Summary
Feed The Children (FTC) is a Christian organization providing physical, spiritual, educational, vocational/technical, psychological, economic and medical assistance and other necessary aid to children, families, and persons in need in the United States and internationally.
On a trip to Haiti in 1979, Larry Jones (current President of FTC) witnessed acute misery and great hunger. This suffering seemed needless to Larry because of the enormous food and grain surpluses in America; this led Larry and his wife, Frances, to found Feed The Children (FTC).
During its history, Feed The Children has created and developed one of the world's largest private organizations dedicated to feeding hungry people. Feed The Children ships millions of pounds of food and essentials to children and families in all 50 states and in 51 foreign countries. Feed The Children supplements daily meals worldwide and delivers the food to partner organizations that speed it to over 60,000 other groups who work with the hungry.
This organization is a nonprofit. Contributions to it are fully tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Contact Information: [ Back to top ]
| Mailing Address: | PO Box 36 333 N. Meridian 73107
Oklahoma City, OK
73101-0036 |
| Website: | www.feedthechildren.org |
| Phone: | (405) 942-0228, (800) 627-4556 |
| Email: | You need to enable javascript to see the email |
Organization Details [ Back to top ]
EIN: 736108657
| CEO/President: |
Mr. Travis Arnold |
Tax Deductible: |
Yes |
| Chairman: |
Mr. Dwight Powers |
Fiscal Year End: |
June 30 |
| Board Size: |
9 |
Financial info from: |
990 |
| Founder: |
Dr. Larry Jones |
Member of ECFA: |
No |
| Year Founded: |
1979 |
Member of ECFA since: |
|
Feed The Children (FTC) is a Christian organization providing physical, spiritual, educational, vocational/technical, psychological, economic and medical assistance and other necessary aid to children, families, and persons in need in the United States and internationally.
On a trip to Haiti in 1979, Larry Jones (current President of FTC) witnessed acute misery and great hunger. This suffering seemed needless to Larry because of the enormous food and grain surpluses in America; this led Larry and his wife, Frances, to found Feed The Children (FTC).
During its history, Feed The Children has created and developed one of the world's largest private organizations dedicated to feeding hungry people. Feed The Children ships millions of pounds of food and essentials to children and families in all 50 states and in 51 foreign countries. Feed The Children supplements daily meals worldwide and delivers the food to partner organizations that speed it to over 60,000 other groups who work with the hungry.
This organization is a nonprofit. Contributions to it are fully tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Feed The Children uses the following to express its mission:
Feed The Children is a nonprofit, Christian, charitable organization providing physical, spiritual, educational, vocational/technical, psychological, economic and medical assistance and other necessary aid to children, families, and persons in need in the United States and internationally
Program Accomplishments [ Back to top ]
Feed The Children communicates the following accomplishments:
- In FY 2003, Feed The Children shipped 54 million pounds of food and 15 million pounds of other essentials to authorized distribution agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Feed The Children also enhances learning opportunities for underprivileged children by distributing books and other educational materials where appropriate. Feed The Children services are targeted to areas of poverty in both rural and urban environments.
- Feed The Children each year provides emergency assistance to victims of natural and man-made disasters throughout the U.S. Feed The Children is often the first relief agency to reach the scene due to its dedicated fleet of 55 semi-tractor trailer trucks operated by its wholly –owned subsidiary FTC Transportation, Inc.
- Last year Feed The Children sent over 14 million pounds of food and other necessities to needy children and families in 62 foreign countries. Since 1980, FTC has shipped supplies to individuals in a total of 109 countries. Particular care is given to children who are disabled, homeless or living in the streets
- Last year, the Medical Team treated 45,966 patients in medical, eye and dental clinics, and dispensed and filled 58,650 prescriptions for medicine and eyeglasses.
- Since December 2002, Feed the Children has distributed 49 semi-tractor truckloads of food and supplies, which directory helped more than 17.00 military families.
- The Frances Jones Abandoned Baby Center, a state-of-the-art facility for abandoned babies and orphans in Africa, was expanded.
- As an implementing partner for UN World Food Programme in Maslakh IDP camp, Heart, Afghanistan, Feed the Children International was contracted to build and manage 25 bakeries in the camp, supplying bread for some 300,000 people per day.
Some Statistics
- Weight of items distributed in FY 2003: 83,531,212 pounds
- Food as percentage of pounds delivered: 73%
- Number of meal supplements provided daily: 509,133
- Number of countries receiving FTC distributions since 1980: 109
- FTC expenditures going to program services: 88%
Statement of Faith [ Back to top ]
Larry and Frances Jones are pleased to identify themselves as Christians. The acts of compassion performed by Feed The Children are motivated by their Christian convictions.
Jesus himself used actions, as well as words, to share His message of peace and life-change. He asked his followers to do the same; feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those who are sick and in prison and attend to the needs of widows and orphans. Feed The Children has embraced that model to demonstrate its values.
