A Midterm Appeal from Soup & Bread

We’re halfway through the 2016 run of Soup & Bread: Chicago, and halfway through our first-ever fundraising drive with our new fiscal sponsors at the Social Good Fund.

At Soup & Bread events over the last six weeks we’ve collected $3,598 for a half-dozen local food pantries, whose stories are different but whose missions remain the same.

At the Casa Catalina Basic Human Needs Center in Back of the Yards, who we raised money for on February 3, Soup & Bread monies go to buy food for diabetic clients and others with special dietary needs. In this video we shot in 2014, Sr. Joellen Tumas explains how Casa Catalina works and how their clients have been impacted by cuts to SNAP and unemployment benefits.

On January 13 our beneficiaries at Benton House told us that they nearly had to close their doors a few months ago due to unexpected maintenance costs on their historic Bridgeport building; our donation can help them keep the lights on.

On January 13, a slate of volunteers from Slow Food Chicago came together with some stunning soups to raise $604 for the shoestring Community Dinners project, which serves weekly hot meals out of the kitchen of Logan Square’s St. Luke’s Lutheran Church.

We’ve had soups donated by chefs at Ada Street, Lula Cafe, Trenchermen, and other talented professionals, as well as by dozens of stellar home cooks. We’ve had hot loaves of fresh hearty bread from Publican Quality Bread. We’ve had ingredients donated by our partners at Local Foods and Green Grocer Chicago. And we’ve had some generous early donations to our 2016 fundraising campaign from supporters like Debra Gerod, David Stanford, Robert Lloyd, and many others.

Now: to the point. We’re doing our own separate fundraiser this year to  decrease our operational reliance on event donations and keep Soup & Bread sustainable in the long term, and we are asking for your help. Even a small donation is a boon: if everyone on this mailing list donated just $10 we would shoot past our very modest goal. And, for just a bit more, we will send one of our brand-new Soup & Bread (pictured above). These beautiful ceramic bowls are available for sale at only at Soup & Bread events in Chicago, but make a tax-deductible donation of just $40 and we’ll ship you one, anywhere in the world.  (Donate $80, and we’ll send you two, etc.)

Feeding people is a radical act, we hear. Please consider showing your support with a small gift to keep Soup & Bread happy, healthy, and well fed through 2016. Just click the link below.

Soup & Bread Fundraiser 2016

Thank you, stay warm, and eat up!

Soup & Bread