What is Freekibble and How Does It Really Work?

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Have you heard about Freekibble? It’s been around for a while, as evidenced by its dated-looking website. But don’t let that fool you. You might be surprised to learn all the ways this simple trivia game website is helping animal shelters and what big names are behind it. This unique organization is innovatively simple in its use of web views to earn dollars to donate supplies to shelters in an effort to turn more attention toward pet adoption. 

Keep reading to learn what Freekibble is, the brains behind it, and how it works. Let’s get started!

What Is Freekibble? 

Freekibble is a trivia website that provides free pet food and cat litter to shelters across the United States. It also offers a variety of other resources for pet owners, such as articles on pet care and training and a forum where pet owners can connect with each other.

The website has dog and cat trivia that’s free to play daily. When you play, they give food or litter to shelters. We’ll get more into exactly how this works in a minute, but basically, all the advertising revenue from the site going toward this cause.

In addition, Freekibble has a Flights to Freedom program. They help transport pets from overcrowded and underfunded shelters to other organizations where they can be adopted quicker. Through fundraising, they can save the lives of thousands of dogs and cats by finding loving homes.

Freekibble funds all of this charity work through Greater Good Charities. The website is owned and operated by CharityUSA.com, LLC, the Greater Good Charities umbrella company.

Freekibble Celebrates 10 years of Feeding Shelter Pets!

Who Started Freekibble?

Mimi Ausland started Freekibble and Freekibble Kat in 2008. At the time, she was only 11 years old. She had a vision of feeding homeless pets at her local animal shelter. That dream quickly grew to provide pet food to shelters and food banks across the country. Turns out, people love tuning in daily to play a little trivia and contribute a few pieces of kibble. As of June 2023, the organization had donated over 6 billion pieces of kibble and counting.

In 2014, Mimi added Free Kat Litter to their offerings. They donate litter to shelters. And have given the value of more than 13.5 million scoops as of 2023.

Replicating her idea, Mimi also co-founded Free the Ocean, which launched in 2019. It provides the opportunity for anyone to have a positive impact on plastic pollution. Similar to Freekibble, it has a daily trivia that funds the removal of plastic from our oceans and helps to educate communities. Mimi reports, “All ad revenue on the website goes to supporting a nonprofit partner, Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii, that organizes beach clean-ups and coastal stewardship through social media and volunteers.”

Who Is Greater Good Charities?

Greater Good Charities is a national non-profit organization comprising many different websites. They essentially host various causes. They’re the umbrella and tool that helps generate funds for causes so that individual charities can spend more time on work on the ground. We’re not entirely sure where and when Freekibble was integrated into the Greater Good Charites network of websites and sub-organizations.

How Does Freekibble Work?

Freekibble offers its trivia game on the home page of its website. You simply answer the question, and whether you get it right or wrong, you’re told that 10 pieces of kibble are donated. After you do the daily trivia question, you can then go to a question about cat food, cat litter, or play for other causes within Greater Good’s organization. 

Freekibble works through its non-profit partner, Greater Good Charities, to donate an equivalent value of the kibble in pet food, litter, vaccines, and other help to animal shelters. They do so through monetary donations and when you play trivia on their website. Essentially, just by clicking on the Freekibble website and playing trivia, you donate to pets. They’ve additionally gamified the site by adding elite memberships, leaderboards, and badges.

Okay, But How Does Freekibble Really Work? 

So, how is answering a daily trivia question generating money to provide kibble and litter to animal shelters? First, you’ll notice the ads running on the website. Ad revenue is generated for Freekibble when people like you and me come to the website to play the game every day. The trivia is just the right amount of fun and simple that it gets thousands of people to come back day after day to look at ads while completing their daily trivia.

The organization is also collecting donations through Greater Good Charities at the same time. Die-hard animal enthusiasts can even sign up for a membership and regular donations.

What Are Kibble Plus Members?

