Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority NFTA Metro Sock and Glove Drive

Target Audience: Public, riders, government and business leaders, members of and NFTA-Metro employees.

Strategy Objective:NFTA Metro and its Transit Authority Police Department hosted its first Sock and Glove drive to help with those experiencing homelessness in our community. Those experiencing homelessness is a considerable concern throughout Western New York and an issue clearly visible within our public transit system. As part of the drive, we leveraged a strong relationship with the Matt Urban Hope Center, a local agency that serves those in need, and they became the host agency for distribution of all collected items. The drive was held from January 31 through February 14, 2018, with an ambitious goal of collecting 2,000 new socks and gloves.

Situation Challenge: Socks and gloves are the most needed and requested items at homeless shelters in Western New York but are continuously the least donated. We connected with two well-known organizations that are served by Metro bus or rail including the Buffalo Zoo (17,000 Twitter, and 59,480 Facebook followers), and the Buffalo Medical Campus (5,448 Twitter and 2,445 Facebook followers). Due to competing charitable drives for both items and funding, it was critical to establish a strong corporate partnership network that was committed to collecting specifically socks and gloves.

Results Impact: NFTA Metro and its TAPD launched the campaign with a media event on January 31st and hosted 9,917 impressions on Facebook in just a few hours. Our traditional media coverage included mentions by WKBW, WGRZ, WBFO and WBLK, which helped further expand awareness of the need. Our Sock and Glove drive was an overwhelming success due to a unified partnership and commitment to helping the community. Our goal was to collect 2,000 pieces and our results totaled at 6,000 donated pieces (equivalent to an estimated $18,000 in value). These 6,000 items provided immediate relief for an estimated 550 families in Western New York.

Why Submit: The campaign's unique artwork and brand reflected the "heart" of the issue - the homeless community is in desperate need of socks and gloves. The underlying message was clear and strong and traveled well through social media, so much so that, Bridgedale Outdoor Ltd., a global market leader in performance socks headquartered in Ireland, learned about our campaign and donated an additional 3,000 socks in May of 2018. This increased the overall outcome to 9,000 socks collected, which was four-and-a-half times over our original goal. The campaign helped bring awareness to the need for socks and gloves for those that are suffering from conditions of homelessness and their struggle to stay warm in the winter.