FoodShare and Firebrand Join Forces in a Creative Partnership.

By Deborah Manning | Posted: Thursday July 2, 2015

With a shared passion for our local community and a strong desire to help those in need, a special opportunity for sponsorship emerged. 

FoodShare was founded in 2012 and since it's launch the social venture has grown from delivering the equivalent of 1000 meals a month to regularly distributing more than 30,000 meals a month. This significant growth has seen operations expand from collecting and distributing food in founder Deb Manning's car to requiring a truck and a busy driver out on the road servicing the expanding list of donors and recipients.  

With a vision to continue growing the collection and distribution of surplus food to those in need key sponsorships and relationships with the business community are essential. FoodShare has been fortunate enough to enjoy fantastic support from a large number of organisations and from a dedicated group of volunteers who continue to help extend the reach of the venture.  

One key area support was needed was the development of a marketing strategy, marketing implementation, design work and development of new fully featured and custom designed online presence. 

In a serendipitous series of events, as is often the case with these things, once the need was identified a creative partnership fell perfectly into place. It began with FoodShare's volunteer Designer Rebekah McNutt getting a job at local web, design and marketing agency Firebrand, and from there the pieces began to fit together. Firebrand had a long history of supporting community projects and Rebekah's involvement in FoodShare quickly came to the attention of Firebrand's Managing Director Rebecca Twemlow and communication between the organisations began. 

"Firebrand had been seeking a charity or a cause aligned with our values that we could establish a long-term partnership with. Across our 6 years in business we've enjoyed supporting a wide range of charities and community organisations including the likes of Fortune Theatre, Base (South Dunedin Social Sector Trials) Feed the Need and Brockville Community Trust and giving back has always been a part of our business. However the experience we gained lead us to realise that delivering a part of the solution, i.e a website, or a new brand, doesn't always provide the biggest impact. 

We wanted to invest our time, effort and energy delivering a full service partnership to an organisation that would return it back 1000 fold to the community and have a significant impact on many lives. We believed that a long term partnership would also allow us to see our full service provision used to it's potential, from forming a strategic marketing plan to creative direction - these bear the best fruits if executed with consistency across a longer time frame. 

The more we learned about FoodShare the more we knew it was a perfect fit and something we wanted to be part of. FoodShare has a massive reach, coupled with strong strategic leadership and a clear vision of what they want to achieve. We saw the opportunity to forge a partnership where our services would significantly contribute to growing the venture and scaling it to achieve it's goals." - Rebecca Twemlow

As Creative Partner Firebrand are focused on delivering sustainable solutions using the teams design and marketing expertise. The first step has been the design and development of a new website which has launched to great fanfare and with a marketing plan and video series underway the future of the partnership is bright for all concerned.  

We'd love for you to take a look at our new website - www.foodshare.org.nz

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