Keep Waco Beautiful Amplified Restaurant Week, Raising $55,000 With a New International Passport Sponsor

Keep Waco Beautiful is an environmentally focused nonprofit organization that is tasked with a plethora of projects such as cleanups, education, tree planting, and much more. It’s no easy feat for their small team, but another duty that lies on their shoulders is fundraising to support their multiple initiatives. Executive Director Carole Fergusson said, “I think Waco has the most nonprofits per capita, and a lot of them are crisis organizations. So my local fundraising dollars are so tricky, and I've had to think very differently in all my years in this role.” 

The Goal

Fergusson first started Waco Restaurant Week in 2019, but the event took a pause for a few years during the pandemic. It was revived in 2023 and proved to be successful. Not one to settle though, she set forth on a mission to do more – for the participants, restaurants, sponsors, and her organization. 

“I always wanted to figure out a way to kind of create some sort of user experience,” she said. “Because that's something I care about very deeply.” She decided to create a page on her website that laid out the participating restaurants and experiences. “It was nice,” said Fergusson, “but not super helpful because you still had to click through to web pages to see what the offerings were for each restaurant. It helped, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted.”

The Plan

In 2025, Keep Waco Beautiful was introduced to Bandwango and Fergusson was able to create the interactive, digital experience that she had envisioned all along. The Waco Restaurant Week Passport became the missing piece that took her already successful campaign to another level. She explained some of the things that caused her to try the platform in the first place, “The usability, all the offerings, and being able to put it in one spot.” It allowed participants to have all of the week’s experiences in one handy place. It also didn’t require them to download an app – another feature she appreciated. She said, “I don't need another app in my life.”

With the new digital experience, she was also able to create a check-in challenge and offer prizes to incentivize passholders to visit participating restaurants. She said, “I think that gamification was just such a unique aspect to it. It was really interesting to see people actually use the check-in, and get really excited about it, and really want some of the things that we had.” 

How Keep Waco Beautiful is Using This Campaign to Raise Funds for Their Nonprofit Organization

Keep Waco Beautiful requires all participating restaurants to pay a small early registration fee. Early sign-up is just $100, and general registration is $150. Late registration goes up to $200. Over 50 restaurants participated this year, and all were local except for a couple that were Texas-based chains. All registration fees were being donated to Keep Waco Beautiful.

“My goal at the end of the day is that I want this to be approachable, and to make sure what they're getting for their spend is so much more.” The participating restaurants are a part of the promotion for months leading up to the event. Fergusson said, “Even if they get two to three new customers during that week, that's still two to three that they probably wouldn't have had. And most reports from our restaurants showed that they saw at least a 20-30% uptick in sales compared to last year, at least in that same event week.”

The Pass Has Given Them Another Sponsorship Opportunity to Sell

The nonprofit organization also saw that the new passport came with another golden opportunity to maximize sponsorship revenue. “That helped me leverage the Bandwango partnership with my board,” she explained. Bandwango’s in-pass ads allowed them to sell a sponsorship to a new sponsor they had never worked with – Uber Eats. Fergusson shared, “That ad space was such a great asset for us. And being able to use it for this sponsor paid for our Bandwango license. It was definitely worth the investment.”

Uber Eats used two ads throughout the campaign. The first was a generic ad, but the second one had a call to action to encourage passholders to use the food delivery service. “They ran a promo where you could get 50% off of your next two purchases,” Fergusson said. “And people loved that! I had several people reach out to thank me for that. It was such a unique way to engage with the local community from their perspective.”

Having Access to Real Data Was a Game-Changer

For the first time ever, Fergusson was able to have access to data that showed exactly how many people the campaign was sending into local restaurants. “That’s something that has always been a barrier,” she said. Most of Keep Waco Beautiful’s fundraising comes from restaurants and sponsors, so it was critical to have hard data to share. 

“When I'm pitching to restaurants or even sponsors, it is so hard for me to explain how big of a deal it is. They want me to show them metrics. I try to tell them how greatly attended everything is, but that doesn't work. And so having these metrics has been advantageous.” She was thrilled to see for herself how successful her one-week campaign was, and can’t wait to use that data to recruit restaurants and sponsors for the 2026 Waco Restaurant Week Passport. 

Results

Fergusson knew Waco Restaurant Week was valuable, and she was excited to now have hard numbers to show the impact. She’s also pleased to see the growth in fundraising revenue. The numbers proved just how impactful the campaign had become. 

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• $55,000: Amount of money raised for Keep Waco Beautiful

• 2,013: Number of Waco Restaurant Week Passholders

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Fergusson said they took other data into consideration as well. “We also worked with our local economic development department to see how long people were staying at certain locations, where they were going, and how sales were looking. It was pretty impressive to see just how much activity that week was having.”

Keep Waco Beautiful’s Tips for Creating Your Own Successful Restaurant Week 

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Build a committee

When Fergusson first started this program in 2019, she did everything on her own. “I've never had that until this year,” she said. “It was good to just have a group of people helping, whether it was securing restaurants or conceptualizing fun ideas throughout the event week.”

Work with partners to promote the campaign 

Keep Waco Beautiful did a small social media campaign and bought Instagram ads that ran in the week leading up to Waco Restaurant Week. Their partners were integral in helping promote the campaign as well, though.  Destination Waco saw value in the program as well and they ran ads on a strategically placed digital billboard that was located on the main interstate that runs through the city. The DMO also ran digital ads and a local magazine donated four months of full page ads. 

Encourage your restaurants to offer good deals

Keep Waco Beautiful allowed their participating restaurants to offer discounts and/or featured menu items within the passport. “We helped them understand what is going to get people into the door,” said Fergusson. She shared some of the types of deals that she felt worked best. “I think people love having a buy one, get one free offer, a discounted combo or entree, $2 appetizers, or buy an entree, get a free appetizer.”

Consider having a kickoff event 

For Waco Restaurant Week, a local distillery had a kickoff event and invited several participating restaurants to do a tasting of their best menu items. They also tied in one of their whiskeys as a part of the tasting. She said, “That was a really well-attended event, and this is the second year that they've done that. It was just such a fun way to kind of gather people, kick off Restaurant Week, and taste a bunch of the restaurants that are participating in the event week, all in one spot.”

Create experiences during Restaurant Week, too

Keep Waco Beautiful has created other fun events throughout restaurant week. Through a creative sponsorship with a high-quality Western apparel company, they created a taco night, complete with live music and margaritas, at a high-end boutique hotel. She said, “You cannot just assume, just because a company is selling clothes that they don't have anything to do with restaurants. Get a food truck out there, get a bar out there, create live music. There's always unique ways to create partnerships and activate your city in a whole new way.” 

Conclusion

When talking about her relationship with Bandwango after her first campaign, Fergusson said, “I think it was probably one of the best partnerships I've ever been able to be a part of. It's been really helpful to have a platform like Bandwango contribute to what we're doing.” She speaks highly of the level of service she’s received from the Customer Success team and feels she has a true partner to help her small staff achieve their big goals. 

In addition to their restaurant week pass, she’s also created Taco and Coffee Passports, and even sold another in-pass ad sponsorship to a local orthopedic doctor. She’s thrilled to find more ways to use the Bandwango platform for other initiatives, and is excited for the 2026 Waco Restaurant Week Passport. She said, “I think this next year, we'll see a better turnout for more ad opportunities. And now that we've seen it work, and we have metrics, I think people are going to be more willing to buy into the ad space options.”

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Do you have an existing restaurant week or month that you want to take to another level? Or are you looking for fundraising ideas for your nonprofit organization? Book a free consultation with our team to learn more.