Coexist Community Kitchen: bringing a community together through food

• Raised £33,068 from 128 supporters
• +£10,000 Extra funding from Sovereign Employment and Training Fund
• +£10,000 Extra funding from Sovereign Thriving Communities Fund
• To provide outreach cookery classes and food provision to confront food poverty

The Coexist Community Kitchen (CCK) is a not-for-profit cookery school based in Bristol that works to provide free cookery classes and community meals for those experiencing social marginalisation in our society. 

The school, which has been operating since 2011, works closely with a wide range of support services in the area, which enables them to offer vital support to those who need it most. CCK works in partnership with a number of organisations offering support to a wide range of people including those who are fighting drug & alcohol addiction, seeking refuge or asylum, accessing mental health support services, or are in need of support as a young person or young carer. 

To continue with their ongoing projects, they needed to raise £20,000, and so the Coexist Community Kitchen Crowdfunder was born!

We caught up with Ari Cantwell, Director & Kitchen Co-Ordinator at CCK to find out more; “Crowdfunding has been an absolute game changer for us. We work really hard to generate our own funds by running public workshops, hiring the kitchen out and catering for weddings – but this only covers a small amount of our overheads.” 

“Being able to publically fundraise and access additional partner funding has become essential to our survival. As everyone is all too aware, energy prices, food prices, and the cost of living in general, has skyrocketed. This means we have to always be thinking of new ways to generate funds that can allow our vital work to continue.” 

“Our community relies on us to offer a safe, welcoming and friendly space where they can come to connect with others. We believe in the power of food as a way to bridge gaps and overcome barriers, boosting people’s confidence and building a stronger, more inclusive community as a whole. With the funds raised via our Crowdfunder we can be more resilient to price increases and create more stability for those who count on us. It has also allowed us to expand our reach, offering support to more marginalised groups.”

The crowd rallied around their project, with one supporter commenting, “Coexist Community Kitchen is a fab idea – Food feeds us in so many ways… nurturing both our body and soul and is the best reason for getting together with other people. A great project! Good luck with your Crowdfunding.”

Another said, “What an asset Coexist is to Bristol. Let’s get them to £20,000!”

In the end, the Coexist Community Kitchen smashed their initial target and went on to raise £33,068 from 128 members of the community. This included £10,000 in funding from the Sovereign Employment and Training Fund, and £10,000 from the Sovereign Thriving Communities fund.

When talking about the +Extra funding, the Coexist team said; “Unlocking the Sovereign funding was hugely motivating and gave us a much needed confidence boost. The money has already helped towards covering our rising overheads for the year, and has contributed to a number of kitchen essentials that allow us to give a warm, friendly welcome for everyone who comes to visit. For example, we’ve stocked up on tea and coffee so we can offer people a cuppa as they come through the doors and we’ve allocated money to cover the cost of some new aprons (as the ones we have are looking very tired indeed!).” 

“We’re also hoping to replace an old industrial fridge that was kindly donated to us. It’s no longer working how it should, so a new one would allow us to ensure food is kept cool and also reduce our food waste. Most importantly though, we have been able to run five further 6-week outreach programmes for those accessing support services in our city. ”

They went on to say; “This is the third time we have used Crowdfunder to help raise funds for our cause. It’s a really easy, simple platform to use but more importantly – it enabled us to unlock extra funding from pots like the Sovereign Thriving Communities, Sovereign Employment & Training Fund and Aviva Cost of Living Boost. We were hoping to raise £20,000 but thanks to this additional funding we smashed our target and reached over £33,000. We found that people were incentivised to help us get to the next threshold and help us unlock that funding.”

“Beating our target couldn’t have come at a better time for us. We were getting increasingly worried about the rising energy and food costs, and parallel to this – we were seeing even greater need for our services in the community. We hoped Crowdfunding could help us replenish our reserves enough to continue our weekly cooking lessons for social service users, and help to cover some of our rising overheads.”

“What is always in the back of our minds though, is helping more people. We have all lived through a global pandemic, and are now navigating our way through an energy crisis – whilst globally, war is raging and millions of people are being displaced from their homes. Organisations like ours are in greater demand than ever before, so being able to raise funds in this way is critical to our survival.”

“For us, this Crowdfunder was about raising essential funds to support our core work for the year ahead. Throughout the year, this includes running approximately 300 free-at-point-of-access cookery classes, which are run specifically for people who experience marginalisation from society. We also prepare and cook over 10,000 free, nutritious community meals each year, which are available for people experiencing food poverty or food insecurity. And we also run a specialist programme called Speak & Eat, which is a regular six-week cookery and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) class that is open to refugees and asylum seekers who are wanting to improve their English. Thanks to our successful Crowdfunder, we are able to keep offering these vital services to our community and for this, we are beyond grateful.” 

After such a successful experience of crowdfunding, and receiving the +Extra funding from Sovereign Housing, we asked Coexist for their top crowdfunding tips:

“We would definitely recommend giving yourself a long build up. There’s a lot to think about and starting early is always a good move. It’s really important to think about your story and how you are going to get people to connect with what you do – whether that’s by sharing photos, testimonials or videos. We also dedicated time to speaking with our network of partners to let them know what we were hoping to do and help galvanise their support. We found that people also liked getting regular updates about our progress. There’s something wonderfully motivating to know you’ve given to a cause that you care about, and been one of the many people who helped make it a huge success. So don’t forget to say thank you to each and every supporter along the way!”

Feeling inspired? Find out if you could receive +Extra funding from Sovereign Housing!