Case Study: Festival Foods achieves streamlined, unified grantmaking and reporting with Blackbaud's GIFTS Online

Uniting a company’s giving arms into a powerful grantmaking program with GIFTS Online

Festival Foods, a family-owned Wisconsin supermarket chain with 17 stores and over 4,500 employees, was actively giving in-kind gifts and cash grants across many communities but lacked a centralized way to track or tell the story of that giving. Each store used paper applications and local staff to manage awards, so there was no reliable mechanism or dedicated person to collect, analyze and report on the company’s collective impact.

Festival Foods hired a Community Giving Manager, Lynn Baron, and implemented GIFTS Online to centralize grant intake, vetting, review coordination and reporting. Applications now flow electronically into the system, reviews are coordinated across locations, and Lynn produces streamlined monthly and annual reports—giving the company concrete data to track budgets, measure impact and tell a unified story about its community giving.

Festival Foods

Lynn Baron

Community Giving Manager