WHY IT MATTERS
Most people think childhood hunger is happening somewhere else. It’s not. It’s in your zip code, right now, sitting two desks over from your kid in math class.
1 in 5
American kids lives in a food‑insecure household. That’s nearly 14 million children who don’t reliably know where their next meal is coming from. Not a statistic somewhere. A kid on your kid’s soccer team. A kid in the carpool line. A kid you’ve already met and didn’t know it.
3 Years
That’s how long a brain has to build itself before the wiring locks in. Kids who don’t get the nutrients they need in that window are 2–3x more likely to fall behind in language, motor skills, and emotional development — and the gap follows them for life. Hunger doesn’t just make a kid uncomfortable. It rewrites their future.
$160 Billion
That’s what childhood hunger costs the U.S. economy every year in lost productivity, healthcare spending, and reduced workforce readiness. Bank of America, Kaiser Permanente, Toyota, Denny’s, and Toast have all publicly named it as a workforce risk. Even if you’ve never met a hungry kid, your business is paying for one.
Not just poverty
Rising rents, child‑care costs, medical bills, and groceries are squeezing middle‑class families harder than at any point in living memory. The cereal‑aisle math problem is a real conversation in real American households — and the kids are absorbing every minute of it. This isn’t a poverty story anymore. It’s a middle‑class story.
It's Solvable
The U.S. doesn’t have a food shortage. We have a distribution problem. The food exists. The infrastructure exists. The charities that know how to deliver meals at scale exist. What’s been missing is the army to fund the work. RipLine is building that army — 168 million outdoor athletes strong.
WANT THE DEEPER READ?
The numbers above are pulled from our America in Crisis article series. Each piece goes deeper on one part of the story:
HELP FUEL OUR FIGHT
Four ways to get in. No spandex required. No fundraising experience needed. Pick the option that fits — we’ll handle the rest.
1. BECOME A LEADER
Pick a challenge — Gravity Quest™, Miles in the Wild™, or Balls Out™. Set a goal. Rally your network. Five minutes to register at riplinefoundation.org. The kids don’t care about your pace — they care that you showed up.
What you get: your own Leader page, a community of people moving for the same reason, and a step‑by‑step playbook that takes the guesswork out of fundraising. Most Leaders crush their first goal — and then come back bigger the next season.
What you get: your own Leader page, a community of people moving for the same reason, and a step‑by‑step playbook that takes the guesswork out of fundraising. Most Leaders crush their first goal — and then come back bigger the next season.
The Leader Playbook
First time fundraising? Most Leaders have never asked anyone for a dime in their life. Good news: peer‑to‑peer fundraising follows a simple, proven rhythm. Six small moves over a few weeks. No spreadsheets. No awkward speeches. Just a sequence that works — even for first‑timers.
Day 0 — Build Your Page (5 min).
Register, pick your challenge, set your goal. Then take two minutes for the move that matters most: add an action photo of you actually doing the thing, and write three sentences on WHY you’re doing it. Skip the generic template — your real story is the single biggest converter on the page. Industry data: personalized pages convert about 14% higher than blank ones. Two minutes well spent.
Day 1 — Be Your Own First Donor.
Donate at least $50 – $100 (or more if you can) to your own page. Here’s why it works: people anchor on what came before. An empty page tells donors that $10 is the expected gift. A page that opens with $100 tells them $50–$100 is the room. This is the quiet move that separates $500 Leaders from $5,000 Leaders — and it proves you’re in before you ask anyone else to be.
Week 1 — Activate Your Network.
Before any public post, send 10–15 personal messages to people who already love you — your inner circle. Text. DM. Voice memo if that’s your speed. This is where the Force Multiplier actually happens: every $20 a friend pledges stacks on your $100 to turn one athlete into a network of meals. Ten friends at $20 each turns your $100 into $300 — and 3,000 meals. Twenty friends? You’ve already doubled it. Industry data: this inner circle delivers 60–70% of most Leaders’ total raise. The bigger you go here, the bigger the multiplier.
