Home › Where Your Gift Goes
Where your gift goes
How Feed America uses your donations. We're a search platform, not a food bank, so the cost structure is unusual.
What donations pay for
| Category | What it pays for |
|---|---|
| Platform infrastructure | Cloudflare Workers + D1 + Pages, Twilio SMS gateway, OpenFEMA disaster ingest, search/indexing compute |
| Data verification | USDA + HRSA + state agency feeds, deduplication, manual review of partner submissions, geocode drift detection |
| Community partnerships | Coordination with food banks, 211 networks, state agencies. Coverage gap closing. |
| Outreach + content | Bilingual guides, ad spend (Google Ad Grants is free, paid is supplemental), partnership development |
| Administration | IRS filing, governance, insurance, operational overhead |
| Fundraising costs | PayPal/Stripe fees, donor acknowledgments, year-end mailing |
Feed America files the IRS Form 990-N; see /transparency for filings and how funds are used.
What we explicitly don't do
- Distribute food directly — we don't run warehouses. Local food banks (Houston Food Bank, Feeding South Florida, etc.) do that. We send people to them via search.
- Pay for paid placements — every resource appears on equal terms. No "promoted listings."
- Sell user data — search queries are anonymous; donor info is private. See /privacy.
Verify Feed America
Verify EIN 92-1761881 on the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search: apps.irs.gov. Candid profile (self-reported by the organization): app.candid.org/profile/14633167.