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Important Updates for the Roslindale Community Fridge: Please Read!
Published on March 14, 2024 by Caroline

 
Dear Roslindale Community Fridge Supporters & Donors,
 
First of all, we want to thank all current and prior donors to the Roslindale Community Fridge. This generosity has helped us provide free food to countless neighbors in need over the past years. We recognize we have been relatively quiet, but we’ve been working on a lot and wanted to share some fridge updates. Please read until the end!

1. Update on the fridge: As many of you know, the original community fridge closed last summer due to challenges related to its location, and we have been on a tireless search for a new host and location since. While we are still pursuing host leads, through this search process, we have identified many willing community partners that would be open to hosting pop-up drives like the Roslindale Community Center, the Substation, and the Roslindale Public Library amongst others. These drives would serve the same core mission of providing food and other high-demand resources to the community, in partnership with other community-focused organizations. If the fridge search proves unsuccessful, we will likely pivot exclusively to this model of hosting mobile food drives until the opportunity for another host arises.

2. Donation Spending: As is transparent on Open Collective, we have paused spending since the closure of the fridge. Looking forward, when we find a new host, we will spend donations to purchase a new fridge, clear out the old one, setup the fridge/pantry, and of course, supply and maintain it. In the shorter term, we plan to use donation funds to support the pop-up drives as described above. Given these plans, we need continued donor support!

3. Open Collective is dissolving: As you know, the Open Collective Foundation (OCF) has acted as our fiscal sponsor for the last few years. Unfortunately, OCF recently announced that it is dissolving, but we want to assure you that the community fridge is not ceasing operations. The funds in our Open Collective account are safe and accessible to us, and we will be rolling over our existing funds to a new platform. However, Open Collective Foundation will not be able to accept donations after tomorrow, Friday, March 15th. You may receive notice from OCF about this, but we also wanted to let you know directly so you can decide whether you’re willing and able to continue your donations on our new platform.

4. We have found a new fiscal sponsor to host our donations: The Hack Club Foundation (HCF). The HCF was founded in 2016 to serve as the legal entity for Hack Club, a nonprofit network that provided high schoolers the coding education they otherwise could not access, and in 2018, the HCF expanded to act as a nonprofit fiscal sponsor for community organization like ours. We will retain our 501(c)(3) nonprofit status to allow for continued tax-free donations. Many other OCF groups have already moved to this new host, and we are excited to continue our work alongside them.

5. If you are interested in continuing your donations on the new platform, please go to https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/roslindale-community-fridge to make a one-time donation or set up recurring donations. All transactions are transparent as they were on OCF.

Our community page is linked here:
https://hcb.hackclub.com/roslindale-community-fridge

Please feel free to read more about the organization at: https://the.hackfoundation.org/

We hope that you will continue to support us with your donations. We appreciate your patience and are working hard to get the Roslindale Community Fridge back into action within the coming weeks, even if it means our model of operations may look a little different moving forward. 

As always, don't hesitate to email [email protected] with any questions.

Sincerely,
The Roslindale Community Fridge Team