Plate Diary Dollars ™

Pass It On Plates is committed to helping others in our community. With this commitment, we would like to tell you about our two complimentary programs:

Plate It Forward™ - a unique fund-raising program for non-profit organizations
and
Plate Diary Dollars™ - providing money to local food banks

Our Plate Diary Dollars program will help hundreds and thousands (and hopefully millions) of hungry people across the USA.

When every plate travels from person to person, we'll donate up to 15% of our proceeds* to the Feeding America (formerly Second Harvest) "Fill A Bowl, Feed America" program. Feed America has partnered with Kraft, who matches all donations up to $200,000. Every dollar donated will fill 32 bowls of food for hungry people.

Just think - every time you pass along your Pass It On Plate, you're providing up to
32 bowls of food
to help feed our nation's hungry.
Isn't that awesome?

How does Plate Diary Dollars work?

• We keep track of this based on Plate Diary comments at http://passitonplates.blogspot.com/.
• Each new valid* Plate Diary comment = 3% of our net profit to be donated
• Money will be sent to FeedingAmerica.org once a month
• We will donate 3% of our net profit up to 5 times per plate, which is equal to 5 new valid* Plate Diary comments, for a total donation of 15% of our net profits.
  
• Each month we'll announce how much money we donated and how many bowls of food we filled, with a link to their site.
• You will not be asked to donate anything towards this program; this is just something we want to do.
• It's free to make a Plate Diary comment.
• Every plate not specifically designated to support a named charity under our Plate It Forward program is included in this program; even a Pass It On Plate purchased two years ago is included.
• Every valid Plate Diary comment made on or after December 1, 2008 qualifies for Plate Diary Dollars.
  
• We reserve the right to change or modify the Plate Diary Dollars program at any time without prior notice.
• Here are more details on the Feeding America Fill-A-Bowl program.

* A valid Plate Diary comment is one pertaining to passing the plate on to another person, not something along the lines of "Visit my site," or "Thank you for the plate" (that's nice but doesn't show the plate is moving along). Multiple Plate Diary comments by the same person in the same time frame are also not valid. The bottom line is we need to see that the plate is moving from person to person.

How did we decide to donate to FeedingAmerica.org?
There are so many deserving charities out there, it was hard to choose.

• First, feeding the hungry was the most logical cause to support with our product - a plate.
• It is estimated that there are 9 million hungry children, 3 million hungry seniors, as well as the working poor, low income families, rural hungry, and others, totaling over 36 million hungry Americans (in 2007.) With today's economic situation, the number is expected to grow.
  Source: http://feedingamerica.org/faces-of-hunger/hunger-101.aspx
• Because we have Pass It On Plates all across the USA, it didn't make sense to focus on just our local area with Plate Diary Dollars. Our Plate It Forward program with local groups - where the sale of every plate provides an instant chunk of cash to the organization with $1 donated every time those plates travel. (This winter we will start Plate It Forward locally and expand to local charities in other areas. Perhaps you will see Plate It Forward in your area in the near future?)
• We visited CharityNavigator.org to research and locate the most appropriate non-profit organization for our Plate Diary Dollars™ program. Charity Navigator is a respected site that rates non-profit organizations based on financial efficiency, and other factors.
• FeedingAmerica.org is a four star charity, the highest ranking given by Charity Navigator, and serves food banks across the entire USA.