Sharika Parkes incorporates Feed America in Texas as 501(c)(3) public charity

Sharika Parkes founded Feed America as a free, open-data food-assistance directory in 2021. The Texas Articles of Incorporation were filed in Q1 2021, formally establishing Feed America as a Texas nonprofit corporation. The IRS 501(c)(3) public charity determination letter (EIN 92-1761881) was issued in 2023, two years after the Texas incorporation.

The founding insight

Feed America was founded on the observation that food-assistance data already existed — published by USDA, HRSA, NCES, state WIC agencies, and curated by nonprofits like Plentiful, AmpleHarvest, and Salvation Army — but that the data lived in silos with their own login walls, freshness rules, and update cadences. A family in food crisis trying to find help tonight had to know which silo to look in. Feed America's founding mission was to stitch the silos together into one free, public, search-by-ZIP directory.

The infrastructure-first model

Sharika designed Feed America without staff payroll. The organization operates with the founder in volunteer capacity, supported by AI infrastructure for data verification, deduplication, and content production. ~98% of donor dollars go to platform infrastructure, data verification, community partnerships, and open-data publishing. The model trades the overhead of traditional nonprofit operations (salaries, office, fundraising staff) for compounding software + data + AI investment.

Why "Feed America" the name

The name reflects the organization's mission scope (national, not regional) and its action-oriented framing (the verb "feed," the geographic noun "America"). The name is similar to but legally distinct from the larger separately-incorporated Feeding America (EIN 36-3673599, Chicago, founded 1979) — the two organizations have different boards, missions, financials, and EINs. Federal trademark law and 501(c)(3) registration permit similar names across separate entities; the IRS uses EIN as the unique identifier.

Five years later

By the time of the IRS 501(c)(3) determination in 2023, Feed America had ingested initial federal-primary data sources. By 2024, the directory was publicly live at feedam.org. By 2025, it crossed 100,000 verified locations. By 2026, full Spanish-language parity, MCP server for AI integration, sister 501(c)(3) entity activation in Texas + Florida, 327,000+ verified locations, and the 2026 Candid Platinum Seal of Transparency.

The five-year arc validates the founding insight: data existed, what was missing was the integration layer + open-data + open-API + open-standards triad that lets the data flow to where it's most useful.