A Hui, A Birthday, And A Fundraiser – It’s A Big Weekend For Good Bitches Baking!

a hui, a birthday, and a fundraiser – it’s a big weekend for good bitches baking!

tuesday 20 september

This weekend, Good Bitches Baking will breathe a sigh of relief, anticipation, and pride as its first Head Bitch Hui gets underway in Wellington, marking the organisation’s eighth birthday.

Preparation for the weekend-long hui began pre-pandemic, and the GBB HQ team is chuffed that after two cancellations, the hui is ON.

GBB General Manager Katy Rowden says, “We have this incredible group of people who look after our 2600 volunteers around the country – we have 30 chapters from Kaitaia to Invercargill, and each is led by a Head Bitch. Those people – effectively our leadership team – have never met each other in person, so this weekend is all about connecting them, giving them some professional development, and feeding them really well – we’re making them make their own dinner though!”

The hui includes sessions specific to GBB operations – the organisation has a custom-built Bitch (volunteer) Management System – as well as broader upskilling in areas such as social media and managing difficult conversations.

The Saturday sessions will conclude with a panel conversation entitled “What actually is kindness?”, chaired by trustee Sarah Meikle with GBB’s founders Nicole Murray and Marie Fitzgerald and representatives from three of our Wellington recipient organisations – DCM, Gender Minorities Aotearoa, and the Mary Potter Hospice.

Instead of the standard ‘book a fancy restaurant for dinner’ approach, GBB is holding true to its style and is doing things a bit differently. Katy has engaged Auckland-based Social Cooking to do a competitive cooking challenge, which will hopefully result in some delicious – edible will do – dinner for the Head Bitch team after a busy day.

The weekend rounds out with a two-hour social media masterclass with Good Bitch and highly accomplished social media manager Libby Greatnews, and a session with Atawhai Tibble, who will discuss Teatoweltanga in the context of GBB’s strategic focus on understanding its roles and responsibilities with Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Katy says, “Our aim for the weekend is to send this bunch of spectacular bitches home refreshed, upskilled, a little bit exhausted, and even more invested in our kaupapa of spreading kindness to people doing it tough in our community.”

Alongside the hui, Good Bitches Baking is running an online fundraising event through Givealittle (supported by The Funding Network’s Generosity Generator), with a target of $23,139, the number of boxes our Good Bitches will donate this year based on numbers to date.

Katy says, “One of the challenges we face with online fundraisers is our reliance on social media to get the word out to our wider community - both about the fundraiser and the work we do. Facebook in particular doesn’t like our name because it includes ‘profanity’ and we’ve already had ads rejected on the platform.”

The fundraiser will contribute to operational costs including salaries for the 2.1 FTE (4 humans) who support the ~2600 volunteers, often the hardest element of running a charity – but perhaps one of the most essential –to fund.

good bitches baking at a glance

Good Bitches Baking was founded in Wellington in September 2014 by Nicole Murray and Marie Fitzgerald, over cocktails and discussions of the number of people they saw daily having a tough time in the community around them.

Since then, it has spread around the country, the newest active one being Gore-Balclutha (although Kaitaia is in the pipeline), the smallest being the Coromandel chapter with 5 Good Bitches and 3 recipient organisations and the largest being Wellington with 463 and 46 respectively.

We currently have 316 recipient organisations (not counting those still on hold due to their internal Covid19 protocols) and delivered 2316 boxes of baking last month.

We are funded through a patchwork of grants, commercial and corporate partnerships, merchandise sales, donations, and fundraising.

useful links

What’s in a name

Wanna be a Good Bitch campaign

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