Mission: Not Available
Meals for Good Inc. is a 501(c)(3) organization, with an IRS ruling year of 2018, and donations are tax-deductible.
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Contact Information
URL not available
130 LENOX AVENUE
New York NY 10026-2503
Encompass Rating System by Charity Navigator
Overall Score
79
out of 100
This charity's score is a passing score.
This overall score is calculated from multiple beacon scores: 85% Impact & Results, 10% Leadership & Adaptability, and 5% Culture & Community
Learn about the Encompass Rating System: Overview | FAQ | Release Notes
Finance & Accountability
This score provides an assessment of a nonprofit's financial health (stability, efficiency and sustainability) and its commitment to governance practices and policies.
Finance & Accountability Score
Not currently scored
This organization cannot be evaluated by our Encompass Rating methodology because it files Form 990-EZ, as allowed by the IRS for charities with less than $200,000 annual revenue.
Note: The absence of a score does not indicate a positive or negative assessment, it only indicates that we have not yet evaluated this organization.
Additional Information
Unscored
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Total Revenue and Expenses
No Data Available
Revenue and expense data is not available for this organization. This data is only available if this charity has at least one year of electronically-filed Form 990 data filed within the last six years.
Salary of Key Persons
No Data Available
Key Persons data is currently unavailable for this organization. This data is only available if this charity has at least one year of electronically-filed Form 990 data filed within the last six years.
Business Master File Data
Below are some key data points from the Exempt Organization IRS Business Master File (BMF) for this organization. Learn more about the BMF on the IRS website
Activities:
Activity data not reported from the IRS
Foundation Status:
Organization which receives a substantial part of its support from a governmental unit or the general public 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) (BMF foundation code: 15)
Affiliation:
Independent - the organization is an independent organization or an independent auxiliary (i.e., not affiliated with a National, Regional, or Geographic grouping of organizations). (BMF affiliation code: 3)
Data Sources: IRS Forms 990
The Form 990 is a document that nonprofit organizations file with the IRS annually. We leverage finance and accountability data from it to form Encompass ratings. Click here to view this organization's Forms 990 on the IRS website (if any are available).
Pandemic Response
Due to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, we give charities such as this one the opportunity to share the story of COVID's impact on them. Charities may submit their own pandemic responses through their nonprofit portal.
Meals for Good Inc. reported being impacted by COVID-19 in the following ways:
Fundraising Capacity
How COVID-19 impacted the organization's operations financially:
We were being supported by restaurants and had to change to individual donations and grants
How COVID-19 impacted the organization's delivery of programs:
we increased the kinds of foods we help supply and worked with more CBOs to reach the people most impacted
How this organization adapted to changing conditions caused by COVID-19:
I think we adapted well. Our goal is to give people agency over their food and help them get the healthy groceries that are missing from many food pantries and are often too expensive at supermarkets.
Innovations the organization intends to continue permanently after the pandemic:
We recently created a voucher program, giving families and seniors vouchers for supermarkets through their local CBOs. This gave people an opportunity to buy their own food. We are looking at the receipt data with Hunter College's Food Policy Center and we find that the majority of dollars are spent on meats, fresh produce and kitchen basics such as flour, corn oil, coffee, etc. Kitchen basics is almost never distributed at food pantries and meats and produce with limited shelf-life are seldom distributed at smaller food pantries
Previous: Finance & Accountability / Next: Leadership & Adaptability
Impact & Results
This score estimates the actual impact a nonprofit has on the lives of those it serves, and determines whether it is making good use of donor resources to achieve that impact.
Impact & Results Score
75
out of 100
Meals for Good Inc. is cost-effective, earning a passing score.
Impact
$5 provides a meal to a person in need.
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Impact & Results Report
75
of 100 points
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Rated Program
Program
Meals For Good, Inc
Activities
The nonprofit provides groceries to beneficiaries.
Program Type
Food Distribution
Beneficiaries Served
Program Geography
Time Period of Data
10/1/20 to 9/30/21
Outcomes and Cost
Outcomes: Changes in the lives of those served by a nonprofit. They can be caused by the nonprofit.
Costs: The money spent by a nonprofit and its partners and beneficiaries.
Impact: Outcome caused by a nonprofit relative to its cost.
