Nine months pregnant, on Christmas Eve of 2011, Shayna Gaunt gave to Daily Bread Food Bank for the first time. She doesn’t recall what sparked that initial donation — maybe it was a holiday mailing from us or a radio story on current demand — but she does remember why she chose to give specifically to Daily Bread.
“People need to eat,” she said. “And the need is only getting worse.”
A few years after that first gift, she and her husband joined the cohort of supporters we rely on most for a stable base of funding — monthly donors. She remembers they researched charities’ administrative costs and appreciated Daily Bread’s efficiency with donor dollars, ensuring as much money as possible goes directly to food programs. “That’s one of the reasons why we donated and continue to donate to you,” she said. Plus, her husband changed careers around this time, and his new employer matched donations, so they knew their impact would be doubled.
They’ve now been monthly donors for more than a decade. Shayna said she loves that being a monthly donor means giving back with convenience. “Instead of giving once a year and worrying ‘I might forget about it next year,’ you can just check that box and make it easy,” she said.
For Daily Bread, the monthly giving program is a vital source of funding that enables us to provide nutritious food all year long. This consistency is especially critical in a realm like food insecurity, where levels of need have skyrocketed at shocking speed over the past five years. In 2024, Daily Bread food banks saw over 3.75 million visits, a historic high that’s more than 4.5 times pre-pandemic levels. In these uncertain times, our monthly donors support us with dependable funding we know we can count on for planning, taking some unpredictability out of the equation.
Thank you so much to Shayna and every single one of the generous community members who donate to Daily Bread. Because of your support, the more than 1 in 10 Torontonians now turning to food banks are able to feed themselves and their families.
You can become a monthly donor for as little as $10 a month. To help put food on the tables of neighbours in need, consider becoming a monthly donor today.
