The little cafe that couldn’t
A Blenheim charity that hoped running a cafe would help boost its coffers has decided to focus on ‘‘something we’re good at’’ – helping others.
Gecko Junction, fitted out with donated appliances and materials and staffed with volunteers, was opened by Bread of Life in October 2016.
But 16 months later, the charity has undergone a sweeping restructure that has involved closing the cafe and making several staff members redundant.
Marlborough insurance broker Peter Yarrell, QSM, said the charity had a social responsibility to ensure donations were being used as efficiently as possible – and a cafe was not an efficient venture for a charity.
‘‘We had to ask the staff, ‘what are you really driving at?’ It’s not running a cafe, it’s helping people less fortunate than themselves,’’ Yarrell said.
‘‘The work we’re doing to help people takes so much time and effort. But we were spending a lot of energy looking after other activities. As great as the cafe idea was, it became obvious after a year that there was a diversion of energy going into that.’’
The Blenheim charity offered counselling, community and family support, OSCAR childcare programmes, and food parcels.
It helped about 1700 people a year, working alongside other charities, doctors, Wairau Hospital and Corrections. Some funding came in through the Sheets n’ Things shop which sold secondhand linen, but they were struggling to make ends meet as funding cuts to many charities over the past three years meant more competition for grants.
Yarrell was asked to join the Bread of Life board of trustees about six months ago by chairwoman Leonie Welch.
‘‘I think they saw that they
‘‘We tried, we put some things into place and it didn’t work out.’’ Brian Gull
needed some financial expertise,’’ Yarrell said.
‘‘The concept of running a business is completely different from running a charity. I was on the board of a big school once and we thought if we invested in forestry we could have helped fund the school fees. But you need a dedicated team at the school just to run the forest. It sounds like a great idea, because there’s a commercial enterprise funding a school, but you’ve got to pay the wages of four people to run the for- est before you even get a return.
‘‘There just wasn’t the research done, and that’s the same as the little cafe. It’s a real learning curve and we just had to make the hard decision.’’
Bread of Life manager Brian Gull said in 2016 he had wanted to open the cafe ever since he joined the charity.
He was ‘‘gutted’’ the cafe had closed, he said on Tuesday.
‘‘But it’s a necessary thing. We tried, we put some things into place and it didn’t work out,’’ Gull said. ‘‘But the biggest failure in life is that we don’t try.’’
Yarrell said Bread of Life leased the Gecko Junction building, and there was already some interest from other potential tenants.
Appliances and furniture that were donated to the cafe would be offered back to the donors, or given away to a good home, Yarrell said.
The restructure also cost some Bread of Life employees their jobs, although Yarrell would not say how many.
‘‘It was more efficient to outsource some jobs. It’s a transitional time.’’
They would also review services to ensure they were not offering types of assistance already covered by other charities in the area, he said. The OSCAR childcare programme would remain a focus for the charity, Yarrell said.
‘‘That puts us in touch with struggling families who we can offer counselling to and help on other levels. OSCAR has really grown under some really good leadership and it offers a wellequipped and professional service.’’
Yarrell hoped Bread of Life’s experience would be a lesson for other struggling charities. ‘‘You can never, ever, guarantee you will have each source of funding forever. You don’t get a contract saying ‘we’ll fund you for 10 years’.
‘‘And when people raise money for charities, you want to respect that money a lot. It’s like it’s your own money, you want to be spending that money in the best way possible. Some charities don’t know how to do that.
‘‘But there’s a responsibility on us to use that money to do the best job that we can. It behooves Bread of Life, in receiving grants from different organisations and even the Government, to ensure that it is targeting what it is meant to.
‘‘And closing a cafe is a great way of saving money that can now be targeted to the people it’s supposed to reach.’’