Community Share Fund Donors Report - 2023

A big thank you to everyone who donated to our Community Share Fund last year! In 2023, the fund’s first year, we received $900 from 24 donors with an average donation of $37.50. Of the $900 donated, $558 went towards donating produce to the Cambridge Food Bank's Mobile Food Market, and $342 went towards supporting our work harvesting, processing, and delivering produce to the House of Friendship's Guelph Street Emergency Food Hamper Program. Valued at our wholesale rate (which is generally 25% less than market price), we donated a combined total of $5201 worth of produce to these programs.

Cambridge Food Bank

Having secured funding to purchase wholesale vegetables from local famers, the Cambridge Food Bank’s Mobile Food Market has been able to make meaningful and practical impacts on food security in our area – not only by distributing healthy foods to underserved communities, but also by supporting the livelihoods of small-scale producers like us. After some conversation with them about their needs and our capacity, the Community Share Fund allowed us to offer them an additional 20% discount on our wholesale pricing. We provided the Mobile Food Market with 200lbs of beets, 200 bunches of kale, 238 bags of lettuce mix, 200 bunches of parsley, 200 sweet peppers, and 93 cabbages. Despite some initial difficulties in finding the flow of our working relationship, we ended the season having supplied them with $2708 worth of produce - $2150 sold wholesale and $558 donated. This has been a wonderful partnership, developed with your support, and we're looking forward to working with them again in 2024!

House of Friendship

Over the course of the 2023 season, we also donated $4636 worth of produce to the House of Friendship's Guelph Street Emergency Food Hamper Program. For several seasons, the Guelph Street House of Friendship has been the primary recipient of our excess harvests and missed CSA pickups – a relationship dating back to Adam’s time at The Working Centre. A few of the more numerous items we donated this season include: 470 bags of salad greens (117.5lbs), 117lbs of beans, 614 cucumbers, 113.5lbs of sweet peppers, and 100 bunches of herbs. The remaining $342 in the Community Share Fund not used by the Cambridge Food Bank allowed us to recoup a small portion of our costs incurred in harvesting, processing, and delivering donations of excess produce to the Guelph Street House of Friendship. In one case, the Community Share Fund allowed us to harvest and process 159 bags (53lbs) of excess salad greens specifically for donation that would have otherwise been left in field. With your support, we're happy to be able to continue to donate to this well-used community resource!