How We Pick Nonprofits
One of the most frequent asks I get is how charity partners get picked for Crust Fund Pizza. Much like the pizza drops, it’s a whole thing, mostly due to having the capacity of an alley pizza operation. I love almost nothing more than meeting the people making Chicago a better place to live. I hate nothing more, from my very Midwestern bones, than not delivering an immediate yes for a good cause. But I do like to be clear about my processes. So:
This many years in, I do indeed have established relationships with some local nonprofits. That doesn’t mean it’s exclusively who I work with.
Sometimes new nonrpofit partners come in as the result of a collaboration dish. Or, say, a particularly bad run of things in Chicago. Friends and neighbors getting extrajudicially kidnapped, say. No controlling for that. Front of the line!
I do my best to establish an actual relationship with any charitable partner, so by design the charity aspect can’t come together nearly as on-the-fly as the pizza aspect. I might be a lone weirdo in an alley, but I do respect the work of professionals here. Meanwhile the dad jokes turn into pizzas just like the Niagara River becomes the Falls.
That said, I am always willing and hoping to meet the people who do real work (which is not pizza work) to make Chicago better for everyone. If you want to reach out, here’s the loose guidelines to what Crust Fund looks for:
Designated 501(c)3 nonprofits only, please.
Direct action. This can mean food for our neighbors, shelter for folks fleeing violence, services for new immigrants, or a whole bunch of other things.
Are you in Chicago? That’s where I live, so that’s my hard border. I can’t even begin to approach all of the worthy causes already here.
Do you have an online payment portal to receive direct donations? I don’t take/pass through any money.
No lobbying, or advocacy, or thought leadership. Nothing against any of those, but I have a very simple brain and like to use it do the algebra of what happened as a result of the money.
I don’t do portion-of-proceeds events or pass-through fundraising (i.e. race fundraising or other individual fundraising). I will occasionally run a race myself for a charity, but that is because I am a slow hypocrite and that’s my thing to deal with.
I look for organizations where the majority of fundraising goes to programming, not overhead.
If you have a gmail address for your organization, it’s probably going to be a no. Sorry.
If that all sounds good to you, go ahead and drop us a line below.