Washington · Nonprofit
FOOD LIFELINE
FOOD LIFELINE (Washington) receives grants from 291 organizations whose IRS filings report $64,743,992 to it, the largest being Feeding America ($14,350,137). 155 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $157M
- Funders on record
- 291
- Grants received
- $65M
- Net assets
- $19M
What Food Lifeline does
Mission
Food Lifeline's mission is to feed people experiencing hunger today while working to end hunger tomorrow.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Program
Feeding people today: Food Lifeline procures, processes, and distributes food to agency and network partners. As the tefap lead agency for king county, Food Lifeline works with wsda to feed western washington. Resources are donated by local governments, corporations, organizations, and community. In fy 25, volunteers contributed over 50,000 hours to support Food Lifeline.
$155,410,429 spentof which $143,526,991 as grants$1,127,403 earned by the program100% of program spending
The program described on its FY2024 Form 990. Program spending in total: $155,410,429.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2019 to 2020, from $38M to $57M (+49%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2017 2% · 2018 3% · 2019 2% · 2020 7% · 2021 9% · 2022 6% · 2023 7% · 2024 17% · 2025 13%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
99% of FOOD LIFELINE’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (97% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 6 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Robert Ojeda
President & CEO end 3/3/25
Board chair
Benjamin Hill
Chair
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 43 funders to 103 funders, grant income rose $2.3M → $7.5M.
42 of 291 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 31% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
Left out of every figure on this page: $1.6M from 2 payers (the payer shares this organization's board, largest Food Lifeline Foundation). These are real filings, and they are not money FOOD LIFELINE raised.
From the IRS filings of FOOD LIFELINE’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 291 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
FOOD LIFELINE has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 22% of grant income, and it takes 5 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 5 funders to its left
79% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund FOOD LIFELINE.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 23% · 2018 59% · 2019 51% · 2020 37% · 2021 22% · 2022 15% · 2023 18% — diversifying over time.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
36% of FOOD LIFELINE's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 53% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
FOOD LIFELINE draws 56% of its grant income from funders outside Washington, across 34 states in all.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $20M arriving through sponsors registered in 26 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
FOOD LIFELINE's funding base is broadening — from 43 funders to 103 as grant income climbed.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 31 food & nutrition nonprofits over $100M, FY2025
Government funding FOOD LIFELINE receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $4.2M on record.
- Department of Housing and Urban Development$4.0M
- Environmental Protection Agency$200k
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Organizations like FOOD LIFELINE
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Washington
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
96% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
93%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 40 states
Part of a family of 1 related entity
- Food Lifeline Foundation · exempt
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for FOOD LIFELINE: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds FOOD LIFELINE?
- FOOD LIFELINE (Washington) receives grants from 291 organizations whose IRS filings report $64,743,992 to it, the largest being Feeding America ($14,350,137). 155 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does FOOD LIFELINE have?
- IRS filings report 291 organizations giving $64,743,992 in grants to FOOD LIFELINE, 155 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of FOOD LIFELINE?
- Feeding America is the largest funder on record, with $14,350,137 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like FOOD LIFELINE find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Washington. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 291 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing