“Which charity gets the money?” is the most common question on the About page. The honest answer today is: we're still choosing. Every subscription earmarks $8 into a dedicated meal fund that pools toward a $50,000/year commitment — the commitment we have chosen to reach before signing, so a partner is approached with a year of funding behind us rather than a promise. The criteria below are what the choice will be made on.
The criteria
- 1. Direct impact per dollar. The organization should convert money to meals (or an equivalent food-security outcome) with minimal overhead.
- 2. Global reach. LADLE has subscribers in ~40 countries; a single-country food bank felt narrow.
- 3. Verifiability. The organization's numbers need to be independently audited and publicly disclosed.
- 4. Scale absorption. Large enough to absorb LADLE's donations without operational disruption; small enough that our donation is not trivial.
- 5. No conflicts of interest — no political, religious, or corporate entanglements that would give a subscriber pause.
- 6. A published per-meal cost we can peg to publicly, so subscribers can independently verify the math.
What we're evaluating
A shortlist of global hunger-relief organizations, scored against the six criteria above. We are not publishing the shortlist while conversations are open — naming organizations we haven't signed with would be a trust signal we haven't earned. When the choice is made, the reasoning publishes here, with the scores.
Why the per-meal peg matters
The simplicity of “$8 = ten meals” is the whole pitch. That requires a partner with a published, audited per-meal figure. Until one is named, $0.80/meal is our working peg — the figure large humanitarian food programs commonly publish. If the partner we select publishes a different number, we re-do the math publicly and re-anchor every surface on the site.
Why not split across multiple
Splitting across three charities makes the number squishier (is a $2.67 donation to Charity A + a $2.67 donation to Charity B still a meal?) and dilutes the message. One partner, one receipt, every month. We may add a secondary recipient in future if the primary relationship scales down for any reason.
The $50,000/year partnership threshold
We have set $50,000/year as the commitment we want to bring to a partner before we sign — enough that the arrangement we are asking for, with per-donation references a subscriber can verify, is worth a partner’s administrative effort rather than being a general gift we cannot publish receipts against. So until the fund crosses that level, the meal fund is held in a dedicated LADLE ledger and reported monthly. When we cross it, we sign, meals ship, and real partner receipts publish alongside the fund report.
If we never cross it
The fund is held. If, after twelve full months, subscriber-earmarked funds cannot be committed via a partnership, we surface options publicly — including donating the pooled balance directly to a hunger-relief organization as an unrestricted gift, with a public vote. What we will not do is spend the fund on operations.