Why We Chose No Kid Hungry

When the three of us started talking about where Toxic Society would give back first, we expected it to take a while to find something that felt right to all of us. There are plenty of causes worth supporting, and we wanted our first choice to mean something to us personally. As we talked about our experiences and the values that shaped us, we found ourselves coming back to the importance of having enough, and what it means to help someone who doesn't.

Angel remembers walking into a Market Basket on his first night in America, amazed by the sheer amount of food available in a single store. Aparna remembers a freezing night in Boston when her mother gave a man asking for change the only fifty cents she had. I remember watching my mom bring plates of food out of her restaurant in St. Croix for people who came by asking for something to eat. And after my family moved to New Hampshire, there were years when SNAP helped keep food on our own table.

Our experiences were different, but each gave us a perspective on abundance, generosity, and what it means to need help. We haven't all faced the same circumstances, but we all understand how much it matters to have enough, and to have someone step in when you don't. For us, that made childhood hunger a cause worth taking seriously. Every child deserves the security of knowing they'll have enough to eat, regardless of their family's circumstances.

A lot of kids don't have that. In 2024, about 14 million kids in the US lived in homes that didn't always have enough to eat [1][2]. In New Hampshire, Feeding America puts it at about 1 in 6 kids, up more than 6% in a single year [3][4]. In Hillsborough County, it's 16.3% [4]. Some of those kids are sitting in classrooms near us, trying to focus on school while they're hungry.

So why No Kid Hungry? It came down to how they think about the problem. They're a campaign run by Share Our Strength, a nonprofit Billy Shore and his sister Debbie started in 1984 [5] in a row house in DC [6]. In 2010, they launched No Kid Hungry to focus on kids going hungry in America [6]. They don't buy food. Their view is that this country has plenty of it, and what's broken is whether kids can get to it [7].

That changed how I saw the whole thing. School breakfast, summer meals and SNAP already exist, and many kids who qualify still never get them. Breakfast is served before the bus arrives, the summer meal site is a long drive away, or the family doesn't know they're eligible. No Kid Hungry works on that gap. They give schools grants for carts and coolers so kids can eat breakfast in class, fund summer meal programs in rural areas, help families sign up for benefits they already qualify for, and push for better policy at the federal level [7].

We didn't want to take their word for it, so we checked. In their last fiscal year they put more than $14 million into 322 school districts and organizations and helped an estimated 32,500 more students start eating breakfast at school every day [9]. When the USDA tested giving families $60 a month, per child, for groceries over the summer, the idea behind today's SUN Bucks program that No Kid Hungry helped push for, the most severe hunger among kids dropped by about a third [9][10]. A Deloitte analysis done with No Kid Hungry's Center for Best Practices found that kids who eat school breakfast score 17.5% higher on standardized math tests and attend 1.5 more days of school a year [11]. No Kid Hungry worked on that study, so weigh it accordingly, but independent research points the same way [12].

I also want to be upfront about the money. About 59% of what they spend goes to programs, 34% to fundraising and 7% to running the organization [13]. I wish the program share were higher, but they have proven to deliver for communities across America. They hold four out of four stars from Charity Navigator [14], which rates nonprofits on their finances, accountability, impact, and leadership. They also have the Platinum Seal of Transparency from Candid [15], a nonprofit that runs a large public database of US charities. Platinum is the highest level it gives, and it goes to organizations that publicly share their finances, goals and how they measure progress. If you look at their website you'll probably see their line that $1 can help provide 10 meals. That's an estimate that varies, and not a precise meal count [16], so we won't claim we fed a specific number of kids. We'll tell you what we donated.

We plan to support No Kid Hungry through contributions from Toxic Society's own funds, and we don't see this as a one-time effort. As donations are made, we'll share the amounts and confirmation on our website. Over time, we hope to extend that support to other organizations doing meaningful work across the country.

We've each said in our own way that we want what we build to give something back, and this is where that starts. A kid who isn't hungry can focus in class and think about what's next, and we want to help make that possible.

If this meant something to you, you can give to No Kid Hungry directly at nokidhungry.org. To see the work for yourself, Billy Shore's TEDx talk [17] and this TODAY segment on breakfast in the classroom [18] are good places to start.

All of us had someone who made sure there was enough on the table, and we want to do the same for kids who need it now.

Toxic Society LLC is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by No Kid Hungry or Share Our Strength. No Kid Hungry is a trademark of Share Our Strength.