These acts of mercy as instructed in the Bible are not restricted to persons of like religious conviction. Indeed, Jesus himself ministered to people who were not of his religion or ethnic group. Accordingly, Feed The Children makes no religious test of persons who may benefit from its help. Feed The Children works with and serves people of all nations, ethnic groups, and religions without discrimination.
Feed The Children is a non-denominational organization. Though many churches, synagogues and mosques support our organization and still others assist in the distribution of goods, there is no individual church, denomination or religion that controls our work. All of the members of our board share our convictions about the importance of helping others and identify themselves as Christians; however none of them acts as a representative of an organized religious body.
Feed the Children was founded in 1979 by Larry and Frances Jones after a life-changing trip to Haiti. An ordained minister, Jones was visiting churches in Haiti and saw the tremendous suffering of Haitian children. Jones had just read an article about surplus grains being dumped by American farmers, and soon after returning home he raised enough money to pay for the shipment of surplus wheat to Haiti. Over the years, a small relief project started by Larry and Frances Jones on their kitchen table grew into the 28th largest charity in the United States (and the 15th largest based on the amount of private, non-government support.)
Since 1980, FTC has provided clothing, medical assistance and educational opportunities to underprivileged children in 96 nations around the world. Through schools, orphanages and church-related feeding programs, Feed The Children touched the lives of thousands of children overseas. FTC sends shipments to Africa, the Caribbean, Central America, South America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union Republic where direct distribution is made to recipients. Additionally, FTC provides financial assistance to orphanages, schools and other charitable groups in these regions.
The goal has been to help needy families move beyond relief assistance and become productive and self-sufficient members of their community. Through long-term, self-help development programs funded by grants and by Child Sponsorship partners, tens of thousands of families in foreign lands have increased their earning potential through new, marketable skills.
Feed The Children has communicated the following needs:
The Child A Week program is focused on combating hunger in the United States. For only $5.00 per week or $20.00 per month we will provide a 26-pound box of food to a hungry child. The box of food will supplement one child for one week.
Club 1000 members share the vision, that no child in America should have to go to bed hungry, and each has made a personal commitment to deliver 1,000 pounds of nourishing food for hungry people by donating $10 per month for 14 months.
The international Feed A Child program is an efficient way to meet the needs of many displaced children worldwide that need immediate and ongoing attention. For $8 each month a real difference can be made in the lives of children worldwide. For this small amount we can feed a child for the entire month.
Builders for Children is an adventure in living and a lifestyle of giving. It is a unique program offering life-changing challenges to framers, roofers, brick masons, electricians, plumbers and people with absolutely no experience in construction at all. The volunteer short-term construction teams visit developing countries to help those in desperate life situations.
International Child Sponsorship offers an opportunity for caring persons to send monthly support to supplement a child's care consisting of food, clothing, medical attention, and educational opportunities. Your $20 US monthly support will help a child with basic necessities that determine the kind of future he or she will have. Without them, there may be no future.
For more information on these needs see the ministry's website.
Research Analysis
Transparency Grade [ Back to top ]
| Transparency Grade of : C |
| Criteria category | Grade | Other Comments |
| Timeliness: | 80 | |
| Financial Information: | 70 | Questions and allegations circulate with the latest with two of its accountants fired. See the Donor Alert. |
| Foundational Clarity: | | |
| Level of Cooperation: | | |
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MinistryWatch.com 5 Star Financial Efficiency Ratings [ Back to top ]
| Ranking Category | Rating | Overall Rank | Relief and Development Sector |
|---|
| Overall Efficiency Rating |  | 79 of 353 | 27 of 54 |
| Fund Acquisition Decision |  | 158 of 353 | 34 of 54 |
| Resource Allocation Decision | | 39 of 353 | 24 of 54 |
| Asset Utilization Decision | | 151 of 353 | 32 of 54 |
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MinistryWatch.com's 2009 list of 30 Donor Alert Ministries
Feed the Children Fires Two of its Own Accountants
MinistryWatch.com’s Take
April 2003
By Dan Wray
Suffer the Children
The pitiful face of a hungry Haitian child changed Oklahoma minister Larry Jones’ life forever. Moved by the poverty he had witnessed, Jones envisioned a charitable distribution of U. S. grain surplus – in excess of 35 million metric tons – which would aid farmers, relieve U. S. taxpayers and meet humanitarian needs in the Western Hemisphere. The result was the Child Sponsorship Program, promoting direct relationships between sponsors and specific individual children, supplementing the necessities of food, clothing, medical attention and basic educational opportunities. Today, the Child Sponsorship Program is just one facet of Feed the Children, one of the most visible, widely supported private charitable organizations in the world and the largest in terms of revenues in MinistryWatch.com’s database, at over $553 million. It moves more than 140 million pounds of donated food and life essentials annually, and supplementing 1.3 million meals a day, worldwide.
