Accountability
The records, the filings, and the limits of what we can claim.
A charity that publishes what it does not know is easier to believe about everything else. This page is written on that principle.
Legal identity
- Legal name
- Ripple Foundation, a charitable trust organized under New Jersey law. Not a corporation. We are governed by trustees under a trust agreement, so our name never carries “Inc.”
- Employer identification number
- 33-6478496
- Federal tax status
- Exempt under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3). Read the determination letter (PDF).
- Foundation classification
- Private foundation under section 509(a). We file Form 990-PF, we are subject to the self-dealing rules of section 4941, and donors face lower deduction limits than they would for a public charity.
- Program
- Lifeline Power is a program of Ripple Foundation, not a separate legal entity.
- Trustees
- Louis Zimick and Elizabeth Zimick, Co-Trustees. Ripple Foundation has no officers, no directors, and no executive titles. Documents executed for the trust are signed by each trustee solely in that capacity and not individually, consistent with N.J.S.A. 3B:31-79. Because there are two trustees and N.J.S.A. 3B:31-48(a) permits co-trustees to act by majority, two of two is the working requirement. Both trustees sign unless one has delegated in writing under the trust agreement.
Who did the first installation
One of the trustees owns Zimick Electric LLC, a New Jersey licensed electrical contractor. Zimick Electric completed the first installation at no charge to Ripple Foundation. It donated the equipment, materials, permitting, and labor, and paid its crew in full. The foundation paid nothing for that work. Every dollar given to Ripple remains available for the next family. Any later decision about who performs an installation, and who pays, will be made by the trustees and stated here before work starts.
Filings and records
We will post each document here as it is filed rather than describe it. Where a document is not yet posted, this table says so plainly instead of leaving a gap.
| Record | Status |
|---|---|
| IRS determination letter | Posted (PDF) |
| Form 990-PF, tax year 2024 | In preparation. Will be posted here when filed. |
| Form 990-PF, tax year 2025 | Not yet due. Will be posted here when filed. |
| Trust agreement | Available on request to donors and partner agencies. |
| Project cost records | Published per project, showing equipment, permit, and paid labor separately. Our first project's figures are being finalized. |
How money is used
- Labor is paid, always. No electrician works unpaid. When a licensed contractor donates an installation, that contractor pays its crew in full, with payroll taxes, workers' compensation, and benefits. Zimick Electric did that on the first installation.
- No payment processing on our own systems. All giving runs through Givebutter, which issues receipts and handles the written acknowledgment requirements. We never see or store card data.
- Nothing of value goes back to donors. No tickets, dinners, or merchandise, so that a gift stays fully deductible to the extent the law allows and no quid pro quo disclosure under IRS Publication 1771 is triggered.
- Published selection criteria, applied uniformly. Our eligibility criteria are posted before applications are reviewed, not written to fit a decision already made.
What we do not yet know
No one has ever measured whether restoring power to a responder's home changes their availability during a crisis. We are not going to claim otherwise, and you should be skeptical of any organization in this space that does.
The two studies that come closest to the question found no association between household preparedness and response behavior. We are stating that here rather than omitting it, because omitting it is how a program like this becomes indefensible later.
What is documented is the burden itself. And the University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center, the same body whose work concludes that responders rarely abandon their posts, recommends precisely the intervention we are building: “the establishment of a robust responder family support framework in order to help alleviate role conflict and help keep emergency workers focused on their professional demands.”
We are building that framework and we are going to measure it. Every household we serve becomes part of the first real dataset on this question, gathered with partner agencies and published openly, whatever it shows. That includes if it shows nothing.
Sources: University of Delaware Disaster Research Center, Report #71 · Knezek, Vu & Lee, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 2021 · Qureshi et al., Journal of Urban Health