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Food For All Recruits Help in Adopting Social Media

FALLS CHURCH, Va. Food For All here is getting ready to tweet. The non-profit organization, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, is gearing up to revamp its Web presence and to begin incorporating social media such as Twitter and Facebook into its communications package. With Twitter and Facebook, it's a great way to reach out to our customer base, said Jessica Dunsmore, director of

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — Food For All here is getting ready to tweet.

The non-profit organization, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, is gearing up to revamp its Web presence and to begin incorporating social media such as Twitter and Facebook into its communications package.

“With Twitter and Facebook, it's a great way to reach out to our customer base,” said Jessica Dunsmore, director of sales and marketing at Food For All. “In our case, that includes the manufacturers, the stores and the customers, and our plan is to send out targeted messages to each of those groups.”

Dunsmore, who joined Food For All early this year and is heading up the website overhaul, said Food For All hopes to launch the new social media tools by early next year.

To help prepare the new effort, Dunsmore has been working with Special Olympics Florida, another charity that, like Food For All, receives strong support from Publix Super Markets, Lakeland, Fla. The retailer connected the two organizations, she explained.

“We've been in touch with them [Special Olympics Florida] about how they use social media, and what works for them,” Dunsmore said.

The expanded use of social media will supplement the organization's current communication and outreach efforts, she said.

“People are more attuned to the Web technologies now,” Dunsmore pointed out. “We've done a little bit with newsletters, but these social media are really what everyone is drawn to now.”

In addition to the new social media presence, Food For All is also seeking to make some improvements to its website, using Google Analytics.

“We want people to come to our website and see what we do, and use it for fund raising, but we also want to be able to redirect people toward our participating retailers — that's our objective,” explained Denis Zegar, president and chief executive officer, Food For All.

The project also involves redoing the website “so that if retailers want to see how to participate, they can,” he explained.