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Free to download, free to print, free to hand out

Unhoused help

Guides to the help available across the East Valley and Phoenix, and a board where a meal is already paid for. Neither asks anyone to prove they need it.

The resource lists

Where to get help

Real phone numbers and real addresses for each city, rather than a national hotline and good luck. Every number on these pages is a link that dials it, because reading a PDF on a phone outside in August and typing a number out by hand is a lot to ask of somebody having the worst week of their life.

The printable trifolds are still here, and they are free and always will be. Print one and put it somewhere. If you run a shop, a church, a clinic or a library, we would rather it was on your counter than ours.

Ask us for printed copies Ask for your city

Spotted something out of date, or know a resource we have missed? Tell us and we will fix it. A wrong phone number on this sheet costs somebody a very bad afternoon.

If you need help right now

Open your city's list above. Every number on it is a link that dials, and the crisis lines at the top of each page answer at any hour.

If your city is not listed above, dial 211 from anywhere in Arizona for referrals to shelter, food and medical care near you.

Pay It Forward has meals that somebody else has already paid for, collected from a local business with nothing to prove.

Pay It Forward

Buy a meal for somebody you will never meet

You pay for a meal in advance. Somebody who needs it collects it from a local business. No questions, no proof of anything, and no conversation about whether they deserve it. Your donation is tax deductible, and the money goes to a local business rather than out of the neighborhood.

The lack of a conversation is the whole design. Plenty of help comes with a queue, a form, or a moment where you have to say out loud that you cannot afford lunch. This one does not, and that is why it gets used.

PIF Board runs as a project of the Foundation for Innovation in Society, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Phoenix Metro, Arizona (EIN 33-2320329). Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Buy a meal on PIF Board Support the wider work

Run one where you are

Any business can take part, and PIF Board handles the awkward parts. We also wrote up how the idea works from the beginning, including what took a few goes to get right.

Take part through PIF Board How the idea works

Why a coffee shop is doing this

Because the same argument runs through all of it: people are not poor because they made a mistake, and a business does not have to be built so that somebody loses.

Work life unbalance