volunteer onboarding, PMM was configured to enable the team to execute route scheduling and planning directly from within Salesforce.
Case Management was configured in Salesforce so that volunteers and staff could report donor and recipient issues/feedback, and manage resolutions in one shared system. Passion Fruit also added advanced features to allow vehicle maintenance management for the trucks that pick up and deliver rescued food.
As partners, Table to Table and Passion Fruit built a solution that will continue to scale for growth and maximize its impact on the community. Most importantly, Table to Table can now use this solution to stay focused on its mission - building vital connections between abundance and hunger in their community.
