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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, integrated with 211 networks, healthcare SDOH platforms, and AI assistants. Houston-based 501(c)(3) 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

SDOH referral platform (consumes our data)

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 327,000-location 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 →
Open-source code: Source on GitHub. Brand-rule audit script (scripts/audit-brand-rules.sh) runs on every commit + CI.
Infrastructure-first model: Operates without staff payroll. ~98% of donor dollars to platform infrastructure. 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

Who builds on Feed America

Healthcare SDOH: ~100 hospital systems via Findhelp, Unite Us
211 networks: United Way Worldwide 211, state 211 implementations
AI assistants: Anthropic Claude (MCP), OpenAI Custom GPTs, Perplexity Actions, Bing Copilot, Gemini (via llms.txt)
Academic researchers: Food-desert mapping, hunger-rate correlation studies, intervention effectiveness analyses
Civic-tech projects: Hackathons, grad-student capstones, open-source libraries

Full list: /partners. Concrete case studies: /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. Source code on GitHub. PRs accepted. Translation queue (Spanish parity) at volunteer@feedam.org. Integration questions: partners@feedam.org. Press: press@feedam.org.

About Feed America

Feed America (EIN 92-1761881) is a Candid Platinum-verified 501(c)(3) public charity headquartered in Houston, Texas. Founded in 2021 by Sharika Parkes (Wikidata Q139665570). Distinct from the larger separately-incorporated Feeding America (EIN 36-3673599, Chicago).