Summary
What do they do? Farming Hope currently offers a 12-week, part-time, paid apprenticeship. Apprentices receive kitchen and hospitality training, professional and life-skills instruction, and work experience producing food for community programs. This report isolates the transition from the apprenticeship into later covered employment; it does not treat the food produced as an apprentice employment outcome. More
Why this approach interests us
- Paid work experience, culinary instruction, professional and life-skills training, case-manager involvement, and employer relationships may reduce experience, confidence, network, and screening barriers to unsubsidized work.
Our main reservations
- Farming Hope does not publish the placement numerator, missing follow-up, job definition, retention, prior employment, comparison rate, or participant-level cost; randomized transitional-jobs effects vary sharply by program.
What do you get for your dollar?
Farming Hope reported 41 apprentices trained, an 85% graduation rate, and 71% employment within 90 days of graduation in 2024. Its Form 990 assigns $1,706,032 to job training, or $41,611 of gross historical expense per reported apprentice. Transferring a 4-point pooled randomized employment effect gives a conditional estimate of about $1.04M per additional person with any covered employment in the late follow-up year. A null remains plausible.
- gross historical benchmark
- ≈ $41,600 — FY2024 job-training expense per reported apprentice; not a marginal price
- our conditional best guess
- ≈ $1.04M — per additional person ever employed in a late follow-up year, using a transferred 4-point effect
- cost per better life
- ≈ $41.6M — per 10 QALYs; very-low-confidence participant-level transfer from a randomized IPS trial
- funding room
- Not published — the $100,000 gift is a scenario, not a verified cohort expansion
1. What do they do?
Farming Hope currently offers a 12-week, part-time, paid apprenticeship. Apprentices receive kitchen and hospitality training, professional and life-skills instruction, and work experience producing food for community programs. This report isolates the transition from the apprenticeship into later covered employment; it does not treat the food produced as an apprentice employment outcome.
Apply with support
Candidates facing barriers such as former incarceration, homelessness, or recovery apply with case-manager support and complete an open-house and interview process.
Complete paid training
Apprentices work part time for 12 weeks while learning kitchen, hospitality, professional, and life skills in a production setting.
Move toward unsubsidized work
Staff and employment partners support graduation, job search, placement, and the transition from temporary paid training into regular employment.
Measure employment after exit
A recommendation-grade cohort would verify job start, hours, wage, benefits, employer, and employment in each quarter through at least 24 months for every entrant.
Scope of this review. The model covers the culinary apprenticeship and any covered employment during a late follow-up year. It excludes meals, groceries, food recovery, community dinners, apprentice wages as a benefit, and any unmeasured earnings, retention, housing, recovery, recidivism, or wellbeing effects.
2. Monitoring and information sharing
41 apprentices trained in Farming Hope's 2024 culinary employment program
Organization-reported annual outcomes. Farming Hope reports an 85% graduation rate, 71% employment within 90 days of graduation, and a $21.29 hourly average wage within one month of exit. It separately reports 149,884 meals cooked and 263,251 pounds of groceries distributed.
Our assessment. The report does not identify the employment-rate numerator, missing follow-up, job quality, hours, retention beyond 90 days, pre-program employment, unsuccessful applicants, or a comparison group. Food outputs serve a different objective and cannot be added to employment outcomes or used to infer apprentice impact.
1,813 men released from prison within the prior 90 days, assigned to transitional jobs or basic job-search assistance
Four-city randomized controlled trial. The programs sharply increased employment while subsidized jobs were available, but did not increase regular unsubsidized employment during or after the program; by the end of year two, about one-fifth of each group worked in the formal labor market. Key recidivism measures did not improve.
Our assessment. This is strong causal evidence for earlier 30-to-40-hour transitional-jobs models in four Midwestern cities, not Farming Hope's smaller Bay Area culinary apprenticeship. The population, labor market, training content, supports, employer links, and comparison services differ.
About 7,000 recently incarcerated people or low-income noncustodial parents assigned to enhanced transitional jobs or community services
Seven-site randomized evaluation and cost analysis. Across sites, administrative data show final-year employment of 64.4% versus 60.4%, a 4.0 percentage-point impact; four of seven programs improved longer-term employment or earnings. Program costs ranged from about $7,000 to $11,100 per program-group member, and effects varied materially by site and model.
Our assessment. The pooled result shows that enhanced models can produce modest longer-term gains, not that every culinary or transitional program does. The study's populations, scale, program components, costs, and local alternatives differ; its per-participant cost is not a benchmark that can be assigned to Farming Hope.
3. Qualitative assessment
Paid work experience, culinary instruction, professional and life-skills training, case-manager involvement, and employer relationships may reduce experience, confidence, network, and screening barriers to unsubsidized work.
Key reservations
- Employment training, community meals, grocery distribution, and food recovery have different beneficiaries, outcomes, evidence, and costs.
