08/30/2026
JOY'S KITCHEN - SEPTEMBER UPDATE
Where We Are
Dear Joy's Kitchen volunteers and community,
We want to give everyone a clear update as we move into September.
September Will Be Our Final Month at D3 Arts
D3 Arts has decided to begin a new lease October 1 with another group that has greater financial capacity to support the cost of the space.
At the same time, it has become clear that Joy's Kitchen and D3 Arts are not the right long-term organizational fit.
We are grateful that D3 gave us a place to land during a major transition. Now both organizations are moving forward in directions that make sense for their work.
Joy's Kitchen is not closing. We are transitioning.
Why This Move Is Different
Since June 2025, Joy's Kitchen has moved four times.
And through every one of those moves, you kept showing up.
Food kept moving. Families kept being served. Volunteers kept carrying boxes, driving routes, organizing donations, and helping us figure out how to keep going.
What this community has just moved through is remarkable.
We are incredibly grateful to everyone who hung in with us and kept feeding people through constant transition.
Now we are finally in a place where we can stop reacting to the next move and start building structure around the work.
We may need to pause parts of the program long enough for funding to catch up and for the organization to regain financial footing. Rather than rushing into another temporary setup, we are looking carefully at new space, mobile outreach, partnerships, program placement, and where each part of Joy's can create the strongest public impact, and orgs that we can infuse with our resources responsibly.
Several conversations and meetings are already underway.
One Thing Is Clear
The resources are not stopping.
Joy's will continue gathering, resourcing, and moving food in whatever capacity we responsibly can through this transition.
We need volunteers to keep showing up, help plan, help organize, and help move resources where they make the most sense.
There is no emergency around where Joy's gathers next.
We will find temporary outreach and gathering spaces through community centers, churches, businesses, partner hubs, and other places that make sense while we strengthen funding.
The important thing now is that funding for our next space starts now.
We do not want Joy's responding to another move in panic. We want the community to help drive what comes next by helping us build the resources first, then choosing the right space, the right partners, and the right structure.
Stronger Support Behind Joy's
Joy's Kitchen has now been chosen as a project of the foundation connected to the nonprofit consulting firm we have been working with.
They are not only serving as a fiscal agent. They are helping us strengthen Joy's while we build the structure needed for long-term stability.
Donations through the foundation can continue supporting the project while we work on financial systems, fundraising, leadership training, program placement, strategic planning, equipment, and securing a future operating space.
This gives us the ability to keep meaningful outreach moving where resources allow while we do the deeper organizational work that has been waiting behind the daily urgency of getting food out the door.
For more than a year, our two-person staff has been handling public programming while also managing repeated moves, equipment, vehicles, storage, fundraising, administration, and everything else required to keep Joy's moving.
There is still a lot to sort, repair, store, donate, move, and organize.
We are ready to finally do that work well.
September - December :
We Need You!
This Coming Week Is Pivotal
Before anything long-term can happen, we have one immediate need:
We have to pay our final month's rent at D3. MONDAY.
With approximately a $5,000 gap in our beginning-of-September obligations.
We are expecting a substantial grant within the next couple of weeks which is GREAT news!
But it does not cover the bills due NOW.
We need our community to bridge September.
Your donation helps cover September rent, food recovery, transportation, equipment, storage, transition work, staffing, and continued outreach while the next phase comes together.
https://joyskitchen.org/donate?id=fall-moving-and-reorganization-campain
We Are Still Serving
We intend to continue using D3 and serving from the space for as long as we can through our final month.
We plan to maintain at least three days of service weekly during the transition, and we are also exploring the possibility of helping build another pantry or community food resource for people in our population who need it most.
By the time we conclude our four months at D3, approximately 8,500 family food boxes will have moved through those doors.
We still need volunteers, and we will need extra help as September moves forward.
This Week's Special Project: Holiday Gift Bags
Thanks to a generous retail donor and grant support, we are beginning a special project preparing gift bags for the upcoming holiday season.
Please check the volunteer system for open shifts.
Mondays and Thursdays will remain our upcoming community days.
We are also seeing a large increase in textile donations and a higher volume of retail goods than we have seen in quite some time.
There is a lot moving right now, and we need hands to help sort, organize, prepare, and redirect it where it can do the most good.
What Comes Next
We are 100% not stopping as a community.
What we are doing is taking enough pause to look honestly at what is ahead and make better choices.
We do not want to rush into anything again.
Our upcoming capital campaign will focus on creating the stability needed for Joy's to house equipment, support staff, and continue moving resources throughout Denver.
A stable home base will also give us more flexibility to place programs where they make the most sense, move food into strong community avenues, and direct resources toward the best possible public impact.
As this transformation takes place, we are excited to see what Joy's can become.
This may be the moment where the program changes into something we have all been moving toward for a long time - more flexible, more community-led, and more sustainable.
The resource is proven.
The community is proven.
Now we fund what comes next.
Sign up. Show up. Support. And let's see what we build together.
If you can help us bridge September, please donate today.
https://joyskitchen.org/donate
And we do not want to build a structure so heavy that Joy's cannot actually carry it.
No matter what form the next few months take, one thing is critical:
Joy's Kitchen needs traction toward securing its own operating space.
We got ya. Keep showing up and so will we.
We will be sending shorter weekly update now tat we know its our last month at D3, informing you on upcoing events and outreaches as well as ways you can help with the capital campaign fund. Stay tuned!!! Watch for the updates!
We love you all-
Joy's Kitchen.
Joy's Kitchen: Rescue Food - Feed People
Kathleen Stanley
Rescue & freely distribute 100,000+ pounds of food, feeding 20,000+ people every month
