Gippsland Foodshare
“We had spent years paying off somebody else's mortgage. Owning the shed means every dollar we raise now goes into food and furniture instead.”
Community foodbank and furniture reuse charity
Traralgon, Victoria
Gippsland Foodshare had rented the same Traralgon warehouse for ten years. It was the right building — high enough for racking, close enough to the highway for the trucks that collect surplus from growers and supermarkets across the valley. It was also on a short lease that was renegotiated every year, and rent rises were eating into the part of the budget that paid for food.
When the building went on the market the charity faced the obvious risk: a new owner with different plans, and nowhere in the region with the floor space, the loading dock and the cool room it would take to keep a foodbank running. Moving would have meant months without a distribution point for the eighty community groups that collect from the warehouse each week.
A loan from Charity Bank Australia allowed the charity to buy the warehouse outright. The same funding covered the fit-out the lease had never allowed: a second cool room, a proper sorting bay for the furniture reuse arm, and a roller door wide enough for a pantry van to load under cover in a Gippsland winter.
The charity now moves more fresh produce than it ever could as a tenant, because it can chill and hold it rather than turning growers away at harvest. Its furniture service — beds, tables and whitegoods rehomed to families setting up after crisis — moved from a corner of the floor into its own bay and now fits out around forty homes a year. Forty volunteers work across the site each week, and the charity has been able to take on two part-time staff with the money that used to go in rent.
Gippsland Foodshare went to Charity Bank Australia after a broker told the board that a charity with donated income would struggle to be taken seriously. The bank's lending team looked at the charity's ten-year record of collection and distribution, visited the shed, and worked to the charity's own timetable through the sale. Being able to speak to the person making the decision, in plain language, is what the board remembers about the process.
“We had spent years paying off somebody else's mortgage. Owning the shed means every dollar we raise now goes into food and furniture instead.”
Doug Farrelly, Operations Manager at Gippsland Foodshare
About Charity Bank Australia
Charity Bank Australia is the loans and savings bank owned by and committed to supporting the social sector. We use our savers’ money to lend to housing, education, social care, community and other social purpose organisations across Australia.
Nothing in this article constitutes an invitation to engage in investment activity nor is it advice or a recommendation and professional advice should be taken before any course of action is pursued.
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