In June 2020, Todd Mackintosh (founder/trustee) set off to Tesco in Newmarket with £100 cash to buy as much underwear as he could. Then drove to Winter Comfort For the Homeless in the City of Cambridge to donate the 40 pairs of pants and 35 pairs of socks to their service users.

Realizing how few pairs of pants and socks you can buy with £100 at Tesco, Todd set out to raise more money to buy from whole-sellers. Creating the charity initiative 'Bare Necessities' with two new trustees, Robin and Tony Pearson, and launching a page on Facebook.

By August 2020, thanks to the support from friends and family, Bare Necessities had been able to secure ten times (10x) the amount of underwear:

Working with Winter Comfort for the Homeless (Cambridge), Jimmy's Cambridge and Caring for Cambridgeshire's Homeless (outreach program) we have now donated nearly 3500 items in 6 months.

However, that is not nearly enough and we are facing another unexpected problem: lack of stock at the whole-sellers. Which has resulted in no donations being made in December 2020. A situation that we wish to avoid in the future.

In 2021 we aim to raise enough funds to be able to bulk order underwear (pants & socks) to hold stock as well as continue to buy stock from our current UK clothing whole-sellers.

Bare Necessities is a registered Charity in England and operates at zero running cost. All time, travel etc is funded by our trustees and all funds are used for the purchase of underwear and to cover marketing/platform fees (like JustGiving).

As soon as we have secured enough funding (read: underwear) to cover the needs of the large homeless population in Cambridge, we aim to expand our work to other cities in England.

We also offer a mentoring & consultancy program for any individuals or groups in the UK who wish to start the same initiative in your area.

Please contact Todd at Bare Necessities by email if you are interested: mail@bare-necessities.charity

We need all the support we can get. Donate, Like our page, share our campaign, start your own fundraiser for us.... ANYTHING you can do helps.

Every pair of pants and socks restores dignity. Just think about it.

Thank you so much.