From Kitchen to Cloud: Global Nonprofit Preps for Disaster Recovery and Remote Workflows

Nonprofit Cooks Up Confidence in Backups and Beyond

World Central Kitchen (WCK) believes that food is a universal human right. Founded in 2010, the global nonprofit serves nourishing meals to families impacted by disasters. As WCK expanded their operations to include approximately 100 full-time staff members in 2023, they also increased their ability to respond to simultaneous disasters by quickly mobilizing local volunteers and contractors. But the work of executing their mission doesn’t stop at responding to disasters, WCK also employs a robust communications team to share the stories from the ground with donors and the public, spreading the word about their emergency food relief efforts.

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When Brian Chan joined WCK as their first IT systems and network engineer in 2021, he quickly realized that, while the team was scaling, the organization’s data was vulnerable to the very same disasters they respond to. Simultaneously, he wanted to streamline operations for the organization’s communications team. They’d just onboarded a new video editor who needed the autonomy to quickly find assets, but the team members who’d been at WCK longer were sometimes the only people who knew where specific images or video clips lived. And, ultimately, Chan hoped to take more of their workflows to the cloud to help the team be as nimble as possible in accessing media assets. 

A “Bare Bones” Archival System

Chan could only describe WCK’s previous storage infrastructure as “bare bones.” A couple LaCie RAID arrays in the Washington, D.C. headquarters stored all the video and pictures gathered on the ground—around 90 terabytes. 

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The photographers and videographers WCK employed would send in their content via hard drives which would then be loaded onto the LaCie arrays. For quick turnaround projects like social media posts, they would sometimes share content with the editors and content team via Google Drive and other file sharing platforms. But overall, the LaCie arrays were the only solution for the organization’s long-term storage, backup, and archival needs.

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Coming from a previous IT administration role at a university, Chan learned to be rigorous in protecting against data loss, whether it happens over failed servers, drive crashes, or a flood or fire in the data center. “Having just this one storage location was uncomfortable and a little scary,” said Chan. “If someone spilled coffee all over those drives or knocked them off the desk, it would be devastating to lose that archival content. So, our director of content and I discussed implementing something—a backup, an off-site backup, an online backup—to protect that data.”

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Additionally, the LaCie arrays couldn’t be accessed remotely—someone had to be physically present at the office to pull archival footage, which slowed content production. Overall, the system’s drawbacks limited WCK’s ability to explore the types of media projects it wanted to develop like shorts and documentary films. 

Safeguarding a Feast of Photos and Videos 

WCK needed a data management system robust enough to handle the volume of photos and videos in their growing library. Chan first installed a QNAP NAS device, adding another 100 terabytes onto the system to expand their on-site capacity. 

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The next step was finding a cloud storage solution to give them a much-needed off-site backup. While WCK didn't anticipate frequent access to their backups, the organization needed the assurance that data would be readily available in case of an emergency. What's more, WCK sought a solution that would seamlessly integrate with their existing infrastructure, minimizing the need for coding or extensive technical knowledge.

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Moving their backups to the cloud was also the first step toward a more streamlined, accessible media library. Chan sought a solution with the capabilities, pricing, and integrations to scale with the team in the future, serving as not just backup, but active archive and, one day, a media management solution as well. 

Backblaze Serves Up Hassle-Free Content Backup

When he began looking for a new solution, Chan immediately thought of Backblaze—he’d been following Drive Stats (Backblaze’s reporting on its drives under management) over the past decade. For Chan, Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage's single-tier pricing for readily accessible data storage had won out over other providers, including AWS. After seeing a demo of Backblaze B2, Chan and the communications team also determined that the service would fit their media workflow needs in the long term, considering its ability to pair with many media software and hardware tools.  

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“Cost was one of our major criteria, and so was being able to plug into different services,” said Chan. “Because this is all media and content, we wanted a company that had experience working in that space.”

Whipping Up a Seamless Transition to Backblaze B2

Since Backblaze already had an integration with QNAP, all Chan had to do was create a B2 Cloud Storage account then configure Hybrid Backup Sync, QNAP’s onboard backup utility, to set Backblaze B2 as the destination for off-site backups. Even for Chan and his obvious tech-savviness, he noted the process was remarkably easy.

With Backblaze B2 in place, content on the QNAP is backed up automatically. Should WCK require additional storage capacity in the future, Chan is confident in Backblaze's ability to scale seamlessly.

“We have a lot of plans to speed up and improve our media and content pipeline,” said Chan. “So far, the big thing is just the peace of mind, knowing that we have backups of this important content.”

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A Satisfying Storage Recipe—With Room for Dessert 

The benefits of Backblaze B2 extend far beyond peace of mind. For WCK, the most significant advantage has been the substantial time Chan and his team have reclaimed, allowing them to refocus on new initiatives supporting their broader mission. This newfound time allows Chan to dedicate his efforts to supporting field staff and clearing a path for the communications team to undertake more ambitious projects.

On that front, discovering Backblaze was also a crucial step in how WCK moves forward with improved media asset management. The nonprofit’s video editor will soon need a better strategy for quickly finding assets and using them in various media projects—all without relying on institutional knowledge of where content is backed up and stored. Backblaze’s integrations with media asset management software, CDNs, and other tools mean that Chan is set up to easily add those services. Now, with its backup concerns allayed, WCK can work seamlessly on building a better content pipeline into their newfound system.

“Backblaze B2 is the key to unlocking other cloud workflows,” said Chan. “And we’re going to transform how we manage media as a result.”