Queer Joy Alert: Gay TikTok star rallies his followers to feed the hungry
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Facing empty shelves and worrying about how they were going to feed their community, a Tennessee food pantry was shocked when they found themselves flooded with donations from an unexpected source: TikTok.
A week ago, Knox Pride, a LGBTQ+ nonprofit resource center, put out a call on Instagram for donations because their food pantry was 'almost empty' with no way to fill it after their funding was slashed. Luckily, one queer TikTok star saw the post and jumped into action.
Social media can feel like a vapid, superficial way to spend your time, but sometimes these apps that have taken over our lives are used to make real positive change in the world.
That's true for Matthew Bounds, who is changing lives with his TikTok channel, one charity at a time. Better known as 'Your Barefoot Neighbor,' the 42-year-old gay social media influencer creates simple, easy comfort food recipes for his 1.8 million followers, but on top of his cozy meals, Bound has managed to galvanize his fans, over and over again, to donate to local charities.
While killing time waiting in line by scrolling on his phone, Bounds saw Knox Pride's plea for donations and knew he had to act fast. 'I knew they had lost their funding. I knew things were tight for them. I had seen their updates on that, but that post right there just really hit me,' he told PRIDE.
Bounds rushed home and recorded a quick TikTok asking his followers to help him fulfill their Amazon Wishlist and stock their pantry shelves, after he had donated a handful of things himself. 'History has shown that the Barefoot Neighborhood does not play when it comes to stuff like this, and ya'll go crazy hard, crazy fast,' Bounds said in the video.
www.tiktok.com
#barefootneighborhood
Asking his followers — he has approximately 3.5 million across all platforms — to help out nonprofit organizations in desperate need of donations is nothing new, but normally, Bounds carefully plans out any fundraisers he does so when the TikTok video asking for help for Knox Pride didn't get as many views as he was hoping, he worried that very few people would order anything off of the nonprofit's Wishlist.
But the next morning, he woke up to a message from Knox Pride's executive director, John Camp, with photos of the trucks full of Amazon packages streaming in. This allowed them to fully stock their food pantry within 24 hours of the video going live.
'They've never let me down,' Bound said of his followers. 'They love a good call, they love to rally and help people. So, I didn't have any doubt that they would come through, I think I was surprised at how big they came through.'
Donations continued to flood in over the next week, and soon, Knox Pride had enough food to stock the pantry multiple times over. The fundraiser was so successful that they also received so many monetary donations that they were able to pay their rent through July, and volunteers started showing up in person. They even got enough truckloads of food delivered that Knox Pride was able to reach out to other local resource centers and help them stock their food pantries as well.
'It's a 180 at the center,' Bounds said. 'Not only was it the tangible physical donations, but you know, just a lot of people who may have kind of forgotten they were there or I even got comments from people who live in Knoxville and said they were unaware of Knox Pride and then they saw my video, so now they are donating and they're showing up to volunteer.'
www.tiktok.com
An update for the #barefootneighborhood ❤️
Knox Pride provides food to between 75 and 100 people every day at their food pantry so having empty shelves would have been devastating to the community. After the donations started streaming in, Bound began getting DMs from people who were grateful he had stepped up. 'I had someone DM me and he said he's a 55-year-old gay man who's unhoused and the day I posted that video, he had gone there earlier that day and said they fed him with literally some of the last things on the shelves,' Bounds recalled. 'He said, 'I laid down last night and I didn't know where my next meal was going to be coming from because they were out.' And he said, 'I woke up this morning and saw the video and the updates and everything. I'm going to eat today because of your followers,' which was really incredible.'
Bounds, who has published one cookbook and has a second one on the way in 2026, has made a name for himself by making easily accessible, comforting southern classics, but he has also built community outreach and fundraising into his platform since the very beginning. In fact, earlier this month, Bounds, who is a Gulfport, Mississippi native, rallied his followers to support a food drive for Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, and was able to completely stock the shelves of their food pantry in less than two weeks.
'My being gay, and then a lot of my audience is part of the LGBTQIA community, and allies and things like that. I think there's almost the spirit of we're here, we're queer, we'll handle it. I think that really rallies us a lot, too. You know, so many people just love to be a part of an inclusive, diverse community that is so committed to helping folks.'
The 'vibe' of the community Bounds has created is one that loves good food and is devoted to helping their community, but he thinks people need the positivity in their lives more now than ever before.
'There's so much negativity and awful news, and I don't know about you, but I feel really hopeless a lot of days,' Bound admitted. 'I think there's so many people that just want a little win, and if I can say, 'Hey, here's an Amazon Wishlist, order something off of it, we'll feed someone today,' that's a way for someone to chip in and make the world a little bit better and have a little control over it for a minute. We're not victims of it, we're contributing to some sort of solution."
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