Mission development
Larry Jones grew an organization around the mission statement,
“...providing physical, spiritual, educational, vocational/technical, psychological, economic and medical assistance and other necessary aid to children, families, and persons in need in the United States and internationally,”
ultimately partnering with nearly 5,000 organizations to distribute relief through a network of over 60,000 outlets. Originally called Larry Jones International Ministries, the name was changed to Feed the Children, eventually developing around four essentials,
- Feeding: first things first
- Development / Self-help: provide sustaining help and development
- Medical: focus technology and professional volunteerism
- Emergency Relief: mobilize specialized resources and equipment
International medical relief was added, teaming specialists and medical service personnel to provide diagnoses, prescriptions and treatment, as well as dental and optical care, including computer assigned, refurbished eyeglasses. Cost effective medical treatment is enhanced by private and corporate donations of equipment, as well as voluntary self-support of doctors and nurses. Young people traveling with the medical teams distribute Bibles and conduct daily Bible classes for the children.
Home and abroad
Feed the Children’s U. S. relief efforts differ moderately from those in foreign countries, with domestic services such as Club 1000, Child-A-Week and Kid’s Stuff USA distributing food, individual child-specific provisions, and holiday and seasonal gift boxes to individual children and families for as little as $5 a week. Champions Youth Development Center provides after-school programs, tutoring and GED supervision, and community involvement in Oklahoma City’s Mark Twain Elementary School area. FTC also reaches out to families of U. S. servicemen with food boxes.
As with all FTC involvement, the international effort revolves around relief for children with emergency food and ongoing meal supplements, clothing, child abandonment / family crisis relief, medical services, and educational opportunities. FTC’s efforts reach nearly 100 countries, on 4 continents, emphasizing self-reliance and independence with additional long-range education and economic development, funded by grants and partnership sponsors. As in the U. S., food and family provisions are supplied by the regular Feed-A-Child financial commitments of FTC donors. Child Sponsorships enable supporters to commit to the future of individual children through existing programs in schools, orphanages, refugee-camps and church agencies. Sponsorship is emphasized, as distinct from adoption, inasmuch as no adoptive parental rights or responsibilities are established, though sponsor visits are permitted and cautiously encouraged within FTC’s guidelines.
Hope is born
The recently opened Abandoned Baby Center in Nairobi, Kenya offers hope for babies abandoned because of AIDS and other family medical emergencies. Volunteer Medical Teams, dispatched 4 times a year, take advantage of host country seasonal conditions from South America to the Far East to establish mobile medical / pharmaceutical complexes. Builders for Children is an example of FTC’s short-term missions opportunities for volunteer professionals, and those without specific trade skills, willing to be involved in meeting practical needs in developing countries.
With the aid of media technology and moved with the compassion of personal experience, Larry and Frances Jones have simplified the global plight of impoverished and suffering children into poignant, recognizable imagery, and a single inescapable question: “Why should children be starving to death while we have surplus?” The answer, “Feed the children.”
Images of Hungry Children
From the beginning, Feed the Children has been synonymous with images of hungry children, provoking sympathetic responses from reasonable and caring contributors everywhere. Using television and other media, Jones interrupts the sensibilities of viewers and listeners with strategically designed “opportunities” to help, and audiences respond from every quarter, including professional sports and entertainment notables. Among such marquee names, NFL All Pro Ray Lewis distributes food and life essentials in Baltimore, fashion industry’s Kathy Ireland sponsors food delivery in New York, and Country Music’s Oak Ridge Boys raise money in concert for Jones’s hungry children. Regularly scheduled television programs in major markets advertise the plight of destitute children and families to massive viewing audiences. Responses are truly impressive, producing recent double and triple digit annual growth in cash contributions and gifts-in-kind.
Product of choice
Feed the Children appeals to corporate sponsors with in-store promotions of “cause brand” products, donating an advertised percentage of designated product revenue to charity, directly influencing product sales and “enhancing brand image.” A full range of corporate and professional giving ideas is detailed on FTC’s website, as well as suggested plans for cooperative company wide and neighborhood special event promotions. FTC is a Combined Federal Campaign participant, ranking 5th in 2001 – 2002.
Keeping it simple
Donating through FTC’s website is a model of simplicity, with program-specific commitment templates for gifts ranging from less than $10 a month to substantial one-time contributions and assurance of reputable, secure servers. Gifts-in-kind are encouraged with program-specific needs itemized on the website, as well as frequent reminders of beneficial tax consequence. FTC’s advertised ratio of proceeds to costs is summarized generally as 85% to 15%, though some FTC critics dispute this ratio.
