Helpberkeley Inc.

“Directors Mary Pat Farrell and Michel Thouati are married.”

“A draft of the form 990 was circulated to board members for review. A meeting was held to discuss, finalize and approve.”

“Each officer of the organization is required to read, review an sign a conflict of interest statement annually. On a quarterly basis the audit committee reviews all accounts and significant transactions, and questions whether any such transaction violates the conflict of interest policy.”

“For any significant paid position at HelpBerkeley, the Audit Committee minus the person holding the position is responsible for 1) identifying a source of reliable compensation data for the position and obtaining the data 2) identifying a compensation advisor who has knowledge appropriate to the position and retaining their services prior to finalizing a compensation agreement, 3) obtaining their written position and compensation recommendation. The full Board (minus the person under consideration for the position if they are a board member)votes on the compensation agreement. The compensation agreement, advisor recommendation and compensation vote are recorded in the meeting minutes. In 2021 their were no full time hires. We hired two contract positions briefly for a total expenditure of $2380.00. Compensation was discussed, voted on, and recorded by the board. All other positions were volunteer.”

“1023-EZ, tax-exempt determination letter, conflict of interest form, and 990 are available via a link on our website and can be downloaded as pdf documents. Our website is searchable. All documents whose disclosure is required are also available upon request.”

“In 2020, our focus was to deliver affordable meals to those who were at-risk during the pandemic and could not shop in-person. When we discovered that some of our members were food-insecure, we started delivering free meals, in a limited way, for two holidays in 2020. In 2021 we focused on free meals as a goal, while continuing to deliver afforable meals produced by local restaurants. We enormously expanded our delivery of free meals, some of which were donated and others which we prepared ourselves: we went from about 2,000 in 2020 to close to 175,000 in 2021. This necessitated the rental of industrial kitchens, the purchase of some kitchen equipment and meal ingredients, and the coordination of many volunteers to prepare and package the meals for delivery. We also began delivering bags of groceries both for HB and for partner non-profits such as Berkeley Food Network, and delivered free prepared meals funded by the County of Alameda. Our global delivery volume increased by a factor of approximately 10, to reach, over summer, a peak of 7,000 meals per week.”

“The rounding errors in the Form 990 caused the program expense amounts in Part III and Part IX to be off by $1. I adjusted the expense amount for the second program service accomplishment by $1 to take care of this rounding error.”

“Contract services for Operations Tech and Chef.”