Bread of the Month Club
In order to continue and grow our mission of feeding the hungry, Daily Bread needs an income stream that is reliable and sustainable. For many years, St. Jude’s Catholic Worker House Soup Kitchen was sustained by its “Ten Dollar a Month Club.” Month after month many loyal supporters (including many of you who are reading this newsletter and followed us to Daily Bread) sent in checks that kept the bills paid, the pantry stocked, and the oven hot. Two years ago we at Daily Bread began a similar club, but because of our increased expenses, we simply called it the “Bread of the Month Club, ” and we asked that you make a commitment of whatever was comfortable for you, be it ten dollars or twenty dollars, or fifty dollars a month. Many of you joined.
Three years ago when the soup kitchen was part of St. Jude’s we were feeding 50-75 guests a day. Today we are feeding over 200 guests every day. As you can imagine, our costs have gone up significantly.
Every weekday we serve over 200 hot meals. Every weekday we pass out over 100 sack lunches for guests to take home as an evening meal. Buying food from the Eastern Illinois Foodbank and the donations of food that we receive plus the talent and creativity of our cooks help keep our costs down, but we still end end up with a big monthly bill at Sam’s.
Every weekend we serve over 350 guests sack lunches and coffee from our traveling van. Cheese and bologna and coffee aren’t cheap. Neither are gas and insurance on the van.
Last year we gave out over 200 yearly bus passes so that guests could have transportation to look for jobs, to get to medical appointments, etc. We also have helped countless guests get birth certificates and state ID’s, necessary paperwork for a successful job hunt. $65 is cheap for a year’s worth of transportation, but those passes and ID’s wreak havoc on our Assistance budget.
As our numbers have skyrocketed, so have our expenses. Today the monthly income that comes in from the Bread of the Month Club is not enough to cover our monthly expenses.
We are asking more of you to join the Bread of the Month Club. It’s an easy club to join. No meetings, no books to read, no bridge or poker to play, no initiation. Just send your first check and Voila, you’re in!! You can send your contributions monthly, semi-annually, yearly. Once you join we’ll send you a profuse thank you, but we wont’ be sending you monthly reminders or envelopes.
For more information contact our treasurer Stevie Bennett at Katie983@aol.com.
Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” Please don’t wait. Join Daily Bread’s Bread of the Month Club today.
