At Food Rescue Hero, we know that the success of food recovery hinges on having the right tools and support to empower dispatchers and volunteers. Our favorite updates from 2024 improved efficiency, promoted equity, and made the volunteer experience more enjoyable. From increasing the visibility of nonprofit partners to optimizing volunteer routes, these updates reflect our commitment to empowering every hero in the network.
Quality of Life Improvements
Save & Finish Later
Dispatchers are masters of multitasking. At any given moment, they are working to get rescues claimed, assisting volunteers in the field, recording and placing incoming donations, and then some! This year, we’ve added features to make everyday tasks easier and faster.
When entering an incoming donation, the dispatcher doesn’t necessarily have all of the information they need. For example, they may have secured a donation but are waiting for confirmation that a particular nonprofit partner can accept it. To eliminate the need for bookmarking donations outside the platform, we added a Save & Finish Later button so that dispatchers can enter the details they have on hand and return to the rescue later to finalize and publish it.
Duplicate a Rescue
Every rescue is certainly unique! Nevertheless, dispatchers often have to create multiple rescues that differ by one or two details. Our network shared with us how valuable it would be to duplicate a rescue and then fine-tune the necessary differences. We added a Copy button to eliminate the tedium of data entry wherever possible.
Rescue Search Bar
Our dispatch dashboard comes with many different filtering and sorting options to help dispatchers monitor the day’s operations. The dispatchers in the Food Rescue Hero Network asked for a rescue search bar and we delivered. Users can now search their past and upcoming rescues by donor, nonprofit, food type, or volunteer.
Emphasizing Impact
Suggested Nonprofits
With a new donation, dispatchers rarely have time to comb through nonprofit partners to find ones that are open, close by, and can take the type of food that is available. The most expedient path is often to call on a trusty partner who always picks up the phone and readily takes available food. However, relying too heavily on familiar partners can unintentionally sideline others. Organizations with irregular hours or limited staff often miss out, despite their ability to accept donations.
To make it easy for dispatchers to quickly identify the best-fit recipients for a donation, we developed Suggested Nonprofits, which uses the nonprofit partner database to formulate a ranked list of agencies to call on.
In the few months that this tool has been widely available, we’ve seen an increased distribution to nonprofits that were previously in the lower percentiles of donations. This tells us that the enhanced visibility granted by the Suggested Nonprofits tool is having a meaningful impact on the equitability of donation distribution!
Multi-Stop Rescues
Up until 2024, all of our rescues consisted of one pickup point and one dropoff point. But it’s often more efficient to combine stops along a single route. It saves volunteer hours, gas mileage, and reduces the responsibility of getting all rescues claimed. In 2024, we added the ability to create rescues with multiple donors and/or multiple nonprofit partners. So far, we’ve already seen an increase in pounds rescued per mile driven, and we expect that metric to increase as our partners identify opportunities to combine routes.
Volunteer Focus
Multi-Stop Rescues
Volunteers are invaluable in food recovery operations. Food Rescue Hero already provides an experience unlike any other food recovery platform, with an easy-to-use mobile app that helps our partners retain and expand their volunteer base. In 2024, we strove to make the volunteer experience even better.
First, the multi-stop functionality that allows dispatchers to consolidate routes also made it easier for our network’s super-volunteers, who previously juggled multiple rescues and manually planned their stops. Now, they can have an optimized route with multiple pickups and multiple drop-offs built for just them.
Social Sharing
Social media is a powerful tool in any organization’s outreach strategy, especially when you include your volunteers. In 2024, we worked to improve the social sharing functionality in the mobile app by leveraging the native sharing capabilities of volunteers’ mobile devices. This new sharing workflow allows volunteers to share their stories and accomplishments to any of their preferred apps.
Delivery Tracking
We also worked to make compliance easier for volunteers. To help them track successful delivery, we added the ability to take a photo at drop-off in lieu of a signature. This gives volunteers an additional option to demonstrate their completed rescue without seeking a receiver’s signature.
Push Notifications
Our 2024 updates also included some improvements to the push notifications that increase claim and completion rates. Our partners can now set a maximum notification radius and customize how often to send notifications for a given rescue. This prevents volunteers from being notified of rescues that aren’t feasible for them.
With each feature we introduce, we aim to make food recovery easier, faster, and more equitable for everyone involved. From enhancing dispatcher tools to optimizing the volunteer experience, the updates in 2024 have empowered our network to maximize their impact and reach.
We’re excited about the positive changes we’ve seen so far and remain committed to supporting the Food Rescue Hero Network in transforming surplus food into meals for those facing food insecurity. Stay tuned for more improvements as we continue to build a future of smarter, more effective food recovery.
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Our model merges technology, civic engagement, and public-private partnerships to introduce a new transport and distribution model that transforms surplus food into a resource and changes the way we approach food access.
And we are seeing sustainable, scalable and measurable impact.
