How the Unregulated Charity sites like #GoFundMe just lost our Food Bank ￡1300

Yesterday we lost ￡1300 of much-needed funds via our go fund appeal.

We Care Food Bank had planned to open the first Uk 24/7 Community hub on Deptford High Street London and had set about raising the ￡5000 we need to fit out the space ready to create a hub that would help anyone in crisis around the clock whilst being a model for other community groups globally to copy, as clearly

" no one plans to be in a crisis and when you are, where do you start to get help locally "?

The Press Office from #GoFundMe clearly loved our idea and set about promoting this radical but crucially important community project to all their press contacts with us raising ￡1300 of our ￡5000 target ( We Care Food Bank gets NO Government or council funding even though it is the Uk largest independent food bank ) Then yesterday with us looking to open as a gift to our community on Valentines Day, we noted the cash had not been transferred to our account when we contacted Go Fund Me to find out why they told us as we had recently listed the appeal as a charity using our recently secured Charity Registration Number we would have to wait 3-5 months for us to be approved in the system, but probably longer, ( happy to share this email they sent us ) When we explained as a community food bank we need the cash NOW not 6 moths into the future and the 24/7 Community Hub was totally dependent on this cash to open, a project they were using and supporting themselves to gain media exposure , they promptly returned all the money we raised to those who donated without any reason for returning it , this sector has zero regulation , we lost every penny we raised in seconds and yet all that we did was change our fund raising ID from me personally to our regesterd charity , how in 2022 does it take 6 months to process a charity that is registered with the Charity Commission and has copies of our charity reg and official documentation?.

We clearly can no longer use this platform as although we are ALL volunteers we depend on this money to pay our rent, train our staff, insurance and buy most of the food and toiletries we give to our 200 plus members.

If you donated and the money was sent back to you, they have the data of who donated so we are unable to contact these people to say what happened or How to re-donate. so please support our fundraiser to open our life-saving 24/7 Community Hub appeal to get us to the ￡5000 we need, Donate to We Care, Cooperative Bank Lewisham Sort Code 08-92-99 Account number 63659328, You can pay pal [email protected] or post a cheque to We Care 50 Friendly street Deptford SE8 4DR

This is a FILM LINK about our life-saving work, why we depended on the public to donate, ideally regularly monthly payments however small.

https://youtu.be/WUld7juGwFA