Our annual report is now available to read on our website, and we wanted to ensure that you - our amazing leaders - are amongst the first to get the chance to read it.
This annual report covers April 2024-March 2025 - the first year since our founder and former CEO Ben stepped down from his role, we changed the structure of our team, and also made some big changes to the way we support the running of your individual groups.
We were grateful (and remain so) for all your patience, trust, honest feedback and willingness to try something new throughout that year, as we adjusted to this new way of working. We hope that, as you read this report, you’ll be able to pause and feel proud of everything you’ve achieved - not just in your local group, but as part of a growing movement of welcome across the UK! If you’ve joined us since then - we hope this report will help you learn more, and feel proud about, what you’re now part of too 😊
Please share our report around with anyone who you feel might find it interesting, heartening, inspiring and hopeful. With reports of far right activity starting around hotels across the UK yesterday, we think the hope, solidarity and togetherness which Local Welcome meals bring is exactly what we all need at the moment.
To you, as leaders, thank you for believing in Local Welcome’s vision, and making the change we want to see in the world feel possible.
As you may know already, we’re celebrating our 10th Birthday towards the end of this year! 🎉
We’re working on an exciting fundraising campaign to help us grow during our 10th year! Part of this includes finding some businesses who align with our mission and values to support the campaign as match funders (doubling donations made by individuals).
We think small, independent, local businesses are more likely to support Local Welcome's work, in particular:
We need your help to come up with a list of people to approach in your town/city who you think could be interested in supporting Local Welcome!
If you’re happy to approach them in-person (or are already connected to them) then this would also be really helpful - we can provide you with all of the information you need about the ask! If not, we can reach out to them by email ourselves.
Let us know if anyone comes to mind, and we can discuss next steps 😊