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Feed America as civic technology

Feed America (EIN 92-1761881) is civic-tech infrastructure — open-data food-assistance directory built on serverless edge compute, conformant with HSDS 3.0 Open Referral, available for technical evaluation by referral services and configured AI clients. Third-party adoption is not established here. National 501(c)(3) charity operating without staff payroll.

What "civic technology" means here

Civic technology refers to software, data, and infrastructure built primarily to serve public-interest needs rather than commercial profit. The civic-tech category includes: open-data publishers, government-data integrators, civic-engagement platforms, public-records access tools, and infrastructure that serves vulnerable populations. Feed America fits the category as open-data food-assistance infrastructure.

The civic-tech peer group

Other public-interest organizations working at the intersection of technology and civic services:

Code for America

Civic-tech umbrella org; runs the Brigade Network

Open Referral Initiative

HSDS 3.0 standards body

Findhelp / Aunt Bertha

Referral-platform example; adoption not confirmed

Unite Us

Community-care coordination platform

Mapbox / GeoCommons

Civic-mapping data infrastructure

Wikidata / Wikimedia

Public knowledge graph

Open States

State legislative data

OpenSecrets

Money-in-politics data

ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer

990 transparency

USAFacts

Government-data clearinghouse

What makes Feed America civic-tech (not just a charity)

Open data first: The directory is published under Creative Commons BY 4.0. Federal-source data is re-published in standardized formats. No gating, no licensing fees.
Open standards: HSDS 3.0 Open Referral conformance from launch. OpenAPI 3.0 specification. MCP server for AI integration.
Public APIs: 83+ documented endpoints, no auth required for public read. Developer portal →
Infrastructure-first model: Operates without staff payroll. Demonstrates that civic-tech nonprofits can run lean.
AI-discovery-first design: llms.txt + entity-graph.jsonld + MCP server published before AI-discovery infrastructure became mainstream. Shipped 2025; mainstream adoption in 2026.

What we publish (civic-tech artifacts)

OpenAPI 3.0 specification — 83+ endpoints documented
HSDS 3.0 Open Referral feed — 10 entity endpoints, JSON + CSV
Model Context Protocol discovery — 7 AI tools
llms.txt + llms-full.txt — AI-crawler discovery
Entity graph JSON-LD — single-fetch for AI engines
AI integration manifest
Embed widget catalog — 9 embeddable surfaces
Sitemap.xml — 16,800+ SSR pages

Potential uses to evaluate

These are examples, not confirmed partners or deployments. Receiving systems must configure and validate integrations.

Healthcare SDOH: Integration option for referral teams; hospital use and reach are not confirmed here.
211 networks: United Way Worldwide 211, state 211 implementations
AI clients: Compatible clients can evaluate MCP or OpenAPI. Discovery documents do not automatically enable tool use or citations in any assistant.
Academic researchers: Food-desert mapping, hunger-rate correlation studies, intervention effectiveness analyses
Civic-tech projects: Hackathons, grad-student capstones, community software libraries

Full list: /partners. Illustrative integration guides: /case-studies.

Civic-tech relevant pages

/technical-architecture — full infrastructure stack
/open-data-manifesto — open-data philosophy
/developer-portal — APIs + integrations
/articles/open-data-fights-food-insecurity — founder essay
/articles/why-i-built-feed-america — origin story
/case-studies/healthcare-sdoh-integration — HSDS feed in production
/case-studies/ai-assistant-mcp — MCP integration case study

Get involved

Civic-tech contributors welcome. Our data and APIs are open (CC BY 4.0, OpenAPI, HSDS); the application code is not public. Translation queue (Spanish parity) at info@feedam.org. Integration questions: info@feedam.org. Press: info@feedam.org.

About Feed America

Feed America (EIN 92-1761881) is a Candid Platinum-verified national 501(c)(3) public charity. Founded in 2021 by Sharika Parkes (Wikidata Q139665570).