 The
Campus Kitchens Project is a 501c3 organization. We share resources
and ideas with our parent organization DC Central Kitchen, but
we maintain an independent organizational status. Our national
office is located in Washington, DC.
There are four CKP-owned, or “pilot” Campus Kitchens.
These Campus Kitchens are completely funded and staffed by The
Campus Kitchens Project and serve as the “testing grounds”
for program development. The rest of our Campus Kitchens are school-owned,
or “Affiliate” Campus Kitchens. Affiliate Campus Kitchens
receive a three-year step-down grant from The Campus Kitchens
Project and receive unlimited programmatic support. However, they
are owned, staffed, and sustained financially by the host university.
They license the use of our name and marks, and we provide them
with a library of information, marketing tools, art and photos,
ongoing support, and answers to any question you can imagine,
from “how do we write a grant to support ourselves?”
to “What do we do with a donation of 40 cases of bananas?”.
Measuring Success: CKP’s Social Return on Investment (SROI)
At CKP, we believe in the importance of measuring our work in
ways that make sense to those who receive meals, volunteer their
time, or write a check. In partnership with some amazing students
at the Kellogg School of Business, we developed a Social Return on Investment
formula as the first step toward greater assessment tools for
the organization.
Our ROI measures how much value we are able to put back into
the community by providing meals using existing resources (like
donated food and volunteer energy) rather than purchased food
and paid staff. The formula works like this:
SROI = (# of meals CKP provides)(Average
cost per meal if an agency provided them) – 1
(Actual cost to CKP of producing meals)
In 2007, the average SROI for a pilot Campus Kitchen was 129%.
That means that for every dollar invested in these programs,
they produced $1.29 worth of meals and services into the
community. 29 cents doesn’t seem so large, but over thousands
of meals, it allows CKP to be a multiplier for our communities.
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