Friends' Cafe being extra friendly on Fridays by donating to charity

Friends’ Cafe at the Health Sciences Library is living up to its name by giving 10 percent of its profits each Friday to different charities.

Simon McGorman, owner of Friends’ Cafe, said this Friday will be the first of many when they will give to charities.

“There are a lot of really great organizations that are doing good work to help marginalized people, and it just seemed like something we should do,” McGorman said.

On Friday, the cafe will be giving to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that says it is fighting against hate and seeking justice for vulnerable groups.

“We definitely wanted to choose a nonpartisan organization and looking at this one online, it seemed like a really good organization,” McGorman said. “We’re still looking at a lot of different organizations to see what we’re going to do for the rest of the Fridays this year.”

Students who come to Friends’ Cafe seem to be pleased with the cafe’s decision to give to charities.

“I think it’s awesome,” said Michelle Nguyen, a medical student at UNC who said she comes to the cafe often.

Clare Schmedes, a junior biology major, said she thinks it is great that the cafe is donating to charity.

“I saw that they are giving to the Southern Poverty Law Center and I think that’s a good charity,” Schmedes said. “If I’m going somewhere on Friday to get food, this definitely makes me consider coming here more.”

McGorman said he plans to give money every Friday for the rest of the year.

“Beyond that we still need to figure out what we are going to do,” McGorman said. “We want to keep a fundraising element in some capacity, but we haven’t determined what that will be yet.”

He said now seems like a good time to begin donating.

“It just seemed like an element of an urgency to support these sort of organizations, so we just kinda quickly made the decision and figured out how to do this for the rest of the year,” he said.

Friends’ Cafe is open to suggestions for charities they can give to.

“We haven’t filled all of the planned Fridays yet for this year,” McGorman said. “The best way for someone to suggest a charity would be to send a message to our Facebook page or they could come in and tell us about it.”

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