We CU Community Partner Spotlight: Channing-Murray Foundation

We CU and the School of Social Work’s Community Learning Lab partner with approximately one hundred community organizations each year. In the Community-Partner Spotlight, a partner answers three questions about their organization’s mission and community impact.    

This week, we are featuring The Channing-Murray Foundation (CMF). Located in the heart of campus, CMF is a non-profit art and social justice campus center rooted in Unitarian Universalist (UU) values. They believe that everyone has inherent worth and dignity, people and planet are interconnected, and we all have a role to play in creating networks of care. Incorporated as a UU student ministry in 1954, CMF has evolved into a performance venue, an activist meeting space, and a home to the Red Herring Vegetarian Restaurant, a program of the Channing-Murray that focuses on making delicious, wholesome food in sustainable ways, incorporating mostly local and organic food.  

We CU students have served in the Red-Herring kitchen and with the Channing-Murray Bucket Brigade, packaging and delivering groceries to people in need.  

You can follow the Channing-Murray Foundation on Facebook and Instagram and the Red Herring Vegetarian Restaurant on Facebook and Instagram.  

In this spotlight, CMF Operations Manager Sam Schnelle (she/her) shares more about their Bucket Brigade program, how vital their volunteers are, and their desire to create a safe, inclusive space on campus.

If you would like We CU to feature your organization in this series, contact the Community Learning Lab at SSW-CLL@mx.uillinois.edu.    

What does a positive community impact look like in this organization? 

One of the main ways in which Channing-Murray strives to provide for the community is through our food pantry program, the Bucket Brigade. By donating and delivering groceries, fresh produce, and household supplies, CMF is able to live out its mission in providing for our neighbors. To reflect our concern for social justice, we offer our space and resources to many UIUC organizations/RSOs–such as Students for Environmental Concerns–where they can advocate for those in need via protests, clothing swaps, etc.

What inspires you about our community?

Though Channing-Murray offers many programs and opportunities to provide for those in need, we wouldn't be able to truly succeed without the help from our community. The many people who join together in helping one another inspires us to keep going and to continue putting forth all our efforts in giving back.

What do you want UIUC students to know about your organization?

 CMF has a strong commitment to diversity and celebrating a multitude of world views, histories, and cultural knowledge across a range of social groups including race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, abilities, economic class, religion, and their intersections. The UIUC students play an important role in Channing-Murray and the Red Herring, and we strive to provide a safe space in which they can do so successfully.