Liquid Church Uses Technology to Help Fight Hunger
While Michael DeMarco, a parishioner at the Liquid Church in Nutley, was volunteering at the Faith Reformed Church Food Pantry in Lodi he saw great need and knew he had to do more. With demand for food increasing and supplies running low, DeMarco decided to try a different way to raise food for the hungry. He decided to use the web-based technology platform from YouGiveGoods (www.YouGiveGoods.com) to run an online food drive.
YouGiveGoods.com is a website that makes it easy to set-up and run food drives. The e-commerce system enables organizations to reach more potential supporters and allows people to buy food online. The online system eliminates collection boxes and handles all the deliveries, free of charge.
“Our core philosophy is to make it as easy as possible for people to help out so that more people do” says Pat O’Neill, CEO of YouGiveGoods.com.
DeMarco launched his online food drive on May 20 hoping to raise $500 worth of food. To his surprise this goal was met in 3 days. He increased his goal for the food drive to $1772 worth of food. When the food drive concluded on June 9, the total amount of food raise was a whopping $3529.
According to DeMarco, “When we started, I thought raising $500 would be tough and that raising the goal to $1772 in two weeks would take divine intervention! I am overwhelmed by the openness of people’s hearts to care about people who they may never meet or know.” He continued, “A lot of the success can be attributed to the YouGiveGoods drive model. Instead of just writing a check, people can go online, shop and purchase exactly what they would like to donate to the food pantry. People generously want to help others and when the logistics of giving are this simple the results are astounding.”
The Liquid Church was founded by its lead pastor, Tim Lucus, in 2001. The church’s vision is to take church to the people. It has campuses in Morristown, New Brunswick and Nutley, NJ.
You can view the entire online food drive at www.yougivegoods.com/HelpUsLoveTheLocalCommunityOfLodi.
(Source: Christian Newswire)
