Not-for-Profit Case Study: Breakfast for Learning

CLIENT:

Breakfast for Learning is a nationwide charity with revenues of $5 million, the bulk of which is given directly to 3,100 school-based nutrition programs that feed 250,000 schoolchildren.

CHALLENGE:

With many corporate donors preferring to fund programs in communities where they have customers, Breakfast for Learning found itself stranded in an information gap, unable to provide fact-based data on which communities its programs were serving. The group turned to EA to help them make a strong case for support by defining each school’s service area and mapping the locations where potential corporate donors’ customers overlapped.

SOLUTION:

EA analysts provided the group with Envision, its online platform that helps users analyze markets and customers with demographic data and PRIZM C2, the company’s segmentation system that classifies Canadians into 66 lifestyle types based on geodemographics and Social Values. Using Envision, analysts were able to quickly produce 3,100 demographic reports detailing the service area for each of the charity’s nutrition programs—generally a three-kilometre radius around urban schools and a ten-kilometre boundary around those in rural areas.

RESULTS:

The charity quickly found a variety of ways to see the detailed analytical profiles. Knowing the ethnic makeup of each school’s population allowed staffers to devise menus that reflected the cultural nuances of area families. To aid in its cause-related marketing initiatives, the group used marketing analytics to attract corporate partners like Moxie’s Classic Grill, a Calgary-based chain of premium casual restaurants. Using Envision, Breakfast for Learning produced a series of data-rich maps illustrating the proximity of the company’s restaurants to the group’s nutrition programs. Now, when a diner orders one of Moxie’s feature dishes, the company donates a percentage of the proceeds to Breakfast for Learning while educating customers about the charity’s work. “The goal is to make our work more tangible to donors,” says Wendy Wong, president of Breakfast for Learning. “The data is helping us answer questions we couldn’t answer before.”