‘Call us next year,’ UMCC tells Belfast Soup Kitchen

United Mid-Coast Charities gave $1,000 to the Belfast Soup Kitchen Oct. 22, with the request that the Soup Kitchen ask UMCC for money again next year.

The donation is the latest of many the soup kitchen has received over the last two months in response to an appeal for help — in August representatives announced at a press conference that the kitchen would close unless it could raise donations to cover operating costs while it reorganized as a nonprofit corporation.

The plea brought in a flood of donations, including some large contributions from local businesses. Among them, a $3,000 check from Viking Lumber, according to the kitchen’s board chairman, Alex Allmayer-Beck.

The kitchen, which serves lunch to around 50 people a day, five days a week, was started by St. Francis of Assisi Church, and until recently was funded primarily by parishioner donations. The kitchen has since separated from the church in order to seek funding from a wider range of sources, but in the interim the operation almost went belly up.

Representatives reported in September that the kitchen had received more than enough money to remain open. The funding came in the form of several large contributions, but also scores of small donations from private citizens.

UMCC representative Jon Cheston said the Soup Kitchen had not been among the 60 local charitable agencies to which the nonprofit had distributed money in past years. The $1,000, which Cheston called a “small” donation, came outside of the group’s normal funding process. On Friday, he urged Allmayer-Beck to make a formal request to UMCC next year.

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