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Local Entrepreneurs Raise $15K in One Day to Help Cambridge Families Facing Food Insecurity
By: Jill McKeon
For some students, school is the only place where they are guaranteed to receive food on a daily basis. But with Massachusetts schools being shut down until at least Apr. 7 due to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, food security for many families is now in jeopardy.
When a group of Cambridge entrepreneurs came to this realization, they started brainstorming solutions immediately. The group teamed up with Cambridge Public Schools and Reservoir Church, creating an initiative that they are calling “Feed Cambridge Families.” The initiative began taking shape on Friday Mar. 13, and by Monday, the site went live.
“This is the kind of challenge where everybody needs to be working together,” said Chris Tolles, CEO and co-founder of skincare gummy company Sundaily, and one of the initiative’s leaders.
Tolles, along with colleagues Kalina Fridrich and Michael Filbey, have been working closely with Cambridge Public Schools’ (CPS) chief strategy officer, Lyndsay Pinkus, along with Debbie Bonilla, the school system’s family liaison coordinator. Meanwhile, Reservoir Church has been handling accounting and donations.
“CPS has been doing an amazing job taking care of kids and families with the school closures,” said Tolles. The school system is unsurprisingly not staffed to handle a crisis like this, which is why Tolles went to them to collaborate.
“Going through the school district is important for us because they have pretty good data on which kids are either low income or otherwise economically disadvantaged,” said Tolles. “They’re the ones who know which families need help the most.”
Donors have two options: They can either donate money through the Reservoir Church website, or they can donate digital gift cards. A donation of $100 can feed one child for two weeks, according to the website.
The gift cards are to Target, Market Basket and Shaw’s as of now, but the store options may expand as non-food needs arise, said Tolles. Other initiatives such as the CPS Emergency Meals Program and Food For Free are distributing meals and food to families in need as well. Feed Cambridge Families is focusing on gift cards since they provide flexibility for families to assess their own needs, while also keeping money moving in the local economy, said Tolles.
“I’m a CEO of a company that’s got thousands of dollars of rewards points just sitting there. I could either take a sweet vacation with my family, or I could help people feed their kids,” said Tolles. “And I know which one of those two things is going to feel better.”
Within the first day of the initiative going live, the group raised $15K from the community. With a goal of $100,000, Feed Cambridge Families is already making plans for what to do if the donations surpass the needs of CPS. Tolles and his colleagues are starting to build relationships with public schools in other nearby towns.
“We’re really eager to make sure people know that they can really take matters into their own hands and grab it,” said Tolles. “There’s an appetite for really helping each other.”
