United Way of Buffalo & Erie County: GiveSmart Success Story

The greater Buffalo area has experienced significant crisis and hardship within its community since 2020. With as many as four in 10 people living in hardship, the COVID-19 pandemic was disproportionately difficult for so many and created a deficit, so that when other challenges came, the community needed dedicated fundraising and support.     

United Way of Buffalo & Erie County had well-established workplace giving and other funding sources. Still, when their crestfallen constituents experienced several high-profile catastrophes in a short period, United Way quickly realized they needed an avenue for evergreen, individual giving.     

Challenge & Solution

When the racially-motivated May 14 shooting happened, several partner organizations collaborated with United Way of Buffalo & Erie County to put up a fundraising form and page, so that individual donors had an avenue to provide both short- and long-term community support. GiveSmart offered an easy-to-set-up webpage and form so that this new group of fundraising and grant-making organizations could mobilize quickly.    

Then, a devastating blizzard arrived in December of 2022, claiming over 40 lives and leaving countless other people without power and heat for days, with significant property damage, lost wages, lost groceries, and more. United Way of Buffalo & Erie County knew people would expect a way to give.    

GiveSmart enabled them to respond agilely and mobilize a fund within days of the crisis. GiveSmart’s customizable, embeddable forms allowed the United Way of Buffalo & Erie County team to better engage with their support network in creating The Community Resilience Fund.     

Results

United Way of Buffalo & Erie County, recognizing that the need for crisis response is likely to recur, determined that establishing an evergreen emergency response fund would be prudent. The Community Resilience Fund and its predecessor have engaged donors from over 1,000 ZIP codes; an easy online giving option has proven critical to the Fund’s success. Now, when a crisis occurs, they do not need to wait to set up a new outlet for giving. The existing Community Resilience Fund can be repromoted at any time within minutes of a need arising. 

One surprising piece of United Way of Buffalo & Erie County’s response fundraising was how donors used the Note field, available on all donation forms. As funds poured in from around the country, donors began leaving touching notes of encouragement and support. This bit of inspiration was one more way that GiveSmart’s easy-to-use platform made a challenging period a little easier.   

United Way of Buffalo & Erie County has been a GiveSmart customer for nearly 8 years, initially turning to the solution for a text-to-donate platform. Their team finds the platform intuitive, which has opened up additional opportunities to use the platform. They’ve more recently tried new-to-them initiatives, such as peer-to-peer giving as part of their largest volunteer day, QR codes in marketing, voting competitions, and third-party fundraisers.   

GiveSmart offers unlimited campaigns and use of these tools with every contract, so when United Way of Buffalo & Erie County was looking for more, they already had all the tools they needed to best support their goals.