Steal, or riff on this:
"Hey — small ask. This summer I’m officially in for Miles in the Wild for the RipLine Foundation: 200 miles for kids who don’t always know where their next meal is coming from. Here’s the wild part — every $1 raised becomes up to 10 meals. So my $2,000 goal turns into 20,000 meals for kids who actually need them. Even $10 puts dinner on a kid’s tray. If you can chip in, here’s my page: [link]. Can’t right now? Share it with one friend who’d care — that helps too. Either way, thanks for reading this far. Love you for it."
Week 2 — Go Public.
Now post everywhere — Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, group chats, office Slack, the run‑club thread. Lead with your WHY, not the org. Tag your people. Use photos — pictures of you mid‑mile, mid‑trail, mid‑backswing, mid‑après. Authentic beats polished, every time. Embarrassing photos welcome. Best post times for engagement: 8–9 AM, around noon, and 5–7 PM. Try one of each — different parts of your network are awake at different hours.
Throughout — Show Your Work.
Post 2–3 times a week minimum. Don’t register and disappear. Mix training shots, mile counts, the trail you’re on, a meal you cooked, the kid you’re thinking about today. Celebrate every 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% milestone publicly — each one is a fresh excuse to post and a fresh nudge for people who haven’t given yet. Counterintuitive truth: “Just hit 50 miles!” outperforms “please donate” every time. Updates beat asks. Momentum beats marketing.
Final Weeks — The Push + Level Up the Multiplier.
Re‑ask everyone who hasn’t given yet. Yes, even the people you already asked — 30–40% of P2P fundraising happens in the final week, because procrastinators are real. Give them a deadline. Then, level up the multiplier: pick one friend who got fired up by your campaign and ask them to lead next season. One recruited Leader doubles your impact. Two triples it. That’s how a single Leader becomes a movement — and a $100 donation becomes thousands of meals.
A few pro tips.
Don’t apologize for asking — the people who love you are honored, not annoyed. Never send a generic link; pair it with one personal sentence. If a sponsor offers a match, lead with it (matches boost response 71% and gift size 51%). Thank donors within 24 hours — they give again, often bigger. And if someone says no? Say thank you and ask them to share. A share is free, easy, and worth more than they think.
2. SPONSOR A LEADER
Got a friend, kid, sibling, coworker, or run‑club lunatic doing a RipLine challenge? Pledge a flat amount or a per‑mile (per‑foot, per‑hole) rate based on their goal. You cheer. They sweat. Kids eat. Three‑way win. A $0.50/mile pledge on a 200‑mile Leader is $100 — and up to 1,000 meals. Math is fun when it feeds kids. And every sponsor pledge is part of what turns Leaders into Force Multipliers — your $20, $50, $100 stacks with everyone else’s to scale impact way past what one athlete could do alone.
3. DONATE DIRECT
Not in the mood to lace up? Hit the donate button at riplinefoundation.org. One‑time, monthly, stock, DAF, or corporate match — all welcome, all deductible. Tax receipt in your inbox before you put your phone down. Every dollar becomes up to 10 meals through No Kid Hungry, Feeding America, Feed the Children, and Vitamin Angels. Direct gifts power the same pipeline as challenge dollars — same partners, same leverage, same impact. The only difference: you don’t have to wait for a season to make a kid’s day.
4. PARTNER WITH US
If your customers, employees, or community look like RipLine’s 168‑million‑strong outdoor tribe, this is your audience. Title sponsorship of a specific challenge. Employee Leader teams. Matching‑gift programs that double employee donations. Cause‑marketing tied to your products. Co‑branded events and content. We design the right structure for each partner — built around your goals, your moments, and your brand. Childhood hunger costs the U.S. economy $160 billion a year. Helping fix it isn’t soft. It’s strategic. Ask for the Partner Deck and we’ll set up a call.
Every dollar = up to 10 meals.
100% of challenge funds go directly to our giving partners. No admin skim. No marketing dilution.