Case Study: Culture Aid NOLA achieves rapid, large-scale emergency food distribution after Hurricane Ida with NationBuilder

Culture Aid NOLA leans into community to pull off heroic response to Hurricane Ida

Culture Aid Nola, a small New Orleans nonprofit founded to deliver no‑barrier, dignified food aid, faced an immediate crisis when Hurricane Ida hit an unevacuated city—widespread outages, massive unsolicited food donations from local restaurants, and the need to rapidly recruit and coordinate volunteers and logistics. To get the word out and manage donations, signups and communications while staff were dispersed, Culture Aid Nola used NationBuilder’s website, CRM and communications tools.

With NationBuilder, the team launched a branded donation page in 20 minutes, built action pages for volunteer sign‑ups, used email broadcasters, text messaging, social dashboards and phone forwarding to coordinate activity. The impact was rapid and measurable: they were cooking within six hours, served roughly 4,000 meals a day during the immediate response, mobilized about 250 volunteers, and moved just under 100,000 pounds of food at a single festival distribution—continuing to serve roughly 30,000 pounds of food a week—results the organization credits to NationBuilder’s quick-build pages and integrated outreach features.

Culture Aid Nola

Erica Chomsky-Adelson

Culture Aid Nola