Sweet Talk with Cake4Kids

We sat down with Alison the Exec. Director to learn a little more about this amazing organization.

A Conversation with Alison Bakewell. (Exec. Director)

So first, what inspired the founding of Cake for Kids and what’s its main mission?

Our founder, Libby, she read an article about a young girl in foster care in the Midwest, she was just placed in a new foster home, which if you know anything about foster care, they do get moved from home to home quite a bit. So the girl was in this new home, and it was her birthday. The foster mom met her at the door when she came home from school with a birthday cake, and the little girl burst into tears and ran into her room. The foster mom was thinking “oh, no, she didn’t like chocolate or she didn’t like the cake.” She went to talk to her, and the little girl said, “I’m not crying because I’m sad. I’m crying because I’ve never had a birthday cake before.”

Libby thought if that was happening in the Midwest, it was probably happening in her own community as well. So she rounded up some friends, connected with a foster family agency and started Cake for Kids,

Sadly Libby passed away in 2013, but it was an amazing group of volunteers that took her vision and grew it into what it is today.

What is the companies main mission?

We want to raise kids self esteem by acknowledging them on their special day. We know that kids who are experiencing homelessness or are in foster care, maybe those who are experiencing domestic violence or are in a trafficking shelter, living at the poverty line and more, we know that they don’t always get acknowledged on their birthday or for other special achievements. So that’s what we’re trying to d by delivering a birthday cake. We also do graduations, adoptions, and academic awards. We’ve seen that if they’re not getting recognized on their birthday, that they also likely aren’t getting recognized for other milestones.

Can you share some key milestones or achievements in the organization’s history?

In our first year we delivered 13 cakes. This year we are set to deliver around 16,000.

How do you guys coordinate volunteers and manage the cake requests?

We partner with human and social services agencies to get requests for the kids. We don’t get it directly from families or the youth themselves, and we do that for the privacy and safety of the youth. As you can imagine, someone in domestic violence shelter, human trafficking shelter, they really do need their privacy for their safety.

What types of partnerships or collaborations have been important to Cakes4Kids?

We have volunteer bakers who bake in their own home and they deliver to the agency that we partner with, they know they’re never going to get to meet the kids that they’re baking for, again, for the privacy and safety of the youth. But they pour their heart and soul into every bake. Sometimes we get feedback, with a picture, and that just makes their day. But really, and I can tell you this as being a baker as well, really what’s exciting is dropping the cake off and knowing that you’re going to make someone smile.

What are some of the biggest challenges Cakes4Kids faces in carrying out its mission?

You know what? It’s really hard to give away free cake. It really is. So connecting with partners is our hardest. That’s the most difficult. And finding people in 21 states, we have 27 chapters.

Some Of The Cakes

Can you explain that a bit more?

So each chapter is led by an ambassador, and that ambassador hopefully has a team to support them, and part of their job is to find partners for us in their region. I did it for years and I probably have 1300 emails where I’ve reached out to people who would say, “Hey, I want to give to your organization, do you want some free cake?” Though not in those words exactly but the issue is after that they never respond. The deeper issue is that email is sort of a new junk mail. People don’t pay attention to email anymore much as we’d like them to. For this reason we also might not get to the right person in an agency. We might get, no one looking at our email. We might actually just end up in spam, so they don’t even see it. a second issue is that when we do get to an organization, sometimes, one of the things that they’re super concerned how nonprofits and government agencies have limited resources, and they look at us like one more program for them to manage. Even though they may find our program extraordinarily valuable for the youth, they may not know or understand that we actually have the resources to administer the program so they dont have to do extra work. In the end we’ve done our best to make it as easy as possible, but it’s still difficult.

What specific impact have you seen on the children and families you serve?

Not only does it make the child feel good about themselves and make them smile, but it builds trust between the caseworkers and the youth. So a lot of these kids come from backgrounds where they’re let down over and over again no one hears them or sees them, then this social worker comes into their life and says, I’m going to make it better for you. And they’re like, yeah, right. Sure. Then when the social worker says, what do you want for your birthday cake? Do you want cake, cupcakes, cookies, bars, brownies? What theme, what flavor? And then they show up with that cake that really builds a bond. So the social workers are finding that it’s not just helping the kids, it’s helping them do their jobs and connect with the kids that they’re serving

What are some of Cakes4Kids’ current needs in terms of resources, funding, or volunteers?

