Reputation building and community engagement campaign - ‘Halloween trick or treat for your local foodbank’

While reputation building and community engagement are two distinct campaign types, they are deeply connected - reputation building earns trust, and community engagement sustains it. The Halloween Trick or Treat for your local food bank is a campaign that ticked many boxes including, enhancing the organisation’s reputation, raising awareness of food poverty and engaging the community to contribute to a cause.

Organised by the University of South Wales Students’ Union, the ‘Halloween Trick or Treat for your Local Foodbank’ campaign was a light-hearted attempt by student volunteers to tackle food poverty by going Trick or Treating for food donations on Halloween.

The campaign had three main objectives:

1. To raise awareness about the Students’ Union

2. To engage a diverse student community

3. To improve the reputation of the Students’ Union within the local community (previously tarnished with complaints about noise and messy student nights)
   

   What was achieved?

   Launched in 2018, the success of the campaign furthered in 2019 when neighbouring universities joined forces and helped generate food donations of over 163 kilograms in one evening alone
   
   So far, over 550kgs of donations have been raised, positively contributing to the community, gaining a digital reach of nearly 35k, as well as building brand reputation
   
   After pausing during the COVID Lockdown period, the campaign was re-launched in 2024 by Nicole Machado with the help of a group of independent volunteers.