Each year FareShare, Leader Community Newspapers and the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation encourage Melburnians to donate to Feed Melbourne. All donations of $2 and more are tax deductible, and donations up to $225,000 will be matched by the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation. Articles appear in all 33 Leader newspapers and events are held across Melbourne.
Every single dollar donated to Feed Melbourne goes to a food charity.
During the campaign we encourage local food charities to nominate for a grant. We ask them to complete an application form that involves describing what they do and how a grant of up to $10,000 would help them support people in their community.
All donations are banked by the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation and at the end of the campaign the foundation advises how much money has been raised. Two thirds of all donations are available as grants for community-based charities, for fridges, freezers, pantries, etc. The remaining one third is allocated to Victorian food rescue charity FareShare.
In the first four years Feed Melbourne gave over $1,000,000 to 85 community food programs. And boy, has it made a difference to them.
A special grants advisory committee – including FareShare, Foodbank Victoria and the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation – reviews the applications and decide how the funds should be distributed to have the greatest impact to food relief efforts in Victoria. This year applications for grants will close on 9 April 2013.
FareShare:
FareShare is a community group that works with businesses to collect surplus nutritious food. Each day 40 volunteers use this “rescued” food in FareShare’s Abbotsford kitchen to cook 2000 hearty, nutritious and free meals, which are given to Victorian charities to distribute to people in need. FareShare receives no government funding and the money that is allocated from the 2013 Feed Melbourne campaign will be used in establishing a new kitchen capable of cooking one million free meals a year for Victorian charities.
