The Hunger Site facts for kids

The Hunger Site is a special website that helps people in need by getting food donations. It was started in 1999. When you visit the site, you can click a button once a day. Each click helps provide food for hungry people. The money for this food comes from companies that advertise on the site.

The Hunger Site itself is not a charity. It is a company that uses money from its ads to help different charities. These charities include Millennium Promise, Food Recovery Network, Partners in Health, Feeding America, and Mercy Corps.

History of The Hunger Site

How The Hunger Site Started

The Hunger Site was created by John Breen, a computer programmer from Bloomington, Indiana. He launched the website in June 1999. The site quickly became very popular. So many people visited that John Breen spent most of his time managing it. He didn't get paid for this work, and the costs of running the site grew.

Changes in Ownership

Because of the increasing costs, John Breen sold The Hunger Site in February 2000. He sold it to GreaterGood, a company that ran an online shopping mall. This mall gave some of its sales money to charity.

In 2001, GreaterGood stopped operating after facing financial difficulties. Then, a company called CharityUSA.com, LLC bought The Hunger Site for one million dollars. CharityUSA.com is a private company based in Seattle. It owns and runs several "click-to-donate" websites.

Donations and Partnerships

CharityUSA.com states that all the money from the website's ads goes to its charity partners. In 2007, the company started a non-profit organization called GreaterGood.org. This organization shares yearly updates about the donations made through its programs. You can also find daily updates on The Hunger Site's homepage.

In 2008, Feeding America, a large hunger-relief organization, shared exciting news. They announced that their partnership with The Hunger Site had raised over $250,000. This money helped provide 4,000,000 meals to food banks across the United States. In just one year, The Hunger Site raised almost $100,000 for Feeding America.

Vicki Escarra, who was the President and CEO of Feeding America, praised the partnership. She said The Hunger Site makes it easy for people to help fight hunger online.

New Initiatives

In 2023, The Hunger Site launched a new project called "Click for Paws". This new site helps pets in need, showing how the idea of "click-to-donate" can support different causes.

How The Hunger Site Works

Understanding the Click System

The Hunger Site works by getting sponsors to pay for clicks. When you click the "feed the starving" button, sponsors pay money. This money then goes to charities that provide food. For example, in the past, sponsors donated money for each click to the United Nations' World Food Programme.

Some experts have looked into how much each click is worth. They believe that while every click helps, the site might earn more when users click on the sponsor's advertisements. The Hunger Site gets most of its visitors from the United States.

Expanding the Network

After CharityUSA.com bought GreaterGood, they reorganized some of the related websites. For example, The Child Survival Site, The Kids AIDS Site, and The Landmine Site were combined into The Child Health Site.

CharityUSA.com also added more websites to its network. These new sites include The Breast Cancer Site, The Animal Rescue Site, The Rainforest Site, and The Literacy Site. Each of these sites uses the same "click-to-donate" idea to support different important causes.

In 2008, CharityUSA.com reported that 66,235,889 cups of food were donated through clicks. The Hunger Site states that over 300 million visitors have helped donate more than 500 million cups of food. The food funded by these clicks is paid for by site sponsors. It is then given to people in need by organizations like Mercy Corps and Feeding America. The money helps hungry people in over 74 countries around the world.

Affiliated Pages

• Charity USA (GreaterGood Homepage)
• GreaterGood site
• The Alzheimer's Site
• The Autism Site
• The Breast Cancer Site
• The Diabetes Site
• The Literacy Site
• The Veterans Site
• The Rainforest Site
• The Animal Rescue Site
• Click for Paws

See also

In Spanish: The Hunger Site para niños

• Freerice
• Por Los Chicos
• Ripple (charitable organisation)
• The Non Profits (free donations directory)
• Free Kibble (click-to-donate for dogs and cats)
• Clique Alimentos (feed hungry in Brazil, By clicking on the company's logo, it commits to donating 1kg of food to the selected city's food bank.)