How Social Bite spends your Festival of Kindness donation
Each year, thousands of homeless people in the UK spend Christmas on the streets, cold, hungry and lonely with nowhere to go to. For many more people, winter marks the end of another year stuck in unsafe accommodation, forced to make choices that leave them in poverty. The ethos behind Festival of Kindness is that together, we can make a difference.
In the run up to Christmas, we ask supporters to donate money or bring physical items to our Trees of Kindness. The goal is to provide 300,000 meals, gifts and essential items to people who are vulnerable or affected by homelessness.
We take pride in making sure every pound you give is used responsibly. When you support Festival of Kindness, you’re providing vital relief for people in need and helping to support people out of homelessness.
Here’s how Social Bite sets its fundraising goals and puts donations to work.
Why 300,000 meals, gifts and essential items?
As well as providing free Christmas dinners and gifts through our coffee shops, Social Bite partners with hundreds of grassroots organisations across the UK during Festival of Kindness. We set a goal of 300,000 meals and gifts because we want to support more people who are homeless and vulnerable than we can help directly through our own work.
Pictured: a map of locations reached with vital support from Festival of Kindness 2024
What do we mean by ‘a bed for the night’?
Homelessness is a complex issue and people affected by it need a safe place to stay for lots of reasons. Over winter, the need for accommodation is even greater because of the weather. Often people need access to emergency accommodation while they wait for temporary accommodation.
The Social Bite Village is an alternative to temporary accommodation, designed for community living and longer-term stays for up to 16 people at a time. We continue to take referrals throughout the winter.
We also work with several charity partners to meet the need for emergency accommodation, making beds available at Christmas and during the winter through other service providers. We do this by discussing their needs and resources, and providing them with a grant.
How does gift giving work?
During Festival of Kindness, supporters donate gifts and essential items from a wish list that people with experience of homelessness have helped us to compile.
We want Festival of Kindness to reach far and wide, helping as many people across the UK as possible. To help fulfil the huge demand, we may use financial donations to purchase more gifts, or items we haven’t managed to receive from donations at the Trees of Kindness. This avoids any gaps in what we can deliver.
We ask for and purchase new items, rather than second-hand items, for a few reasons. We can’t guarantee the safety of certain pre-loved electronics and lack the resources to ensure hygiene standards are met with clothing items. Above all, new items reinforce the campaign’s ethos of kindness: thousands of people buy a gift with someone in mind, even if they don’t know that person.
How do you provide so many Christmas meals?
Throughout December, our shop teams prepare thousands of meals. Some will be served in our venues on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and others are sent out to our partners to feed the people they support.
Some of our partner organisations prefer to prepare the meals they serve themselves, so we buy and send them ingredients like potatoes and sticky toffee pudding, free of charge. This means your donation may also be used to buy Christmas dinner ingredients. We also provide grants to charities and community groups across the UK to help them fund their Christmas dinner services and winter meal programmes.
Longer term projects
Donations over Christmas may also help to fund:
- Year-round free food services. These run daily from Social Bite’s coffee shops, providing tens of thousands of meals a year to anyone who needs them.
- The Social Bite Villages, which provide accommodation and receive referrals all year round.
- Our Jobs First programme, which supports people affected by homelessness to find and sustain a meaningful role at any time of year.
The amazing impact your donation has
You can see examples of the organisations and projects we support and the incredible, widespread impact of your donations from Festival of Kindness 2024 in this impact report.
More about our funding in general
Social Bite receives donations from several sources, including:
- individuals and businesses who fundraise for us and donate to us
- businesses who provide their services or products free of charge
- charitable foundations and trusts
- profits from our coffee shops
- gifts in wills.
The information on this page was last updated November 2025