Controversy
Feed the Children has not been exempt from controversy. Recent proof of forgery of two successive annual FTC audits forced the resignation of the charity’s Chief Financial Director. While spokesmen for FTC expressed confidence that the numbers used were accurate, they were forced to admit that accounting giant Arthur Anderson had neither certified, nor even seen them. FTC has since retained the services of Capin Crouse, noted for proficiency with faith-based charities, acknowledging a number of advised remedial measures.
Pointed observations by charity analysts concerning FTC’s method of representing contributions against cash expenditures continue to fuel criticism that a food-for-children charity directs up to 75% of its budget expenditure on program publicity. Others answer that FTC’s relatively minimal cash outlay for food resources is offset by substantial food donations as gifts-in-kind. Larry Jones explains, “I turn television money into food.” Attention is also directed to FTC’s wholly owned trucking subsidiary, and partnerships with numerous existing relief agencies to minimize transport costs and maximize distribution efficiency.
Critics have also alleged that FTC’s use of carefully designed media appeal to produce sympathetic donor response is misleading, targeting areas where supporters are most likely to give, without informing of other intended uses for the donor revenue, that some of it may be kept in reserve against emergencies, natural disaster, even the predictable and cyclical downturn in giving. Additional lesser criticisms have issued a perception of comparatively large salaries going to Jones family members.
Not picture perfect
Videotape was used to establish a case of outright theft against Feed the Children’s Nashville operation, resulting in arrests and criminal charges for converting donated goods to personal use by FTC employees. The entire Nashville staff was fired and FTC temporarily closed the distribution center. The Tennessee expose’ follows policy violations several years ago in Oklahoma City, prompting Jones’s recent media response that the Nashville trouble is FTC’s “greatest loss,” and a distraction from the charity’s years of good work.
Celebrities espousing the charitable cause of Jones’s hungry children have themselves occasionally been “poster children” for questionable lifestyle. NFL All Pro Ray Lewis was initially implicated in a 2001 post Super Bowl skirmish which left two dead. Lewis was eventually acquitted and assumed active player status. Recently described as a “best friend to working mothers,” fashion and glamour icon Kathy Ireland has not always evoked imagery consistent with Christian endeavor.
Who is my brother?
Christ’s prophetic pronouncement in Matt. 25:31-46 of favor upon those rendering aid to His brethren in distress is perhaps the single most widely invoked example for charitable giving. However this interpretation is problematic at best, inasmuch as Christ’s brethren – beyond clear references to His immediate family and ethnic kin – are identified as those spiritually related to Him according to the will of the Father (Matt. 12:49-50). While it is beyond debate that Christ was kindly disposed toward children, use of this prophetic teaching to motivate giving to the poor is awkward at best. At its worst, it is plainly a distortion of Scripture.
Making disciples
Pairing of a clear articulation of the Gospel with charitable relief efforts has long been a formula for avoiding criticism from conservative evangelicals. While one may find mild affirmations of gospel witness in Feed the Children literature, the Mission Statement contains no such clear assertions, neither does the charity offer a Statement of Faith. This is consistent with Larry and Frances Jones’ historical affiliation with the Disciples of Christ, a group opposing creeds as a test of fellowship as stating in denominational publications,
“...unlike most other churches, we Disciples do not have an official doctrinal statement we can refer to when someone asks, 'What does the Christian Church believe?' "
FTC’s decision not to emphasize the gospel message has left them unprotected against a charge that they are merely “treating the body and ignoring the soul.”
Genuine Christians are fundamentally giving and kind, to their brethren as well as to those outside the Household of faith. Most do not question that Scripture teaches sacrificial giving and the fundamental virtue of meeting peoples’ immediate needs such as hunger and destitution of home and hearth. FTC’s strained application of Scripture as a motive for charity, however, is disconcerting, complicated further by substantiated charges that indeed all things have not been done “decently and in order.” Scriptural injunction that Christian conduct be above reproach and that the affairs of business withstand scrutiny sets an appropriately high standard for an ostensibly Christian organization. In the light of recent criticism, certain remedial steps seem prudent, worthy of FTC consideration.
- Large amounts of money will always require skilled management and scrupulous oversight
Feed the Children’s installation of operations officers with management authority could have prevented some, perhaps all of their trouble.
It does matter what people think, as reputations are frequently built on perception. Strategic use of gifts-in-kind to free up cash for expenses which must be met with cash should be clearly explained to donors.
- Appeal to sacrificial giving will never reconcile with perception of excess, whether in salaries or operating expense.
- Scripture teaches generosity
Questionable interpretations can easily be avoided in favor of texts which clearly teach Christian charity.
In the words of an Oklahoma news editorial,
“Any charity worth its salt and light should be glad to have its operations scrutinized... No one is picking on Feed The Children. Larry Jones and his operations are simply getting a thorough examination, so the public can decide for itself whether Feed The Children is worthy of continued support.”