Kibble Plus is a monthly and annual giving plan. You register for the amount of money you want to donate every month or year, and each level has a different number of kibble and vaccinations associated with it that goes to shelters. The monthly donations range from $5 to $15, and the annual amounts are $50 to $150. In addition, you can register for the Sidekick plan, which is free and provides you with a dashboard to keep track of your trivia playing. 

What Are Leaderboards and Badges For?

Leaderboards are reserved for Kibble Plus members to compete when playing trivia. The more members play, the more Freekibble donates. The leaderboards show who is playing the most. You can also earn badges and earn extra kibble. Badges are a fun way to track how many consecutive days in a row you’ve played. You have to come back every day to keep your run streak up or you will lose your lead! You also unlock badges as you go, giving you milestones to shoot for. Many people have daily streaks of over a year.

How Does Freekibble Help Shelters? 

Freekibble does more than just the kibble and kitty litter, but it all started with pet food. This has opened up doors to more ways of supporting shelters. For example, they partner with pet food brands like Halo. By working together, in one month, they were able to donate approximately 32 million pieces of Halo kibble, 120,427 scoops of Fresh Step litter, fund $51,250 to support soldiers saving puppies in war zones, transport hundreds of pets via Flights to Freedom, and helped get over 4,700 shelter pets vaccinated through the Kibble Plus program.

Pet Food

Freekibble donates pet food to shelters, and by doing this, they save the lives of animals. When shelters and rescue organizations don’t have to worry about raising money to feed the pets in their care, they can focus on other things, such as getting more animals into forever homes. Donating food and other supplies provides enormous relief and the ability to allocate funds toward other urgent needs.

Cat Litter

Similarly to an animal shelter receiving food donations, cat litter is another helpful basic need that’s met through Freekibble’s donations. 

FreeKibble Cares

Freekibble Cares is a monthly program. Each month, Freekibble shares a new cause that it’s partnering with. All donations toward the specific cause go to that organization. 

Flights to Freedom

Flight to Freedom is Freekibble’s signature program. They transport pets via airplanes from overcrowded and underfunded shelters to places that have space for them and can get them adopted within a short period.

Pro Tip: Find a dog or cat to adopt using our guide to the best pet adoption websites!

How Much Pet Food Does Freekibble Really Give to Shelters?

Freekibble gives a lot of pet food to shelters. In 2008, its first year in business, Freekibble donated over 65 million pieces of dog kibble and over 50 million pieces of cat kibble. Fast forward to year-end 2022, they gave over 200 million dog kibble and over 186 million cat food. Plus, over 1.5 million scoops of cat litter. 

Their numbers have held fairly steady over the years. So far, their best year was 2020, but that’s not surprising due to the pandemic and many people adopting pets and having extra time at home. The donations decreased in 2021 and 2022. 

How Much Dog Food Is In 200 Million Pieces of Kibble?

I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time visualizing 200 million pieces of kibble. Freekibble as used the terms “equivalent value” all over their website, but does not give the rest of the equation. So, I got out my scale and some dog kibble to get an estimate that I could wrap my head around.

Now, all dog kibble is going to weigh differently. I tested 10 pieces of kibble 3 times to get an average of .016oz/piece of kibble.

A 30lb bag of dog food is 480 ounces. 480/.016oz = about 30,000 pieces of kibble per bag.

This means, at this estimation, that 200 million pieces of kibble equals about 6,667 bags of dog food per year. Now that’s a little easier to visualize! At about $30/bag, this is the equivalent of about $200,000 worth of pet food. Additionally, that means the 10 pieces of kibble you can donate daily by doing the trivia is worth about $0.01.

Play Trivia, See Some Ads, & Help Freekibble Live Out Its Mission

Start playing Freekibble’s trivia today and help save dogs and cats! Shelters win big from organizations like this and we can all play our part for free. You might also accidentally learn something from the trivia as well.

You can also connect with Freekibble on Facebook.