Chinchilla-based Volunteer organisation Kup of Kindness forced to choose between op shop and food services

A Chinchilla charity has been forced to downsize its services in the face of volunteer shortages. Find out more.

Kup of Kindness has had to make the heartbreaking decision to close either their op shop or food service.

A Chinchilla charity which has served the community for more than five years has been forced to close its op shop and many of its programs due to a lack of volunteers and rising demand for services.

Kup of Kindness announced the closure of their op shop on Monday as well as their DV support and relocation and the emergency accommodation projects, food hamper and vouchers and Christmas hampers and toys.

Kup of Kindness president Ruth Lindsay said the small volunteer base simply couldn't keep up with the need in the community.

“The decision came because we haven't been able to find a manager for our op shop, our last manager left because of full-time work and she did an amazing job, but seven months ago she finished up,” she said.

“Since then we have tried to find a manager or two managers and every time we came up with the same answer being that they wanted it to be a paid position or there wasn't the ability for them to do it.

“We also struggle with volunteers, our volunteer base is very elderly and we just don’t have the volunteers to run the shop full-time.”

Kup of Kindness food truck launch.

Ms Lindsay said they had made the decision to close the op shop in order to focus all of their efforts on their food services.

“Our decision was we would shut the op shop in order to keep our organisation running with the soup kitchen and food truck but we are yet to find out if we can get a grant to cover the breakfast program,” she said.

“Our op shop was our major fundraiser and it provided funds for our other projects, with the closing of the shop our major fundraiser is now gone. We will now need to rely fully on grants and donations going forward.

“We had quite a number of projects running and it is becoming harder and harder with the amount of need out there to keep up with it all financially and physically.

“I have been trying for about a year and half to find people to take my place in those projects and once again I couldn't find anyone.

“It is has been heartbreaking it has been over five years but this is a decision we had to make to be able to at least continue on with the food bank.”

Pastoral carer Ruth Lindsay is passionate about helping those in need and is the founder of Chinchilla-based charity Kup of Kindness.

Ms Taylor said the food services would continue for as long as they were able, but appealed for volunteers and donations.

“The big thing people need to know is the food van is not stopping, we feed between 90 and 120 people every Monday night, this takes a massive amount of cost, but we want people to know that food will be available as long as we are able to keep going,” she said.

“Most of the people who work with me in the food van and the soup kitchen are full time workers so to also have people in the op shop was very hard.

“We are a 100 per cent volunteer run organisation and all the money we receives goes into the community and this is the point we have come to.”