Thank you to donors - July 2025
With the help of you, our wonderful donors and our volunteers, this year we have supported even more people in need. Every pound and tin donated and each hour given by volunteers contributes towards ensuring no-one in our community goes hungry and that they have enough gas or electricity to cook meals for their families. For this we are truly grateful.
As you can see from our graph and the attached statistics page, this year has been busier than we have seen in the past. So far this year, demand has increased by 5% on last year, when we saw a huge increase of up to 27%. With your support, we have not had to make the difficult decisions some food banks in the country are having to make, of changing their offering as they don't have resources to cope with demand. Thank you.
I would like to provide you with a few highlights from our year so far.
National volunteer week
We were blessed to have a visit from Peter Cluff, High Sheriff of Guildford and his wife during National Volunteer week in June. We spent time talking about our work and they saw the food bank in action, packing parcels and greeting and supporting clients.
Some of our Tuesday volunteer team, with Jessica, Peter Cluff and Geoff, our Chair of Trustees
Energy Manage project
Our 3 month trial of support for clients who are billed for their energy was very successful with 75 clients being referred for support.
The trustees agreed to extend the project to the end of 2025, with a review in the third quarter. To date over 100 clients have been referred, with combined fuel debt of £45,000
The support we provide funding for, via Energy Manage, is a payment to the client's energy account, where appropriate and then advice on a range of issues including payment plans and tariffs. This may sound simple, but can often be very complex. The case study below is for a current client who we are supporting via Energy Manage. We have had their consent to provide you with this information.
Client referred to us with high arrears of over £7000 having fled a violent relationship and having suffered financial abuse.
We have provided 4 face to face appointments and a series of support telephone calls to help the client address the issues around their energy account and to offer general support through this difficult time. We have supported the client in making a hardship fund claim to address the energy arrears (decision pending) as well as providing energy advice and resources for savings moving forward. We have added the client to the Priority Service Register, they are on the cheapest energy tariff (and available social tariffs) and helped set up a payment plan to prevent further energy arrears.
In addition, clothing support has been arranged for their child, as well as providing an air fryer and microwave to further support energy savings. We have also been providing ongoing support to help keep the client on track during this time.
The client has also been referred to further budgeting support and will be attending one of our energy support workshops later this year.
Energy Manage are experts in accessing grants and resources. A small example of this is Love Your Neighbour, which is part of The Lighthouse project, who can provide energy saving devices such as air-fryers and electric blankets. This has been a brilliant support for some of our clients working with Energy Manage.
As you can see, this support can be life changing. This is a project which we would love to continue in the coming years, due to the long term impact it can provide for these individuals and families.
IT System - potential change
We have been very fortunate to have volunteers willing and able to set up and maintain a client referral system for us, which enabled us to keep running effectively when COVID hit. We have continued to use the same Google form/sheets system since. It is great and relatively versatile, but can also be unstable and is prone to glitches that only one volunteer is able to fix! We are therefore looking at moving to new software in the next few months that will ultimately (following a training period) reduce the time our team leaders spend preparing for a client session, provide secure referrer log in and enable us to manage our stock more effectively. The software we are currently looking at is relatively low cost and we are looking to fund this from a grant, or specific donations, to ensure that all current funds donated continue to be spent on supporting our clients and our current overheads.
Volunteers wanted
Due to the continued high demand we are seeing and a natural turnover of volunteers, we are currently looking to recruit volunteers to talk with our clients in the cafe when they come to collect their parcels and for drivers to deliver parcels to those who are unable to come to the food bank to collect.
We are currently in need of:
Cafe Listeners and Drivers on Tuesdays 12.45 - 3pm,
Cafe Listeners on Wednesdays 8.30 - 10.30am and
Cafe Listeners and Drivers on Fridays 4.45 - 7pm
Details of the roles are available on the Vacancies page of our website vacancies
Please share this with anyone you know who is looking for a volunteering role in the near future. If you are a member of a local organisation, please share this with them too. We also have a Facebook post which you can share. It is pinned to our page here https://www.facebook.com/NorthGuildfordFoodBank
I would love to have a chat with interested people about joining our team 😊
The Big Give
We are considering running our Christmas fundraising campaign with The Big Give. We will be back in touch with more information on this nearer the time.
We will be back in touch with you in late August regarding organising any donations from your Harvest Festival events.
Thank you again for everything that you do to support us and our clients, we are blessed to have you with us.
Very best wishes
Jessica
Manager
07538 413525
jessica@ngfoodbank.co.uk
