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Determining Effective Avenues for Sustaining a UBC Meal Donation Program

University of British Columbia. Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability; University of British Columbia. Office of the Vice-President, Students; University of British Columbia. Campus and Community Planning

This study investigates the best way to frame and structure a meal donation program at UBC to increase funding and support, as well as optimize fundraising efforts. We predicted participants who were provided with excerpts featuring other students’ experiences with food insecurity would donate more than participants who were not. Furthermore, we predicted the most favourable donation methods were passive (by default) ones that require minimal effort on the donors part, as opposed to active (self-driven) methods. Through an online survey we assessed our hypotheses by randomly assigning UBC students, faculty and staff (N = 96) to receive either a basic questionnaire about their knowledge of food insecurity, amount they were willing to donate, and preferred method of donating, either with or without food insecurity quotes from affected students. Results from a Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney U-test suggest that there is no significant difference in donation amount due to the inclusion of personal quotes, however the effect of other marketing strategies, such as using visual elements, were not considered. A Chi-Square goodness of fit test indicates there is statistical significance in students’ preference for passive donation methods over active ones, speaking to the need for providing convenient donation avenues tailored to different UBC demographics. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

Report

eng

2020-08-12

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/75437

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/