Well, I’ll always say funding first. We’re not the type of agency that gets grants because almost all of our funding goes towards operations. And when you look at foundations, they want to fund a project, or if you look at government grants, they’re looking for places where the money turns around, goes right into the community. And ours goes for running the program to all the logistics, the staff, software, insurance for making sure that we get the cake request in. So I’d definitely say funding. We are mostly privately funded. It’s all private donations. We also have a few fundraisers every year and a few smaller ones that are cake related. As well as an auction and a national online auction. Second I’d say recruiting volunteers and partners. It goes in waves. When I started, you couldn’t get a cake request. You were sitting there hitting the button, refreshing, refreshing, seeing if something popped up so you could grab it. Then other times we need volunteers. This is a great volunteer opportunity. You can bake as much or as little as you like. So you can bake once a month, once a week, a couple times a week, once a year, you take three years off because you’re super busy and come back to us. Its flexible.

What is the process for becoming a volunteer?

So, you fill out an online application and we ask for your driver’s license and insurance information, which always gives people pause to put that in online, But we need that for our insurance purposes. So everyone’s expected to bake and deliver. Doesn’t mean you have to drive a car to do it. You could take ride share, you could get a friend to drive you. You could get one of your family members. We have people who have ridden a bus with a cakebox, so public transport, especially easier in large cities like San Francisco or Chicago. But once you fill out that online application, then we invite you to a one hour online orientation, and then you have to pass a short quiz. And it’s super easy. It just means you were paying attention during orientation. And then you get access to our portal where it shows all the cake requests that are available in the region you signed up to bake in. Then you can choose a request based on how close it is to home or work. You always get a minimum of two hour delivery window because we understand traffic and life happens, and it’s hard to be somewhere on time every time. At the end we reach out for feedback on every request.

How do you ensure the cakes are safe and appropriate for the children receiving them (e.g., allergies, dietary restrictions)?

Yeah, we do accommodate dietary restrictions. And those are clearly labeled on the cake request. Anything with any kind of dietary restriction has its own little icon, so people know they’re looking at a dietary request or a dietary restriction request. We have guidelines for safe food handling, so every time they sign up for a cake, a popup for the CDCs guidelines for FDA’s guidelines for safe food handling pops up. And then we have guidelines for allergy baking that we share with them as well.

Do you have a chapter in Florida

We don’t. So we do open new chapters pretty regularly. Our chapter application period is happening starting in September, and we’ll go through the first quarter of 2025 and we’ll open up chapters in 2026.

What advice would you give someone looking to start a similar nonprofit initiative?

It’s a lot of work. I would definitely tell them to first make sure that they have that supply and demand balance to get insurance, to make sure that you get a really good team. This is not a one person gig. Even when I started in 2013, we were all volunteer run at that point and there were seven or eight of us doing it. And that was for 300 cakes a year.

Head to their site to learn more

Cake4Kids gets cakes from home bakers to professional business owners. Cake4kids.org

Can you tell us a memorable story or experience that you’ve had or one from a volunteer?

Yeah. I actually got lucky. So I was delivering to a domestic violence shelter and it was a gated facility. And I was meeting the social worker there and she was late and I thought she was just going to be there. So I’m standing in front of this gated community, waiting, waiting, waiting. For almost 20 minutes, I’m still waiting and calling her and trying to get ahold of her and nothing. And this lady and young daughter come out of the facility. I walked up and said, Hey, do you know if so and so is in there. I am here to deliver a cake. And she said, I don’t think she’s on site. What is the cake for? I said, I’m with Cake for kids. It’s a birthday cake. And she goes, who’s it for? And I said, the little girl’s name. And she said, but that’s for my daughter. And so I got to meet them and got to show her the cake. And she was so excited. It was just such a happy coincidence. That really doesn’t happen very often. Was very nice of this lady to identify herself, but honestly, it was so exciting to see the look on our face.