Cost-effectiveness: A judgment as to whether the cost was a good use of resources to cause the outcome.
Outcome Metric
A meal provided to a person in need
Outcome Data Source
Ratings are based on data the nonprofit itself collects on its work. We use the most recent year with sufficient data. Typically, this data allows us to calculate direct changes in participants' lives, such as increased income.
Outcome data collected during the program. The nonprofit submitted data on the amount of food it provides.
Method for Attributing Outcomes
We don't know if the observed changes were caused by the nonprofit's program or something else happening at the same time (e.g., a participant got a raise). To determine causation, we take the outcomes we observe and subtract an estimate of the outcomes that would have happened even without the program (i.e., counterfactual outcomes).
We assume that the distribution of a meal from one nonprofit's food distribution program does not diminish the amount of food distributed by any other (neighboring) food distribution program. This “counterfactual” assumption about the amount of food distributed in the absence of the nonprofit’s food distribution program implies that the benefit of a meal to a beneficiary in need constitutes a net gain; the gain is not offset by reductions in food provided to other beneficiaries in need. We therefore set the counterfactual to zero.
Cost Data Source
After estimating the program's outcomes, we need to determine how much it cost to achieve those outcomes. All monetary costs are counted, whether they are borne by a nonprofit service deliverer or by the nonprofit’s public and private partners.
Program cost data reported by the nonprofit. Partner and beneficiary costs reported by the nonprofit or estimated by Charity Navigator.
Cost Calculation
$58,000 program costs + $3,321 partner costs + $0 beneficiary costs = $61,321 total costs
Impact and Determination
We calculate impact, defined as the change in outcomes attributable to a program divided by the cost to achieve those outcomes.
Impact Calculation
$61,321 total costs / 12,000 meals provided = roughly $5 provides a meal to a person in need.
Benchmark for Rating
Impact & Results scores of food distribution programs are based on the cost of a meal relative to the cost that a food-secure person incurs to buy a meal in that county. Programs receive an Impact & Results score of 100 if they are less than 75% the cost of a meal and a score of 75 if they are less than 125%. If a nonprofit reports impact but doesn't meet the benchmark for cost-effectiveness, it earns a score of 50.
Determination
Cost-effective
Analysis Details
Analysis conducted in 2022 by Charity Navigator using data submitted by the nonprofit, theory and evidence from scientific research studies, and public datasets.
Previous: Impact & Results / Next: Culture & Community
Leadership & Adaptability
This score provides an assessment of the organization's leadership capacity, strategic thinking and planning, and ability to innovate or respond to changes in constituent demand/need or other relevant social and economic conditions to achieve the organization's mission.
Leadership & Adaptability Score
100
out of 100
The score earned by Meals for Good Inc. is a passing score.
Encompass Rating V4 provides an evaluation of the organization's Leadership & Adaptability through the nonprofit organization submitting a survey response directly to Charity Navigator.
Leadership & Adaptability Report
100
of 100 points
Mission
The nonprofit organization presents evidence of strategic thinking through articulating the organization’s mission
To increase affordability and access to mostly local and regional fresh food as well as basic groceries for New Yorkers of all ages who face food insecurity, and, by doing so, also support our family farms.
Source: Nonprofit submitted responses
Vision
The nonprofit organization presents evidence of strategic thinking through articulating the organization’s vision.
We envision a time when everyone in NYC will have agency over their own food, which includes access to a variety of healthy, fresh foods and groceries at affordable prices, no matter where or how they live.
Source: Nonprofit submitted responses
Strategic Goals
The nonprofit organization presents evidence of strategic thinking and goal setting through sharing their most important strategic goals.
Goal One: to issue grants to smaller, underfunded food pantries for fresh produce from local and regional family farms
Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.
Goal Two: To give people agency over their own food by supplying them with vouchers for local supermarkets, where the food choice is theirs.
Goal Type: New program(s) based on observed changes in needs among our constituencies/communities served.
Goal Three: to survey tenant associations and community based organizations to help supply the groceries their constituencies are missing
Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.
