Adrian Kulesza, Senior Photographer

Every week, student volunteers at the Yale Community Kitchen, or YCK, provide meals to New Haven residents on Fridays and Saturdays, the only two days of the week when the Downtown Eating Soup Kitchen, or DESK, is closed. However, YCK is currently struggling to find funding and balance its budget. 

Last March, the News reported on the kitchen’s difficulty funding its weekly operations. Since then, a new group of student coordinators has worked to find ways to address the funding issues the organization faces sustainably. Two of YCK’s head coordinators, Madeline Pitre ’26 and Nolyn Mjema ’26, spoke with the News about the organization’s ongoing challenges to meet more than $5,000 in costs per semester. 

“It’s difficult when one of the major volunteer organizations at Yale that helps provide in a weekend close to 400 meals, cannot find enough funding within Yale to support itself,” Pitre said.

Both head coordinators highlighted that YCK has seen steadily increasing demand for meals in recent months, potentially due to inflation and the pandemic’s lingering effects.

Like other student organizations on campus, YCK relies on the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee, or UOFC, to fund its operations. However, Mjema noted that UOFC’s funding can be erratic, and YCK has often found itself in a “scramble.”

The UOFC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

In recent years, funding has become a pressing issue for YCK, leading coordinators to reach out to various administrators, including the Office of Student Affairs. Pitre told the News that these conversations reached a “dead end,” and YCK was told that there was “just no money to give.” 

Director of UOFC Andrey Sokolov told the News that the organization is committed to equitably and efficiently allocating funds. Sokolov added that UOFC is focusing on increasing the transparency of the club funding process and is working with Student Organization Consultants to gather feedback from clubs and understand their experience applying for UOFC funding.  

When Yale’s funding proved insufficient to support the YCK’s expenses, the head coordinators were quickly forced to adapt. 

“At the beginning of last year, there was a reevaluation of where we were getting our funding from, and the head coordinators from the past year put in a lot of new strategies for cost-cutting that of course were not instant,” said Pitre. 

Despite rising food costs, the kitchen managed to limit its cost per meal to $2.75 last year. 

YCK coordinators have also taken steps to secure the additional funding needed to preserve the kitchen in various ways, including from Dwight Hall. 

Though the kitchen is working to cut its internal costs while also seeking further external funding, the head coordinators would prefer to move away from applying for local grants as a Yale organization. For Pitre and Mjema, funding would ideally come entirely from the University. 

“There are a lot of other non-profits and other organizations in New Haven that don’t have Yale’s name that are not able to be supported in this way,” said Mjema. 

One key goal for YCK in the coming year is to secure more consistent funding from within the Yale bubble. Such funding would both allow the kitchen to leave local grants available for organizations not affiliated with Yale and rid head coordinators of the headaches of rushing to acquire funds for meals on short notice. 

The head coordinators are in talks with Yale about Student Orgs Annual Raise, which could help the kitchen secure the consistent funding it needs through fundraising from alumni. 

“SOAR is a new system for student organizations that are registered with us and that develop a budget to help them raise funds from alumni, and that was quite successful last year,” Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis said. “Some organizations might have just raised a few hundred [dollars], and others raised considerably more than that … I’m not sure it’s at the level that they might need to get back to where they were.” 

YCK has been running for over 20 years.

Update, Sept. 12: This story has been updated with response from Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee.