Food banks of England: How do other clubs do on outreach?
Food banks of England: How do other clubs do on outreach?
As Dons Local Action Group and its 1,000 regular volunteers celebrate five years of seven-days-a week feeding, connecting and supporting south-west London’s families in difficulty, it’s worth taking a glance at other localities.
Dipping into a selection of the staggering 18,000 professional or semi-pro clubs in England (- plus another 22,000 amateur ones – ), it bears remembering the size of the problem which clubs’ social ventures address.
Authoritative commentators the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculated in June 2023 that 5.7 million UK homes were cutting down or cutting out meals, amid what its researchers called “the horrendous new normal” of deprivation. A consistent 22% of Britain’s households remain in or close to food poverty, researchers believe.
A change of government has yielded little improvement. Collated with the Trussell Trust, the JRF’s March 2025 report find Britain’s “inadequate social security net” is pushing 5 out of every 6 families on Universal Benefit to skip essentials such as regular meals.
“Inadequate social security is the main driver of food bank need”, that report concludes bluntly, “with 3.1 million food parcels given out from Trussell food banks (nationwide) in the year to March 2024”.
Football, Pele’s ‘beautiful game’, ought to be a natural ally to alleviating un-beautiful hunger. Next time, we’ll look at what Prem clubs outside the capital, engorged with TV money, do in this space.
This first quick scan, though, hints that lower levels clubs seem to be doing the most interesting things, even if only as one-offs.
As recently as April, what organisers billed as the UK’s inaugural Foodbank Cup took place at Fleet Town FC in Hampshire. Played between fans & volunteer staff of distribution operations, not clubs, a Hart Foodbank XI edged Farnham Foodbank 4-3, with nearly £950 and 150kg of goods donated.
In London, most clubs in Britain’s richest city have roots in its poorest neighbourhoods. Even if its clubs have food-focused ventures pre-dating DLAG’ launch in 2020, then Covid’s lockdowns will have put rocket-boosters under their operations.
Starting in the 1980s, Millwall famously put effort & energy into its social benefit activities, seeking to counter the club’s fearsome reputation.
Today, besides initiatives in skills training, mental health & friendship clubs, Millwall Community Trust runs its Lions Food Hub, which helped 120 low-income families every week in 2024.
“We have seen a marked increase in the use of our food banks”, chair Keith Soper writes in the MCT’s latest report. “The simple truth is that low-income families would go hungry through a combination of a lack of money and energy poverty”.
Last year MCT distributed 9,500 free meals to kids during 13 weeks of school holidays. “We have seen an increase in the number of parents seeking help too” adds Soper.
Newly crowned Europa League champs Tottenham Hotspur, representing this author’s first love in football, has a no direct food donation arm. Instead its Foundation fund-raises, including via a mass six-a-side tournament in early May, to support the 50 & more food banks, social larders and community kitchens operating in the club’s home borough of Haringey.
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Darren Phillips, THFC Foundation’s community manager, said: “Working in the local community every day, we hear and see about all the challenges residents face, like food poverty. It’s vital we continue playing our part to make a difference”.
The Premier League’s Charitable Fund runs a Fans Fund, accessible to EFL and lower league clubs, and intended to prime the pump of social outreach ventures; in theory including the relief of hunger. Under chief executive Ruth Shaw, the Prem’s fund funnels £35 million in grants to 100 & more clubs, including food donation.
Most Fans Fund grants are between £10,000 and £25,000, though clubs tend to use the money for social outreach to under-represented cohorts of fans, rather than solely feeding its most deprived families.
One recipient, the Leyton Orient Trust directs its grant towards attracting various interest groups & ethnicities in NE London to use the O’s facilities at Brisbane Road.
Sharing your home patch’s name with a type of a bun could, you might have thought, energised Chelsea FC’s engagement with food donation. Periodically, the Blues do publicise their association with local food initiatives, such as its staff & fans donating last autumn over 700 food items to the LB Hammersmith & Fulham foodbank.
The Chelsea Supporters’ Trust (CST) has supported that foodbank since 2018, and hosts a food collection point on matchdays in Fulham Road near Stamford Bridge.
What knowledge do readers of this newsletter have of other clubs’ exemplary engagement with deprivation relief, particularly concerning food poverty?
Does a club being owned by its fans, as in AFC Wimbledon’s case, boost its propensity to deliver social benefit, and in industrial quantities? Email your thoughts, please, to this author, on Alban.Thurston@Gmail.com, under the subject line “Club food banks”. In particular, do readers know of social outreach by clubs in Germany. Famously, all but a couple of the Bundesliga clubs are fan-controlled co-operatives like us Dons.
Meanwhile, a huge and continuing “Thank You” to all DLAG’s hundreds of volunteers who work so hard to ensure nobody goes hungry.
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