- The 85% graduation and 71% employment figures do not publish exact numerators, missing follow-up, job definitions, retention, or a comparison group.
- The $21.29 hourly average lacks a sample size, distribution, hours, benefits, prior wage, and retention window beyond one month.
- Employment during a paid apprenticeship is not the same outcome as sustained unsubsidized employment after exit.
- External randomized studies show that transitional-job effects vary by program and may fade after subsidies end.
- Form 990 program expenses are organization-wide buckets and cannot be divided by trainees or placements to produce a causal cost per job.
- Active public contracts and earned food-service revenue may fund overlapping activities, so the additional activity created by a private gift is unknown.
Benefits not included in our estimate
- The reported 71% employment-within-90-days rate as a causal effect
- Graduation, paid apprenticeship hours, meals, groceries, food recovery, and earned revenue as if they were the same beneficiary outcome
- Employment in all quarters, permanent employment, job quality, earnings, wage progression, and benefits because Farming Hope has not published those outcomes for the cohort
- Employer substitution, avoided public costs, reduced recidivism, housing stability, recovery, confidence, belonging, and family spillovers
- QALYs, WELLBYs, mortality benefits, and a 10-QALY life-substantially-bettered conversion
4. What do you get for your dollar?
Our current model: about $1.04 million per additional person ever employed in a late follow-up year—conditional on a very uncertain transfer.
The historical cost anchor divides Farming Hope’s filed 2024 job-training expense by 41 reported apprentices. It is a gross cross-source ratio, not an incremental cohort budget. The causal midpoint uses the seven-site Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration’s 4.0-point increase in any administrative-record employment during the final follow-up year. We deliberately do not use Farming Hope’s 71% placement rate as an effect. The 1%, 4%, and 8% cases are decision scenarios, not statistical confidence bounds.
A better life is our comparison unit of 10 additional quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), potentially spread across people. These are uncertain estimates, not measured returns or verified donation offers.
How we calculate the estimate
CONDITIONAL COST PER ADDITIONAL PERSON EVER EMPLOYED IN THE LATE FOLLOW-UP YEAR: $41,611 ÷ 4%
= $1,040,263
Model inputs and assumptions
- FY2024 job-training program expense
- $1,706,032 (range: Fixed published value). Farming Hope's 2024 Form 990, Part III, line 4a. The bucket includes the full job-training program and is not an incremental or philanthropic cost. high for filed accounting; low for marginal use.
- Reported apprentices trained
- 41 people (range: Fixed published value). Farming Hope's 2024 Gratitude Report. The report does not publish applications, enrollment timing, duplicate handling, exits, or complete follow-up. moderate.
- Historical gross expense per reported apprentice
- $41,611 (range: Fixed published value). $1,706,032 of filed job-training expense divided by 41 reported apprentices. This is a cross-source historical ratio, not a marginal price, causal cost, or cost per graduate or placement. low.
- Organization-reported employment within 90 days of graduation
- 71% (range: Fixed published value). Farming Hope's 2024 Gratitude Report. The numerator, graduate denominator, missing follow-up, job coverage, hours, wage distribution, and comparison rate are not published. This input is descriptive and is not used as the causal effect. low for interpretation; not causal.
- ETJD pooled randomized late-year any-employment effect
- 4% (range: 2.2%–5.9%). Across seven enhanced transitional-jobs sites, 64.4% of the program group versus 60.4% of controls had any National Directory of New Hires-covered employment in the final follow-up year; impact 4.0 points, 90% CI 2.2 to 5.9. The study populations and programs differ from Farming Hope. high for the pooled study; very low for direct transfer.
- MFI transferred late-year any-employment effect
- 4% (range: 1%–8%). The midpoint copies the pooled ETJD randomized result rather than Farming Hope's 71% placement rate. The wider 1%-8% positive-effect scenarios reflect program and population transfer uncertainty and are not confidence bounds. Earlier transitional-jobs trials found no lasting unsubsidized-employment gain, so zero or harm remains outside the numeric range. very low.
What would $100,000 imply at the historical cost ratio?
- Favorable positive transfer: 0.19 additional people. 2.4 historical-equivalent apprentices · $520.13K per outcome
- Best guess: 0.1 additional people. 2.4 historical-equivalent apprentices · $1.04M per outcome
- Small positive transfer: 0.02 additional people. 2.4 historical-equivalent apprentices · $4.16M per outcome
Uncertainty. The conditional range excludes zero and harm. An earlier four-city randomized demonstration found that transitional jobs increased employment only while subsidized jobs were available and did not increase regular unsubsidized employment. If Farming Hope's apprenticeship does not improve late follow-up employment relative to existing services, if employers substitute apprentices for other workers, or if a gift replaces public, restricted, or earned funding, additional employment approaches zero or becomes negative and no finite positive impact price exists.
Our current best estimate: about $41.6 million per better life (10 QALYs).
