gathering to Give Back: Our CSR Commitments

Here at gather by Cater Care, we’re proud to provide quality education catering to boarding schools and university residential halls across the country. A key part of our mission is supporting the holistic development of our partner’s students in all areas of their lives, and we share our parent company’s core values of Care, Pride and Community. Caring in the Community, our shared Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, is the focus of our efforts to give back to the school communities we live and work in. 

Our last campaign was in May, when 2024’s Walk the Talk campaign raised more than $17,000 from both Cater Care and gather. These life-saving funds will go straight to Lifeline, where the results of both teams’ hard work will help train more Crisis Supporters to help save lives in our community. 

We’re incredibly proud of this achievement, but May’s campaign was just the latest in a long line of coordinated efforts to support our charity partners’ lifesaving work that leads all the way back to the launch of Caring in the Community in 2020. 

 

Putting our best foot forward with Lifeline  

Lifeline was founded in 1963 with a simple mission: ensure nobody had to face their darkest moments alone. They’ve spent the last sixty-one years saving lives with extensive suicide prevention services, but their non-profit status means they’re ultimate reliant on charitable donations to keep the lights on.

Since 2020, we’ve been supporting Lifeline through our annual Walk the Talk CSR campaign. Walk the Talk lays down the gauntlet by challenging the gather and Cater Care teams to each walk 65 kilometres throughout May – one kilometre for each thousand Australians who attempt suicide each year – while raising mental health awareness and funding for Lifeline. 

Every dollar raised by these campaigns goes towards recruiting, training, and retaining Crisis Supporters who answer calls, texts, and online messages to make sure nobody has to be alone. Our most recent Walk the Talk campaign saw the team walk 6,639 kilometres to raise slightly over $17,000 – all of which will go straight to saving lives. 

 

Bringing the Christmas feast to Foodbank 

Food insecurity is a silent crisis in Australia. In 2023, approximately 36% of Australian households – some 3,700,000 of them – experienced moderate to severe food insecurity. Since 1992, Foodbank has provided freely accessible pantries of essential goods to struggling community members, and they’ve been playing catch-up with rising demand ever since. 

Christmas Pride is our once-yearly major effort to raise support for Foodbank at the height of the silly season. This campaign pits the Cater Care and gather teams against one another in a string of internal competitions that challenge us to dish up delightful food, amaze our partner’s students, and keep Foodbank’s pantries well-stocked. 

Thanks to Foodbank’s powerful logistics network, every dollar donated can help them provide two meals for those in need. Beyond just monetary donations, Foodbank also gratefully accepts shelf-stable and in-date produce – something that gather is able to provide in abundance. Last Christmas saw the team provide the funding for more than 5,000 meals to help keep food on the tables of families everywhere during one of the most expensive times of year.

 

The story so far 

In the four years since the launch of the Caring in the Community CSR program, a number of strides have been made within the community support space – not least of which is the more than $100,000 that gather and Cater Care have raised for our two charity partners.

Since 2020, we’ve helped raise just over $12,000 for Foodbank, which equates to roughly 24,000 meals funded – enough to keep more than two hundred people fed for a month straight. In addition to the funds raised, every year we donate a significant amount of food and produce that goes directly to their pantries. 

Our fundraising work with Lifeline has raised just above $60,000 over the last four years. Lifeline estimates that just over $7,000 is required to recruit and retain a Crisis Supporter for one calendar year – meaning that we’ve helped approximately eight Crisis Supporters take the hot seat and answer roughly 1,500 calls from those in distress.

The long road ahead

Caring in the Community has already delivered some positive outcomes that we’re incredibly proud of, but that doesn’t mean that now’s the time to call it quits. We have further campaigns planned for the future, and achieving such significant results in our recent campaigns just means we’ll have to outdo ourselves next time around! 

While each of these major campaigns rolls around once a year, our charity partner donation portals are available year-round. If you’re willing and able, you could help a family put food on the table by pitching in for Foodbank HERE, or you could help raise funds for a life-saving conversation by supporting our friends at Lifeline HERE.