Case Study: Houston Food Bank achieves $7.3M in Hurricane Harvey relief donations with Blackbaud

Houston Food Bank - Customer Case Study

The Houston Food Bank, one of the largest in the U.S. serving more than 800,000 people in southeast Texas and a Feeding America member, faced an urgent crisis after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Widespread flooding and displacement created catastrophic need while also triggering an unprecedented surge of donor interest—yet the organization had limited access to its building and needed to rapidly change messaging, scale donation processing, segment new supporters, and guard against fraud.

Using Blackbaud’s cloud solutions for marketing, fundraising, peer-to-peer, analytics, and payment services, the team quickly pivoted pre-staged email messaging (a post-hurricane appeal that achieved a 27% open rate and raised $125,000), launched a donation lightbox that brought in $7.3M in two weeks, and enabled peer-to-peer campaigns. Real-time reporting and segmentation streamlined donor communication, payment services reduced fees and caught fraudulent transactions, and the effort supported a 563% increase in transactions, tripled daily food distribution, and funded expanded programs and equipment.

Houston Food Bank

Heather Icenogle

Director of Annual Giving and Events