Publish an explicit, very-low-confidence decision estimate of approximately $41.6 million per 10 QALYs. The model divides Farming Hope's $41,611 gross historical expense per apprentice by the 0.01 incremental QALY per assigned participant reported in a randomized Individual Placement and Support trial, then multiplies by 10 QALYs. This is a participant-level intervention transfer—not QALYs per job and not a claim that employment itself is a health state. The population, clinical setting, intervention, comparator, utility trajectory, and follow-up differ materially, so the sensitivity spans $20.8 million to $416 million and a true null remains plausible.
EXPLORATORY COST PER 10 QALYS · ONE BETTER LIFE: $41,611 ÷ 0.01 QALY × 10
= $41.61M
QALY conversion assumptions
- Gross historical cost per apprentice
- $41,611 (range: Fixed historical ratio). FY2024 job-training expense divided by 41 reported apprentices; not a marginal donor price. low.
- Incremental QALY per assigned participant
- 0.01 (range: 0.001–0.02). The central value and 0.003-0.02 reported range come from a randomized IPS trial in substance-dependence treatment. MFI extends the downside to 0.001 to reflect transfer from a specialist clinical supported-employment intervention to Farming Hope's culinary apprenticeship. This is a decision range, not a statistical confidence interval. very low transfer.
- One better life
- 10 QALYs (range: Fixed comparison denominator). Universal Market for Impact comparison unit. defined.
- Optimistic direct-transfer bound: $20.81M. 0.02 QALY per assigned participant · per 10 QALYs
- Central direct transfer: $41.61M. 0.01 QALY per assigned participant · per 10 QALYs
- Reported lower trial value: $138.7M. 0.003 QALY per assigned participant · per 10 QALYs
- Transfer-discounted downside: $416.11M. 0.001 QALY per assigned participant · per 10 QALYs
The numeric range is conditional on a positive health-utility effect. The external trial does not establish Farming Hope's effect, and broader reviews find uncertain or heterogeneous health impacts from employment interventions. If Farming Hope creates no incremental QALYs relative to alternatives, the impact price has no finite upper bound.
5. Funding and previous grants
There is no current apprenticeship-only marginal budget, verified 3- to 24-month employment and earnings cohort, credible Farming Hope counterfactual, or public/restricted/earned-funding displacement rule.
The $100,000 scenario is illustrative. Farming Hope's website says gifts support paid job training alongside food recovery and community meals, but it does not publish a current apprenticeship-only budget, committed funding, remaining gap, cohort expansion, staffing constraint, employer-placement capacity, or public/earned-revenue displacement rule.
This review does not establish a verified marginal funding offer or a complete history of grants.
Opens the organization’s giving page. A general donation may not fund the specific activity modeled here; confirm allocation with the recipient.
6. Sources
- 2024 Gratitude Report. Farming Hope. organization-reported. Published: calendar 2024 report; file published 2026-07; retrieved: 2026-08-30.
- 2024 Form 990. Farming Hope / Internal Revenue Service. organization tax filing. Published: filed 2025-09-23; retrieved: 2026-08-30.
- Apprenticeships. Farming Hope. current organization program description. Published: current program page; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
- Sugary Drinks Distributor Tax Evaluation Report 2022–2023. San Francisco Department of Public Health. city program description and participatory reporting. Published: 2024-03; retrieved: 2026-08-30.
- Returning to Work After Prison: Final Results from the Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration. MDRC. randomized controlled trial. Published: 2012-05; retrieved: 2026-08-30.
- Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration Evaluation Final Report. U.S. Department of Labor. randomized evaluation and cost analysis. Published: 2018-11-01; retrieved: 2026-08-30.
- Nonprofit prime-contract ledger: Farming Hope. City and County of San Francisco. public-contract accounting. Published: data as of 2026-08-20; retrieved: 2026-08-30.
- Superiority and cost-effectiveness of Individual Placement and Support versus standard employment support for people with alcohol and drug dependence: a pragmatic, parallel-group, open-label, multicentre, randomised, controlled, phase 3 trial. The Lancet Psychiatry. randomized cost-effectiveness trial. Published: 2024-02-01; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
- Economic analyses of supported employment programmes for people with mental health conditions: A systematic review. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences. systematic review of economic evaluations. Published: 2022-08-15; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
- Employment Interventions in Health Settings: A Systematic Review and Synthesis. Annals of Family Medicine. systematic review. Published: 2018-09-01; retrieved: 2026-08-31.
Annual expenses: years and sources
Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): $2,878,863. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.
Farming Hope
Whole legal entity Form 990 Part IX total functional expenses; latest original reconstructed filings checked, fiscal-end year from printed reporting dates. Older fallback rows from IRS extracted API.
Latest original filings checked; ProPublica extracted API lags these original returns. Original FY2022 amount $2,616,700 differs from extracted API $2,598,058; original filing used.