We’re thrilled to welcome Lucy Furneaux to The Stop’s leadership team as our new Director of Development and Communications! Lucy recently moved to Toronto from London, where she worked with homelessness and arts nonprofits for over ten years.
As an introduction to our community, Lucy has shared her first impressions, the challenges and opportunities she envisions for The Stop, and how to support our work.
Hi! I’m Lucy, The Stop’s new Director of Development and Communications. I’ve worked in fundraising for my whole career, mostly in homelessness and arts nonprofits, two causes that are very close to my heart.
Having spent the last ten years living and working in London, I decided to move to Toronto this February and so far, I’m very pleased with my choice! Outside of work, I love to cook and host people whenever possible. Food tastes better when it’s shared.
In my first week at The Stop, I joined our programs as a volunteer and was impressed to see the dedication of our staff and volunteers and the genuine warmth and connection between our community members.
The Stop does so much across its programs, from drop-in meals to perinatal nutrition classes and food hampers to urban agriculture sessions. Once you step inside our spaces, you can feel something special happening here.
The most rewarding thing for me is knowing that our behind-the-scenes fundraising work powers this and being able to share that magic with donors.
We are experiencing very challenging times: the needs of our community have never been greater. The spiraling prices for groceries is severely impacting how much we can offer people, while also affecting the budgets of the kind people who donate to us too. It’s stark – we’re need to buy more food than ever before, and food has never been more expensive!
Here at The Stop we’ll do everything in our power to be there for people who need us, but we need serious policy changes to stop food insecurity from becoming an even bigger problem than it already is. Your support through donations is critical, so if you’re a donor to the stop – thank you!
The best way for people to support The Stop is ultimately by donating cash. Cash gifts are great because we can allocate the money where the need is greatest, meaning we can react to crises quickly and effectively – something we did during the pandemic thanks to our amazing, generous supporters.
Other than relying on donations, we also rely on feedback and ideas from the community! Please reach out if you want to ask a question, learn more about what we do, or have thoughts on our fundraising and communications. I love hearing from people and getting fresh perspectives.
The support of our donors is exclusively what keeps our programs running. Help us to provide our neighbours with healthy food and to run our vital community-building programs throughout the year: