City Harvest, a food donation organization in New York, will deliver 8.5 million pounds of food for the holiday season as a result of using QR codes in their information campaign and donation drive.
The said organization, which provides emergency food to shelters and communities, employed QR codes on their print ads, Facebook page, phone booths, shelters and other public places that enable people with smart phones to scan the code and look at the information and make a donation right away. The code gives the user an option to surf the City Harvest website, view information and videos on the organization’s workings, and most importantly, make a donation.
The method is an efficient one as it enables easy online donation and it allows direct calling to City harvest’s hotline. Jilly Stephens, executive director of City Harvest, stated that potential donors want to act immediately and the QR technology offers them to learn and give instantaneously.
The organization, although focused on food collection and delivery, also needs cash donations to run its operations especially on food trucks and the staff overseeing the distribution. Through the ease of donating through scanning of the QR code, more people are giving specially on the appealing and hassle-free process.
QR codes offer more advantages to charity organizations. It reduces the cost of advertising as no running costs are incurred for it will be the users themselves who check the code that will be available as long as it can still be scanned. It also provides an interactive, engaging and highly educational means of addressing the donors for different multimedia content can be linked to the code.
City Harvest is a NY based charity organization helping 300,000 individuals through 600 food programs, soup kitchens and food centers.
