About Edible York
Edible York is a registered charity. We became a charity in 2014. Everyone involved in Edible York is a volunteer. Do become a member!
Expand the boxes below to read more about us.
Aims and objectives
- Improve the conditions of life for the inhabitants of York particularly through community gardening and horticultural projects
- Promote and encourage the growing of food locally
- Demonstrate how easy it is to do this and to encourage participation in this
- Plan and organise the gathering of fruit, storing it and distributing it, and organise any activities for using the fruit for the benefit of local residents
- Work with similar groups and exchange information and advice with them
- Provide networking opportunities for like-minded groups, organisations and individuals
- Raise funds for all of these purposes
Rules
- Treat everyone with respect no matter what their background, gender, orientation, faith or active lack of faith
Constitution and Trustees
Edible York is now a Registered Charity (Charity Number: 1158779 ). Registered Charities are run by trustees who are responsible for ensuring the organisation abides by charity law and the constitution (the rules) of the particular charity. For instance, the trustees must ensure it looks after the land it uses as specified in licence agreements, and that money is managed properly.
Many of the trustees have been involved with Edible York since it began in 2009. We became a Charity in 2014. Everyone involved with Edible York is a volunteer.
Edible York is a membership organisation. Anyone who supports the aims of Edible York can apply to become a member for a two year period. The members may put themselves forward to become trustees of Edible York, and it is the members who elect the trustees at each Annual General Meeting.
Clearly, if you’re interested enough to have read this far, you should become a member! This link will take you to the membership bumpf.
The rules by which Edible York operates are written down in the constitution. This is a formal document which can be obtained by contacting us. For the day to day operation of gardening and horticultural activities Edible York has a number of exciting policies and protocols, covering health and safety and so forth.
The current trustees are:
Ruth Jennaway (Vice Chair),
Penny Bainbridge (Treasurer),,
Bill Eve (Chair),
Reece Ford
Shaun Byrne
Emily Hansen
Gavin Aitchison
Partners
Edible York is an umbrella organisation that supports communities to grow and enables people across the city to access fresh, local food through our network of public vegetable beds, York Orchard tree-planting and harvest redistribution project, Abundance.
We wouldn’t be able to do any of these things in isolation, and working together with other organisations and people has been vital to our character from day one. There are so many organisations in York doing fantastic things, and it’s been a pleasure to work with many of them towards our vision.
| City of York Council | licenses the land for our city centre beds, and lends the site for Apple HQ. |
|---|---|
| Yorkshire Chillies | provide space in their polytunnels to get our seedlings off to a robust start in the spring |
| Too many to name individually | guardians and hosts of the York orchard fruit trees. |
| York Environment Forum | share and support our vision, and provide effective campaigning, publicity and networking |
| St Nick’s Environment Centre | for occasional events |
| Food Banks and community cafes | to use and distribute fruit for people who would not otherwise have any. |
Donating
We are very grateful to those that want to donate and we use donations to support our work around York.
Individuals and companies have donated various amounts over the years. We can suggest ideas for holding a fundraising event to have fun and help Edible York at the same time.
Please donate to Edible York:
We are a volunteer-run charity with no permanent staff, so we welcome any support, and we can make your money go a long way to improve your local city.
Donations to support our work around York – by cheque, online with Just Giving or bank transfer.
Donate online here: www.justgiving.com/edibleyork
To send a cheque or pay via your bank – Contact us and we will tell you the details you need.
Any amount helps – £5 will buy some seeds, £35 covers the cost of planting a fruit tree, £50 will pay for compost.
Thank you!
Abundance at Edible York – our biggest fundraising campaign.
We ran a crowdfunding campaign March-June2016 and reached the target of £4,819 on 19th June 2016.
This enabled us to fund a permanent storage container (Apple HQ and a a Vigo Apple juicer, and allowed us to expand picking surplus fruit around York in 2016 and 2017 and has partly funded our efforts in 2018.
The details of our original 2016 crowdfunding campaign project are on www.spacehive.com/edible-york.
Finances
Edible York is entirely volunteer-run and relies on funding from other organisations and individuals to enable us to deliver our initiatives and cover our core costs (insurance, seeds, compost, events, marketing and so forth), and on in-kind support in many guises. We have fundraising events throughout the year.
There are a number of ways that our activities are funded:
1. Raising money:
- Donations – large and small amounts – cash collections at events and one off gifts
- Fundraising events – sales of goods, plants, refreshments (see the Events Page)
- Grants for specific time-limited projects for a particular purpose
- Small donations via the Just Giving online service
- Presenting talks about Edible York to gardening clubs and other groups.
2. By support ‘in kind’:
- Donations of seeds, plants for the gardens, growing space (thank you Yorkshire Chillies!)
- Materials to help the gardens grow – bark chippings, manure
- Fruit bushes such as those kindly donated from RVRoger
- Plants grown on windowsills, in greenhouses and gardens, and donated by our wonderful members (you!)
- Extras donated from gardens and allotment – eg. raspberry canes, strawberry runners, unwanted gooseberry bushes etc.
3. By the number of hours of unpaid work provided by the trustees and volunteers throughout the year:
- Thousands of gardening, seed sowing hours from members each year
- Watering in hot weather by passers by and friendly local businesses (more support always wanted in summer!)
- Generous commitment of trustees at meetings and AGM
- Administration of the charity
- Organisation of large scale events (Edible Open Gardens, Bloom festival.)
Without our active members all donating many hours throughout the year and our trustees meeting regulary to progress new/struggling projects, none of this would be happening. From all of these people, thousands of hours of time are donated every year to make us so successful.
Your help would be really valuable too – please get in touch – info@edibleyork.org.uk.