Delivering 592 Meals to Elderly New Yorkers with Citymeals on Wheels

Lemonade’s Giveback to Citymeals on Wheels

Citymeals on Wheels funds weekend, holiday, and emergency meals to homebound elderly New Yorkers who can no longer shop or cook for themselves. Citymeals on Wheels volunteers may also deliver meals themselves, so they can provide the elderly with the companionship that they need.

Through the Giveback to Citymeals on Wheels, the Lemonade community funded 592 nourishing meals for elderly New Yorkers! To show even more support for the cause, Team Lemonade also hand-delivered some of the meals to New Yorkers for the July 4th weekend.

The 2017 Lemonade Giveback

Our total Giveback for 2017 was $53,174, and this number calls for some context: this amounts to 10.2% of our revenue. As a point of reference, the Fortune 100 give 0.08% of their revenues each year (CECP p.36). So if year-one is anything to go by, Giveback has the potential to 100X that benchmark. Time will tell, but early indications are encouraging.  

We had 21 cause-centric-groups as of June 30, and 14 (66.7%) received a Giveback. Here’s a fun fact: among these 14 causes, an average of 24% of premiums were given to charity. These funds can go a long way when put in the right hands.

But it’s more than just numbers. Giveback amounts to a change in kind, because it isn’t dependent on profits (Lemonade hasn’t turned a profit yet). We think of Giveback as a social contract among our community, where the size and allocation is determined not by our big profits or big hearts, but by the good fortune and good behavior of our members. Remember, it’s not our money.

As our Chief Behavioral Officer Dan Ariely explained, “it’s money our community has entrusted to us, first and foremost to help our members recover from unfortunate events in their lives, and secondly, to help the less fortunate in our broader community.”

Share your Citymeals on Wheels impact, and read more about our 2017 Giveback here.