Community Fridge Set-Up Fund

Thanks for your interest in applying for a grant to set up a community fridge in your community. Thanks to our partnership with The Co-op, we’re are looking to support another 20 groups to Set-Up a community fridge, helping more people share surplus food and reduce waste in their local areas.​ 

Please see the ethos of the Community Fridge Network:

Community fridges are a space that brings people together to share food, meet up, learn new skills and prevent fresh food from going to waste. They’re open to all and anyone can share or take food, including surplus from supermarkets, local food businesses, producers, households and gardens. Fridges are run by community groups in shared spaces such as schools, community centres and shops. 

The funding on offer is for one grant payment of £4,750 towards the cost of setting up a community fridge in your area. 

 
On receiving the grant, groups commit to returning the necessary reporting documentation for the first 6 months of opening:

• Weight of food (KG) of food distributed per month
• Number of visitors per month

Groups are required to open their community fridge within 12 months of signing their Letter of Agreement 
 
Saving progress: Please make sure to save your answers elsewhere (e.g., Microsoft Word) as the save functions on this form may sometimes fail. 

The deadline for applications is September 30th, 2025, 11:59PM. We reserve the right to close the application portal before this time if all the funding has been allocated. 

Before you start:  
Please review the following materials alongside this form. Hubbub commits to implementing the IVAR principles in all grant provisions and these materials are intended to provide you with an understanding of how to ensure your community fridge is inclusive to all, show the practicalities of setting up a fridge, and to provide detailed information on the application questions, eligibility and what the grant entails.  

• CFN Set Up guide
• CFN Set Up grant application questions guide
• Co-op Grant Eligibility Criteria

You will also need to upload the Governance Documents for your group, please have these available to you when you start the form. For information on guidance documents see here: https://www.ncvo.org.uk/help-and-guidance/setting-up/a-charitys-governing-document-what-it-should-include/

 

Please feel free to contact the team here if you have any queries, need support in completing this form or have any reasonable adjustments you would like to request. 

*This funding can only go towards the set-up of a new community fridge and cannot go towards other initiatives (e.g., food banks, social supermarkets). It also cannot go towards an existing community fridge. If you are looking for funding for an existing community fridge please see our Food Hubs grant.

Please refer to the Community Fridge Network ethos (available at the top of this form). This question helps us understand the type of community fridge you want to set up and why. We’re looking to see how your fridge will fit with the Community Fridge Network’s ethos—focusing on reducing food waste and building community connections, rather than being mainly about addressing food poverty. It also lets us know if your idea has been shaped by your community or if it’s something you or your group decided to do on your own. Fridges that are well-supported by the local community tend to be the most successful.

*You must already have a site available for your community fridge and have identified where there is surplus food in your area that is going to waste.  

Please review what you can spend the funding on in our Set-Up Fund Eligibility Criteria document. Answering this question demonstrates your understanding of how the funding will help establish your fridge. It will also help to better to clarify what the ongoing costs are required to keep the community fridge running so that it can be a sustainable project.

Answering this question allows you to demonstrate you have a confirmed location for your community fridge and that it will open to all. We’d like to hear about where it will be located: library, community centre, street, youth centre, church, school etc. This shows us how easy it will be for the community to find and use the fridge, and who it’s intended to serve. 

There's no community fridge without food waste! Do you have connections with local shops, farms, or other food sources and checked there is available surplus food going to waste? If so, please tell us who they are and what conversations you’ve had with them.

Sharing links to your organisation's webpage or social media is a fantastic way for us to see your current activities. While this information will not be scored initially, it can be a valuable resource in making decisions if we need to choose between equally strong applications. Please leave blank if you do not have a webpage or social media account.

You're almost finished! Check that all of the information above is correct before clicking 'Submit' below, then you're good to go..

Data protection: Under the General Data Protection Regulations and Data Protection Act 2018, you have a right to see the information that is held about you. The information you provide is controlled or processed by Hubbub for the purpose of managing this grant. If you would like to understand how we will use this information you can make an appointment with a member of staff by contacting hello@hubbub.org.uk. This request will be passed to the Data Protection Officer who will respond to you. If you would like to find out more about how Hubbub handle personal information, please read our privacy notice online.