Million Meals Day – Thank you for helping!
We would like to send a heartfelt thank you to our volunteers, supporters and generous donors for helping us exceed our fundraising target for our inaugural Million Meals Day and achieving an incredible result in raising $246,000 or the equivalent of 1.23 million meals. SecondBite’s Million Meals Day was a resounding success thanks to you.
930 amazing SecondBite supporters across the country heard our impassioned call to help feed food-insecure Aussies, donating over $123,000!
Every cent of this was doubled by our generous matching partners:
- John and Rose Downer Foundation
- Gourlay Charitable Trust
The $246,000 raised was well above the $200,000 we needed to provide the equivalent of one million meals to people struggling right now. Here’s how the magical day unfolded…
At 8am, with our first team of volunteers well caffeinated, we rang the bell and proceeded to contact you, our community.
We highlighted the fact that up to 14 million Aussies are having to make difficult choices between paying bills and putting food on the table, with families and young people the most affected, according to recent YouGov findings.
We told you how Million Meals Day was chosen to align with World Food Day, with this year’s theme being ‘right to foods for a better life and a better future’.
We asked you to action this call for people going hungry. And immediately, you responded. Within the first hour, we had received almost 30 donations. By 11am, we were sitting at close to $40,000 total, or 200,000 meals.
SecondBite ambassadors Matt Preston and Tobie Puttock stopped by to boost morale and do their bit to help the cause.
A camera crew from Channel 9 descended on the buzzy HQ and interviewed SecondBite founder Simone Carson and SecondBite | FareShare CEO Daniel Moorfield.
Pictured: SecondBite | FareShare CEO Daniel Moorfield, SecondBite Co-founder Simone Carson and SecondBite ambassadors Tobie Puttock and Matt Preston.
A din of energy enveloped the room. The donations continued to pour in.
The next team of volunteers took and received calls with the same energy and enthusiasm. By lunchtime, hopes of hitting our one million meal target were high.
This momentum meant that at 6.30pm, the SecondBite HQ let out an almighty roar as we crossed our One Million Meals target! Hugs abounded. Fists pumped.
But we weren’t done.
A matching partner was offering to match an additional $25,000. Suddenly, we had a new target to aim for. Why settle for one million meals when our generous partner was offering to help make it 1.25 million meals?
We put our celebrations on hold and set about enacting a final surge. It was a heck of an hour and a half. As the clock struck 8pm, we had surpassed $230,000 total. Overnight, it would go up to $240,000. Our final tally sits at $246,000.
That’s up to 1.23 million meals for people doing it tough at the moment. What an achievement!
A big thank you to our supporters for smashing our one million meals goal out of the park. It’s clear so many of you care about alleviating hunger in our communities. And to us, that in itself makes Million Meals Day pretty special.
If you missed out on donating on Million Meals Day, you can still show your support and donate today.