Plate Diary Dollars ™

Last week I announced our exciting Plate It Forward™ program. This new program designates certain Pass It On Plates to raise money and awareness for a specific non-profit organization.

This week we'd like to announce our complimentary program:
Plate Diary Dollars ™.

Every plate not already designated to raise money for a specific cause in the Plate It Forward ™ program will still help hundreds and thousands (and hopefully millions) of hungry people across the USA.

When every plate travels from person to person, we'll donate a percentage of our profits 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
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 = up to $1.00
• Money will be sent to FeedingAmerica.org once a month
• 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.
• While we will not retroactively look through the Plate Diaries and contribute based on older Plate Diary comments, every valid Plate Diary comment made on or after December 1, 2008 generates up to $1.00 toward 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.
• What does "up to $1.00" mean, exactly? Pass It On Plates contributes 2% of the price of the plate to FeedingAmerica.org, for every qualifying Plate Diary comment, up to 10%. This means that for a $50 Complete Pass It On Plate, we contribute 2%, or $1.00, per plate diary comment. When this particular plate has 5 Plate Diary comments, Pass It On Plates will have contributed a total of 10% of that $50, or $5. This one plate, with 5 Plate Diary comments, will help to provide 160 bowls of food to hungry Americans.
  

* 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 $1 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.

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