Source: Nonprofit submitted responses
Leadership Development
The nonprofit provides evidence of investment in leadership development
Describe an investment in leadership
we have paid for a number of zoom opportunities including at Candid/Guidestar, NonProfit New York, the Lawyers Alliance and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Classes have informed us on fundraising, on legal issues for the Board, and taxes among others. We also receive many newsletters, among them from Hunter College's Food Policy Center and CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute
Source: Nonprofit submitted responses
Mobilizing for Mission
The nonprofit provides evidence of leadership through focusing externally and mobilizing resources for the mission.
This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:
Strategic Partnerships
Networks of Collective Impact Efforts
Raising Awareness
What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?
We mobilize in a number of ways: we work with community based organizations to understand what they are doing, what foods they feel their constituencies are missing, how best to reach out. We also work with the City HRA to guide us to the smallest, most underfunded food pantries in certain areas of each borough, and then we visit those pantries to make sure they can handle a grant for more produce (which is almost always from local or regional family farms). We also work with restaurants and community organizations to donate hot meals to shelters, particularly at holiday time.
Source: Nonprofit submitted responses
Story of Adaptability
The nonprofit has an opportunity to tell the story of how the organization adapted to tremendous external changes in the last year.
Meals For Good began by partnering with restaurants that added $0.25-$1.00 to one food item on their menus, and the money would then be awarded to underfunded pantries in the neighborhoods of the restaurants. During COVID, we could no longer rely on the restaurants that were trying so hard to survive themselves, and we began fundraising from individuals and applying for some grants. We continued to supply pantries, mostly in Harlem and the South Bronx, but we began to experiment with other ways to help people - particularly families - obtain the missing groceries they needed and wanted. We organized pop-up pantries for unemployed restaurant workers and people in low-income housing; we gave incentives to community based organizations for their constituencies to buy more produce at farmers markets, we supplied free fridges in the South Bronx and Harlem, we surveyed pantry lines to see what foods people needed but did not receive, and finally, we started a voucher program, where we gave community based organizations vouchers to give to their constituencies for local supermarkets. Constituencies included mostly those who were not allowed to receive federal funding because of immigration status or because their salaries were slightly over the poverty line. We found that people were missing fresh meats, fresh produce, and kitchen staples such as flour and corn oil. They were also missing foods that were part of their culture such as bok choy, jalapenos, collards. We are continuing to supply both pantries with fresh produce and community organizations with supermarket vouchers in Harlem and the South Bronx. We are also working with the Food Policy Center at Hunter College to study receipt data from some recent supermarket voucher programs.
Source: Nonprofit submitted responses
Previous: Leadership & Adaptability
Culture & Community
This score provides an assessment of the organization's culture and connectedness to the community it serves. Learn more about how and why we rate Culture & Community.
Culture & Community Score
100
out of 100
Meals for Good Inc. has earned a passing score. The organization provided data about how it listens to constituents (Constituent Feedback) (see report below).
The Culture & Community Beacon is comprised of the following metrics:
Constituent Feedback: 100/100 (100% of beacon score)
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion: Not Scored
Culture & Community Report
100
of 100 points
This beta feature is currently viewable only on desktop or tablet screens. Check back later for updates.
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
This organization has not provided information regarding the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices it is presently implementing. As such, the organization has not earned a score on this metric. Charity Navigator believes nonprofit organizations implementing effective DEI policies and practices can enhance a nonprofit's decision-making, staff motivation, innovation, and effectiveness.
Methodology
We are utilizing data collected by Candid to document and assess the DEI practices implemented by the organization. Nonprofit organizations are encouraged to fill out the Equity Strategies section of their Candid profiles to receive a rating.
Learn more about the methodology.
Constituent Feedback
100/100 points
100% of beacon score
This organization reported that it is collecting feedback from the constituents and/or communities it serves. Charity Navigator believes nonprofit organizations that engage in inclusive practices, such as collecting feedback from the people and communities they serve, may be more effective.
View this organization's Constituent Feedback Practices
Methodology
We've partnered with Candid to survey organizations about their feedback practices. Nonprofit organizations can fill out the How We Listen section of their Candid profile to receive a rating.
Learn more about the methodology.
Analysis and Research
Like the overall Encompass Rating System, the Culture & Community Beacon is designed to evolve as metrics are developed and ready for integration. Below you can find more information about the metrics we currently evaluate in this beacon and their relevance to nonprofit performance.
