Food banks often receive inappropriate food donations when what they really need is financial support. The Food • Free website educates people about making informed decisions on how to best help their local food banks to have a bigger impact on their communities. The website encourages and enables people to host peer-to-peer fundraisers and donate the cash they raise to their chosen food banks.
They believe in educating people on how to help their local food banks so that they can make informed decisions and have a bigger impact in their communities. Food • Free wants to encourage people to donate cash over food as money is the optimal resource.
Food banks often receive inappropriate food donations when what they really need is financial support. As a result, food drives, donations, and such are usually full of unwanted donated items. These items are not what food banks actually need and can lead to food waste instead of food security.
The primary target market for this organization is adults ages 20–35 who are socially active and would like to support their local charities. Influenced their friends and social circles, Food • Free can leverage this group’s energy to participate in friendly competition between fundraising teams and help food banks more effectively.
To create a website that focuses on encouraging people to donate money to food banks by using peer-to-peer fundraising and information design. This enables users to have a bigger impact their community food banks.
Colours, typefaces, and shapes were all chosen to give Food • Free a humanistic look. Elements were carefully chosen to give users a tone of community and encouragement in order to get them to create fundraisers and donate.
One of the main challenges was establishing the right brand and visual design. As a humanitarian website that was asking for cash donations, there was a fine line that needed to be considered—generally, people are distrustful of organizations that ask for money. Thus, the UI design had to reflect this and boost other benefits such as personal stories, smart spending, or community needs.
Compromise is key! While another solution to the issue could have been build a flashy social campaign or rebrand food banks to encourage donations, ultimately action and education have a bigger impact. Food • Free's website was an optimal platform to do both while also providing opportunities for creative branding.
