Pennies Can Change ...

March 2010 - "Spring for a Meal Food Drive"

March is our 1st annual "Spring for Meal Food Drive". $5.00 will buy an average couple, a single parent with two young children, or a single parent with a teenager one meal. Our goal for this food drive is to be able to donate 1,000 meals. Donate your $5.00 today!!!

Frequently Asked Questions

If your question is not addressed below please feel free to email your question or call us on our toll free line at 1-866-772-1236.

Q: Why not just create a food bank?
A: We believe there are plenty of facilities in place to feed the hungry. However, the problem is keeping them full of the needed supplies. We believe our resources are best served keeping the existing places up and running. They already have the infrastructure in place to help. They just need the year round resources.

Q: Why should I donate through Pennies Can Change?
A: Two main reasons: 1) We believe that we can raise funds more efficiently than the people we are helping and 2) Our interactive web site allows you to participate in how your money is being spent. We plan to run at 80%-20% meaning we donate 80 cents out of every dollar donated. An average non-profit currently operates at 60%, the good ones operate at 61-70%, and the exceptional are over 75% donations to expenses. We do hope to build this movement large enough that our expenses will be under 5% of the total.

Q: How do you decide where the money goes?
A:We use a combination of the following criteria:

• Answers from our online polls and questionnaires
• Pay It Forward. As a general rule we try to ensure the money goes to facilities in the state where the donor resides.
• Random Acts of Kindness. Many times when we visit a facility we will bring supermarket gift cards with us to hand out to the people in line. We hope to utilize volunteers from across the country to help us in this type of effort.
• Suggestions from our donors. To date about 1/3 of our donations have gone to facilities or families as the direct result from a donor suggestion.
• Email requests. If we can verify the families situation or facility exists we will accept and highly encourage direct requests for help.
• News stories. We are constantly looking for people to help and there are many news stories that bring these situations to our attention.

Q: Are my donations tax deductible?
A: As of February 2, 2010 we are a non-profit corporation with a Federal Tax-ID. However we still need to file a 28 page application for our 501c3 status. With less than 10% of these applications rejected we feel confident to say donations made during 2010 will be deductible for the tax year 2010. According to the law we can not guarantee this until the final approval. The approval will be back dated to the date of incorporation which is 2/2/2010.