How Kindful Helped The Nashville Food Project Get Off Spreadsheets

One in seven people in Nashville lacks access to enough food to sustain a healthy lifestyle.

At the same time, 40% of all the food in Nashville goes to waste.

That’s why The Nashville Food Project exists. Formed in 2007, TNFP grows and recovers food, prepares and cooks made-from-scratch meals, and shares it with their community. Not only that, but they also partner with organizations that are working to combat poverty, unemployment, low wages and escalating housing costs – factors that all contribute to the challenges that the most vulnerable residents of our city face.

When Teri Sloan, the current Chief Operations Officer, joined the organization she inherited a system based entirely on spreadsheets. “I love a good spreadsheet, don’t get me wrong, but we needed to do something else. We’ve got to get more organized.”

That’s where Kindful came in.

Kindful + TNFP

Experience With More Complicated Systems Led Them To Kindful

“In other nonprofits I’ve worked with, I’ve used more of the big, complicated systems, like Raiser’s Edge and that sort of thing,” says Teri.

The Nashville Food Project had tried Salesforce several years before, but didn’t get the support they needed to get it set up.

“We were really looking for something that is simple and easy to use for our full staff, that everyone could get a quick intro to it and figure out what to do with it. And Kindful really met that need.”

Teri is able to get team members up to speed on Kindful with minimal training due to its intuitiveness and simplicity.

“When I train new people on how to use Kindful, it’s like an hour or two. It’s even simple enough that a lot of times I can just set people up and say, ‘Hey, sign on, you know, click around, explore. Let me know what questions you have.’ And most people are able to figure it out pretty easily.”

Kindful + TNFP

The Nashville Food Project is able to connect to other systems they depend on for other aspects of their operations.

Save More Time

"We do have Kindful synced with Mailchimp and Eventbrite. If someone comes in and volunteers, we automatically upload their information to Mailchimp and invite them to our distribution list, which then adds them into Kindful."

Raise More Funds

"Anytime someone attends a Food Project event, they're automatically added into our system, which is really nice and convenient to just have all of those things happen automatically and not have to keep up with it too much."

Do More Good

With fully integrated systems, The Nashville Food Project can spend more time concentrating on alleviating hunger and less time making sense of multiple spreadsheets.

When I train new people on how to use Kindful, it's like an hour or two, you know. It's even simple enough that a lot of times I can just set people up and say, 'Hey, sign on, you know, click around, explore. Let me know what questions you have.' And most people are able to figure it out pretty easily.
Teri Sloan, Chief Operations Officer, The Nashville Food Project

Built To Scale

The Nashville Food Project was able to leverage Kindful during a particularly busy time for the organization – the 2020 pandemic – when the need for their services was at an all-time high.

“The last year we saw more first-time donors than ever before. In a typical year we get around 300 first-time donors. Last year we had 800 or 900 first-time donors. And so it’s been really great to have good tools to keep interacting and engaging with those folks who gave for the first time, because there were a lot of them.”

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