Fed Is Best Foundation

What it reported doing in 2024

In the year 2024, the Fed is best foundation continued its work to support parents and health professionals to feed newborns and infants safely and sufficiently. Our social media platform on Facebook has reached over 900,000 followers and includes the parent infant feeding support group, which provides direct one-on-one and group support for individual parents who have concerns about infant feeding. It is moderated by a panel of license lactation consultants, nurses and doctors that provide evidence based safe feeding advice. The goal of the group is to provide judgment-free, safe, evidence-based feeding advice to parents who are breastfeeding, combination feeding, formula feeding, pump breast milk feeding, and tube feeding in a way that prioritizes feeding infants so that they thrive. We also address maternal mental health issues related to modern pressures to feed infants in a particular way, especially when they are unable to achieve their feeding goals. We also support health professionals in a private health professional support group. This includes nurses, lactation professionals, and doctors who share concerns about the hospital quality metric that enforces avoidance of formula supplementation in breastfed infants, which has led to infants becoming excessively jaundiced, dehydrated, and hypoglycemic resulting in preventable hospitalizations and even long-term brain developmental problems and deaths. These professionals are commonly grappling with the ethical dilemma of being encouraged to tell parents that they're crying newborns are not hungry to avoid formula supplementation according to the hospital metric, when in fact they are and are at risk of developing starvation-related complications that can result in readmission, extended hospital admission, and long-term neurodevelopmental disability. We study the published scientific literature to understand what constitutes safe thresholds in the clinical management of infants as it relates to weight loss, bilirubin, glucose, and sodium levels. We also study what levels of jaundice, hypoglycemia and hypernatremia can result in long term developmental disabilities to help guide safer infant feeding policies. We also discuss ways we can support parents in a non-judgmental way in order to help them reach their infant feeding goals while ensuring the safe and humane feeding of their infants. We have also signed a book contract with Ben Bella, a publisher that distributes through Penguin House Publishing for our book, Fed is Best: Feeding Your Baby Through Breast, Bottle or Both, Which is expected to be released August of 2024. In this book we provide a comprehensive review of the history of breastfeeding and bottle feeding, the science of infant feeding, as well as a complete guide to breastfeeding, supplementing, combination feeding, formula and bottle feeding. We provide recommendations on how to closely monitor newborn breastfeeding initiation to prevent the serious complications of jaundice, dehydration, hypernatremia, and hyperglycemia and how to ensure healthy growth through the first year of life. We continue to draw media attention to the issue of safe and inclusive infant feeding support for all families. We have seen this influence extend into the professional realm as breast is best versus fed is best was discussed in the Pediatric Academic Societies 2022 conference where significant attention was paid to the safety issues of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative.

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 54.5%; rating input score 54
• Program expense ratio: 53.6%; rating input score 54

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 52nd percentile among comparable filings
• Major donor itemization: Limited

Sustainability

• Operating margin: -1.6%; rating input score 41; 41st percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.03; rating input score 7; 7th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: Limited
• Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: -4.5% per year; rating input score 0; 36th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: 2% per year; rating input score 100; 60th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: -18.2% per year; rating input score 0; 11th percentile among comparable filings