Reading a receipt.

LADLE's core promise is a monthly receipt for the WFP donation. Every month has one. They live at /impact/reports on the marketing site. This is the field-by-field guide.

**The header.**

Month name and reference number. The reference number is issued by ShareTheMeal (the WFP-partner platform we donate through). Format: usually a 4-digit prefix + a letter (e.g., "4471-A"). You can look up any reference number on the ShareTheMeal side to cross-verify.

**Total meals funded this month.**

The count of meals that the aggregated donation from all LADLE subscribers bought in that month. This is meals funded, not meals served — WFP handles distribution on their end.

The floor: this number is at least (subscriber count × 10 meals × months paid). Annual subscribers who paid in that month contribute their whole year's meal count in that month's total, so annual-heavy months look bigger.

**Total USD sent to WFP.**

This is the raw dollar amount transferred. It's total meals × $0.80. Small rounding for regional price variation but generally that math.

**Batch number.**

WFP aggregates our donations into batches for operational efficiency (a single wire transfer per batch instead of thousands of individual ones). The batch number ties our monthly total to WFP's incoming record. Same number on both sides.

**Subscriber-level breakdown (optional).**

Some receipts include an aggregate per-plan breakdown: how many meals came from Ladle subscribers, from Max 5x subscribers, from Max 20x subscribers, and (when there are any) from gift subscriptions. This is useful for verifying the plan mix and per-plan meal counts (10 / 50 / 100). We don't publish per-user info — that would be a privacy violation. Aggregate only.

**Reference to the previous month.**

Every receipt links to the prior month's receipt. Continuity is part of the trust — a missing month would be visible.

**What the receipt DOESN'T include.**

Distribution details — where the meals landed, which specific country, which specific program. That's WFP's operational decision, not ours. If you want to see WFP's country-level activity, their transparency reports at wfp.org are the source.

Individual per-subscriber records. Your specific meals aren't personally traceable in the receipt — they're pooled into the monthly aggregate. This is intentional: aggregating protects both privacy and operational efficiency for WFP.

Refunded donations. If subscribers refunded within the 7-day window in a given month, those meal donations are reversed BEFORE the batch is sent. The receipt total already accounts for reversals.

**The escape hatch.**

If we ever can't publish a monthly receipt on time, we say so in the changelog with the reason. If the receipt total is materially different from what the subscriber count and plan mix would predict (say, off by more than 5%), we owe an explanation. This has never happened as of publication but we've written the escape hatch policy in advance so we know how it goes if it does.

**Where the receipts live.**

The full archive is at /impact/reports. Every month since launch. Reference numbers are permanent — they don't rotate.

If you're new to LADLE, spending five minutes reading a few months of receipts is the fastest way to verify the promise isn't marketing polish. That's the whole point of publishing them.