Chesterfield Foodbank, based in north Derbyshire, helps over 10,000 people a year facing food insecurity during the cost-of-living crisis. In April alone, the food bank supported more than 850 local people facing financial hardship and provided a total of 7,686 meals.
We caught up with Communications, Engagement and Funding Manager, Jacqueline to find out more about their cause after receiving a £500 grant from easyfundraising’s Impact Fund 2026.
Tell us about Chesterfield Foodbank
We provide a safe and welcoming space where people can access emergency food, essentials, and compassionate support.
We’re mainly volunteer led; we’ve got about 130 volunteers across all the different food bank centres in our warehouse region. We have volunteers who work in the warehouse doing packing and sorting, as well as volunteers in our food bank centres as well to greet clients when they come and process their vouchers.
When clients come to us, we offer them food parcels, which our volunteers ensure are all are up to standard and nutritionally balanced, but it’s not just food we provide. We also make sure people have got other basic essential items such as soap, toilet rolls, toothpaste, sanitary items. As well, any other items that are donated to us in terms of toiletries, cleaning products, or pet food we supply to people in need as well.
When people come, we want to make sure they are being really listened to and heard. They can sit, have a cup of tea, and just breathe and relax. They see a friendly face, a genuine smile – somebody who really cares and wants to listen.
It’s not just about handing over some food and saying, off you go. It’s also about creating a plan of action and making sure they leave with a lot more hope than when they came in. We also have some guest agencies that come in on a roadside basis, and they offer different specialist areas of support each week as well about housing or debt advice, for example.
What will the Impact Fund grant make possible?
The £500 that we’ve received from the fund is going to be able to pay for the venue hire for our Monday daytime for the whole year. We’re super delighted and really grateful, thank you so much. It does make a big difference to ease that pressure on us with one less bill to worry about.
With this money, our team of dedicated volunteers can keep this vital support accessible and welcoming in the local community.
What else do you need funding for?
Any help that we can get means we can sustain what we do, cover our overheads, and obviously make sure we don’t have any gaps in our provision.
Our services are more in demand than ever with the cost-of-living crisis, the number of families in need of our help seem to be on the increase recently, certainly since January. We had our busiest month since 2022 last year.
With the cost of rent rising, we’ve had to downsize our warehouse to make it a more sustainable cost for us. We’re hoping that this move to the new warehouse, with it being slightly smaller than it used to be, it’s going to hopefully be a bit more affordable.
What challenges are you facing as a charity at the moment?
With rising food prices, it really effects how we pack food for the parcels as there are things that have more expensive, in particular. A cheap or affordable bar of chocolate is now double what it was before. So, we really have to prioritise and make sure we find the most nutritionally effective and filling items for people that are a sustainable and affordable cost for us.
Any donations that people buy for us as part of our packing list, or anything extra to that, of course, is a treat. But where we have gaps, we need to make sure we’re using the food bank efficiently and sustainably which is getting harder with inflation.
Why did you choose to join easyfundraising?
easyfundraising is a fantastic supporter of charities like ours, not only through grants like the Impact Fund, but by giving our community an easy, everyday way to raise funds while they shop. It’s a simple idea that helps us sustain our services for the people who need them.
What impact does Chesterfield Foodbank have on your local community?
Talking and engaging with our clients, you realise it’s obviously about a lot more than emergency food. It’s the care, the love, the compassion, the patience we can offer, and the genuine willingness to really take the time out to help people.
We’ve seen people come to us in desperate situations, not just financial crisis but in terms of their emotional state and mental health. Our volunteer team are able to really support people, listen to them and comfort them over a cup of tea and some biscuits, while they tell us everything that’s going on so we can them rally around them and make sure they can leave a little bit happier than when they come in. One chap, who visited a while ago still every time he comes, he always acknowledges us and says you saved my life that day, I’ll never forget it.
We’re always receiving testimonials and lovely messages from our clients to say thank you to our volunteers and to let them know what a difference it made to them.
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Chesterfield Foodbank continues to transform the lives of local people. If you’d like to support them by raising free donations every time you shop online, sign up here.
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