Using a disused pub to feed the local community

At The Social Change Nest, we support over 500 grassroots groups and community projects through our fiscal hosting service. 

We recently sat down with Matt Harding, one of the Team Leads at Cambridge Community Kitchen, to talk about their work to feed the local community out of a disused pub, the challenges they face as a small volunteer-led organisation and their experience of fiscal hosting.

Disclaimer: These are Matt’s individual thoughts as a volunteer with Cambridge Community Kitchen, not a collective statement on behalf of the organisation.

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Can you tell me a bit about Cambridge Community Kitchen and how it started?

Cambridge Community Kitchen started in November 2020. There was a disused pub in Cambridge and a group of people moved into it and cleaned it up. They noticed that there was a really good professional kitchen, because it had formerly been a pub. They thought it was an amazing opportunity to start cooking meals for the community. After a long legal battle with the landlord, they won the right to continue using the premises for the benefit of the community. It’s just grown and grown since then. Now we cook hot vegan food twice a week, and deliver the meals all over Cambridge. 

What has been your experience of being fiscally hosted?

Being able to receive grants and manage our money in a transparent way is great, especially in a way that doesn’t involve being tied to one person’s bank account. Sometimes we might need someone to go and do a shopping run for our next shift urgently, and because we can collectively manage our finances via Open Collective, anyone can go and pick up that task. They can submit the receipt and get reimbursed and the admin overheads are really low. 

If we were tied to one person’s personal bank account, I just worry that the whole project would fall apart the second that person leaves. Most of the people who originally founded the kitchen have moved on, but being fiscally hosted has allowed us to be sustainable. The way we work means that people can drift in and out and volunteer when they have time. Fiscal hosting is a big part of what makes that possible. 

We’ve also received a few grants. We needed to do some renovations to the kitchen. The sort of money we had coming in through regular donations was enough to cover our ongoing operations, but not to build our capacity, or do any improvements or repairs. The grants we’ve had wouldn’t be possible without being fiscally hosted. We’re not incorporated, we’re a really informal, self-assembled group, so it’s really valuable for us to be able to receive those grants, whilst having all the admin handled for us.

What are the main challenges you face as a small grassroots organisation? 

Money and volunteers. There’s never quite enough! We’re always looking to build our capacity. We currently do 300 portions per shift. We haven’t canceled any shifts over the last year, and we’re really proud of that. But the need is high. And we’d love to get to a point where we’re able to deliver food three times a week. Usually we see a bit of a dip in the summer, because hot food is less appealing to people. But this year we haven’t really seen that. The numbers keep going up. I think it’s mostly due to the cost of living crisis, and we’re also becoming more well known as an organisation.

What advice would you give other groups who are interested in fiscal hosting?

It’s really valuable. The ability to get access to larger funds and manage your money collectively is really helpful. It’s important for decentralising your admin, and putting systems in place that mean it’s not just being held by one person. It’s really helped us to build resiliency as an organisation, because power and decision-making isn’t too concentrated. 

What are your hopes and dreams for the future? 

Yeah, so like I said we’d love to find a way to expand our capacity enough to do three shifts a week. That’s a stretch goal. But it would also be great to invest in some kitchen equipment – things that make it easier to cook for the amount of people we’re catering for. 

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A big thank you to Matt and Cambridge Community Kitchen. If you’d like to find out more about the project, you can visit their website here: Cambridge Community Kitchen.

Interested in being fiscally hosted? Learn more now.