Accessing funding can pay for a dedicated coordinator for your area and allow you to purchase the necessary equipment

Thematic areas

• Reducing food waste
• Promoting environmental sustainability
• Supporting vulnerable communities
• Enhancing community cohesion and wellbeing
• Volunteering opportunities

Measuring impact

Funders will usually be interested in a thematic area and your application will need to outline what you’re already doing within this area, what you would like to improve using the grant funding, and how you will achieve it.

When hosting your gleans, it’s useful to gather ongoing stories and statistics that showcase how gleaning is beneficial to: the farmer, the volunteers, reducing food waste, the recipient organisations.

Social impact

• Take pictures and videos of the day
• Write up/film case studies with volunteers and farmers
• Create a feedback form for volunteers to complete at the end of the glean where you can extract key information for funding applications.
  • Questions in these forms can be tailored to thematic areas above. Asking questions in the feedback with multiple choice or rating scale questions are best
    • eg. ‘XX% of our volunteers say gleaning has helped with their self confidence / understanding of the issues of farm level food waste / feeling part of the community‘ etc.
• Ask recipient organisations to provide quotes and take pictures of the meals they have made with the donated food

Numbers and stats

A record of the amount gleaned and number of volunteers for each glean is the key data you should keep. Other useful stats to keep may include number of new farms, new volunteers, total media engagement, total carbon saved, total meals made from surplus.

In funding applications, you can use these numbers as a baseline to help with shaping your outcomes that you’d hope to achieve with the funding.

Where do I find funders?

Small regional pots of grant funding suit gleaning activities, as opposed to larger national pots with intensive reporting needs. Generally, paying for a salary for a two or three day a week role, and or funding for equipment or other capital costs have been successful.

Check your local online voluntary service, or ask AI exactly what you’re looking for. For example ‘Find me grant opportunities in Sussex for between £5k and £20k that fund staff costs and capital costs for a CIC and focus on thematic areas including: community action, sustainable food, food waste, climate and nature, volunteering. Format as a table with the following headings: Funder/Donor name, funding range, thematic areas, application deadline’.

AI is great for finding funders but not for writing the application, as funders can usually tell.

Feel free to download and use the Gleaning Network logo in your email signature when sending applications and mention you are part of this network.

Corporate gleaning days

Another way to raise funds is to through creating a package for corporate groups to attend gleaning days. There are many ways to organise and price this but we recommend creating a package based on group size rather then per person.

How to set up a gleaning group

In 2020, we ran four free training sessions – these recordings are useful resources alongside the toolkit to better understand gleaning and how to set up a group

1: Why gleaning matters

An overview of the role gleaning can play in reducing farm level food waste, supplying wholesale volumes of fresh produce to organisations supporting people in food insecurity. (Slide Deck)

2: Working with Volunteers and Sharing Out The Food

with Charmaine Fyffe from Khepera

The “how tos” of gleaning, including recruiting, managing and safe supervision of volunteers, and the practical and logistical aspects of distributing the food. (Slide Deck)

3: Working well with farms

with Pete Thompson from George Thompsons Ltd Holt Farm

How to build trusting relationships with farmers, including how to introduce your group to commercial growers, and some insights into the pressures farms currently face and how gleaning fits with that. (Slide Deck)

4: Creating a Strong Group and Network

with Semble

Supporting your organisation to get its gleaning operation established, including ways that you can build your volunteer network, obtain funding and strengthen your group. (Slide Deck | Semble Slide Deck)

• Be understanding of the minutiae of factors which can contribute to food waste on farms, conducting liaisons with farmers in a polite, sympathetic and professional manner
• Be mindful not to over-contact farmers, to contact them without sufficient reason, or against their wishes
• Respect the farmer’s requests with regards to publicising gleaning. Do not publicly acknowledge the specific farm or their circumstances without checking first that the farm is happy to be mentioned
• Do not use, sell or re-purpose any gleaned or donated produce, for a purpose the farmer has not agreed with in advance, especially for financial gain
• If using harvesting knives, do not invite volunteers who are under 18 to take part in the gleaning day, unless the young person is under the supervision of a suitable parent or guardian who has provided written confirmation that they understand and accept the risks.
• Food waste is a symptom of an unfair, inefficient and ecologically catastrophic food system. Redistributing food waste is a great opportunity to provide a short term solution, but should not be seen as a solution, to food insecurity.

• The principles from the food use hierarchy should be adhered to when undertaking all gleaning related activities
• Where possible, gleaning should aim to achieve three central objectives 1) Redirecting fresh produce at risk of being wasted for human consumption 2) Offering participants/volunteers a beneficial outdoor experience connecting with nature and food production 3) Highlighting the factors within the food system which give rise to food waste on farms and the actors who contribute to this
• Actively get as many people involved from different backgrounds, be welcoming and understanding of different people’s specific/additional needs
• Regardless of the size, type or specific practices of each farm, always treat the grower with courtesy and respect, even if they practice farming in a way that you disagree with