Meal-equivalence framing

Hunger-relief fundraising runs on cost-equivalence: a figure translating a donation into meals, pounds or families served. Donors understand it immediately, which is exactly why it gets borrowed.

There is no figure on this page. Any number we printed would describe some other organization's cost base, and a borrowed ratio is the most common way this claim goes wrong — including for organizations that had a perfectly good number of their own and used someone else's because it sounded better.

Derive it from your own accounts

The arithmetic is not complicated. What matters is being deliberate about what goes into it, because every choice changes the answer.

• Decide the denominator. Meals, pounds distributed, households served, or a defined food box. Each gives a different number and each is defensible; using one label while calculating another is not
• Decide which costs are in. Purchased food only, or purchased food plus transport, storage and handling. Both are legitimate; the second is usually closer to what a donor's money actually pays for
• Decide how donated goods are treated. This is the choice that moves the number most. If donated food is valued and included, the cost per meal falls sharply — and the figure then describes the whole operation rather than what a cash donation buys
• Pick the period. A full financial year, not a strong month
• Write down the method where the next person will find it

State it so it holds up

Three things make the difference between a figure that survives scrutiny and one that becomes a correction.

Say what it is based on. One clause is enough: derived from your own financial year, on a named basis. A donor who sees the basis trusts the number more, not less.

Do not present it as a guarantee. It is an average across a period, not a promise about a specific donation. Language matters here — a figure described as what a donation "helps provide" is accurate; one described as what it "buys" usually is not.

Recalculate annually. Sourcing, fuel and food prices move. A figure carried forward for five years is a figure that is now wrong, and it will be checked eventually — by a journalist, a major donor's adviser, or a board member.

Using it in an auction

An auction is a good place for this framing and a bad place to overstate it. Two practical points:

• Attach it to the goal rather than to individual items. "Our goal funds X" is cleaner than putting an equivalence on every listing
• Where the auction funds equipment rather than food — a van, a freezer — describe the equipment instead. It is more concrete than a converted meal figure and it is what the money is actually doing

The alternative, when you do not have a defensible number

Describe the operation. The route that reaches four rural pantries, the freezer that lets you accept fresh produce, the driver's week. Concrete description of what the money does works, it needs no arithmetic, and it cannot be wrong.

What the auction should name: setting the goal.