Case Study
Food Bank Uses Data Analytics to Foster Exponential Growth
CLA’s digital strategies connected data systems and enhanced functionality, helping Gleaners food bank scale and support their communities.
Organization
Nonprofit food bank
Need
Connected data systems for faster decision making and streamlined operations
Outcome
Increased functionality led to the ability to serve more people
Understanding the situation
Gleaners is a nonprofit food bank serving Indianapolis and 21 surrounding counties, with a mission to lead the fight against hunger. When pandemic-fueled economic struggles left more people in need of food, its $35 million operation quickly increased to $180 million. One Gleaners location that typically served 300 households soon started serving 2,100.
Such rapid growth caused logistical upheavals throughout the organization, and Gleaners needed a way to keep up with the accelerated needs of its communities.
Exploring the challenge
CLA took time to get to know Gleaners and identify potential digital strategies that could help improve management and operations. With tools like AI and machine learning, our CLA Digital team connected multiple data systems, pulled information together, and increased the functionality of their operation so Gleaners could continue to scale, grow, and better support their communities.
Achieving results
With a new data warehouse and real-time dashboards providing consistent and consolidated information across all departments, Gleaners gained the key insights they needed to put the right people in the right places. A modernized suite of tech solutions helped the organization improve order and pick-up accuracy, boost donor retention, and keep pace with their community’s current and future needs.
There’s no way we could operate at the level of volume and sophistication that we are today without a digital strategy. The importance of data and analytics to operate our business — we couldn’t function without it.
