Lessons in Lean Entrepreneurship from the Feds Feed Families campaign

Unlike most of my mid-career executive classmates, I do not have a wealth of experience in management, let alone managing a startup or extensive project for a public or private organization. So my example of running a project will be quite a bit more prosaic: my office food drive.

Every year, from around the beginning of June to the end of August, most federal government offices will take part in the “Feds Feed Families” campaign. Each office will donate food to their local food bank or charity, and send the total amount of food (as measured in pounds) to the USDA, which will total up the entire amount of food donated by federal employees for the campaign for that year. Each office has a campaign coordinator who will work with the local charities to arrange the donations, as well as organize festivities and events to encourage office donation participation.

I was my office Feds Feed Families coordinator for two fiscal years. My approach to my first food drive could best be characterized as “Build-It-And-They-Will-Come” with some elements of “Just Do It!” thrown in for good measure. My vision was an elaborate raffle system in which items designated by our local food bank as critical / high need, such as canned meets, peanut butter, beans, rice, and other calorie dense and protein-packed foods, would be worth a higher amount of raffle tickets than items not designated as critical. At the end of the food drive, the office would raffle off prizes, and those with more raffle tickets could increase their chances of winning particular prizes.

Once I had the vision worked out, I went about trying to implement my grand scheme: I designed posters which detailed the values for each variety of food donated, I bought prizes, I worked out a system where people could anonymously donate and still claim their tickets, and so on. By the time I finally had the raffle setup and running, three weeks had passed, with only five weeks of donation time left to go.

I wasted critical time constructing my elaborate food drive vision, but it would have been worth it if it proved wildly popular, and I had high hopes that it would. Part of my design phase was spent doing market research, i.e. asking my coworkers what they thought of my plan, and what feedback they had to offer. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive: This sounds like a great idea! They particularly appreciated the fact that I would send out one email once the raffle was up and running, rather than send out an annoying email everyday asking people to donate food.

For all the positive feedback I received, the results did not match the market research. Donations were sporadic, and not particularly tilted towards high need / critical foods. Ultimately, the total amount of food donated was about 5,000 lbs less than the previous year, a drop-off of about 70%. My first effort was a failure, to put it generously. Where did I go so wrong?

Some insights from my failed first effort that I believe can be applicable to start-ups in general:

1. Minimum Viable Products +refinement / revision will general outpace and ultimately outperform one market-ready product. In my case, the minimally viable product was simply an office email, “Friendly reminder that the Feds Feed Families campaign is ongoing! Be sure to drop of your donations in the training room!” A simple email is fast, cheap, has the widest possible reach, and can be combined with other products (such as notification of upcoming campaign events). Cycle quickly, and persevere, pivot, or perish. Instead of wasting almost half of the food drive time coming up with the grand blowout event, it would have been more effective to use daily email reminders as the initial minimally viable product, followed immediately by minimally viable events. Perhaps the first week, I could have brought in donuts on a Wednesday, with an office email with the subject line “DONUTS!!” and a friendly reminder of the ongoing food drive in the email body. Then Friday could be “Dress Casual Feds Feed Families Friday.” Measure the feedback: which events seem to generate the most interest? Snacks in the break room? Mini-games and competitions? Random and silly emails? What kinds of snacks, games, humor are most effective? Which days of the week generate the most donations? Observe feedback, revise your approach, refine your minimally viable product, and ensure your methods are quick, cheap, and high-value.
2. Product feedback is usually more informative than other forms of market research (such as survey data). People will tell you what you want to hear, even if they know it is for research purposes. Preferences revealed using actual products rather than hypothetical ones will usually give more accurate insights. All of the coworkers I spoke to loved the idea of eschewing daily emails that constantly and repeatedly reminded people to donate food, and they also loved the idea of giving different prized values to different food items. But it it turns out that those daily reminders, while annoying, are far more effective at motivating donations than posters advertising a big event. Further, the prospect of raffle prizes did not seem to have any effect in increasing the donation of critical / high need food items. With an actual product in place, people will tell you what they really think with actions rather than words.
3. It’s cheaper to perish early than later. Rather than one elaborate event, I could have followed a minimally viable product approach in which I discovered that planned functions and events generated no more food donations than simple daily reminders. If this was the case, I could have decided that revising and reiterating my approach was unlikely to improve outcomes, and ceased trying to create a market-ready product, sticking instead to a minimal-cost daily email through the duration of the food drive.

Thoughts? Comments? All feedback is appreciated.