What is actually free, and what is not

The four arrangements

Genuinely free at the point of use. Free help with no charge and no means test: a food pantry, an information and referral line, most of what a local nonprofit does with grant money. Nobody asks what you earn.

Sliding scale. A fee that moves with income. Often described as free because it can reach zero. Ask for the actual scale and the top of it. This is where families get surprised three months in.

Means tested. Free if you qualify, unavailable if you do not. Most government programs work this way and so do many charity programs that carry government money. The relevant question is the income limit, not the price.

Donation requested. Free, with an ask attached. Legitimate and common. It becomes a problem only when the ask is presented at the door in a way that makes a proud person leave.

The costs nobody quotes

A service can be free and still expensive:

• Getting there. A free congregate meal eight miles away costs whatever the ride costs, every time.
• The paperwork. Means tested help has an application. Somebody has to gather documents, and for many households that somebody is a working adult taking unpaid hours off.
• The waiting list. Free with a nine month waiting list is not free help this year. It may still be worth joining, and it is not an answer to a problem happening now.
• What it displaces. Some programs cannot be combined. Taking one occasionally closes another, and the closing is rarely mentioned at signup.

Three questions that settle it on the phone

These are worth asking in this order, because each one changes what the next answer means:

1. Is there any charge to the person receiving it, ever? Not "is it free". The longer question catches the sliding scale.
2. Is there an income test, and what is the limit? If the answer is yes and the limit is unknown, that is the number to chase before anything else.
3. What does someone have to do to keep it? Annual recertification, a review, a renewal form. This is where free help is lost, not at the start.

Why free rarely means unfunded

Almost nothing here is free because it is cheap. It is free because a county contract, a federal formula grant, a foundation or a charity's donors already paid for it. That matters for two practical reasons. Funding runs in years, so a program can be open in October and closed in July with nothing having gone wrong. And funders attach the service area and the eligibility rules, which is why a local nonprofit can be unable to help somebody standing in front of them who lives one county over.

What we can and cannot tell you

We record whether an organization is open, who it is open to, and when we checked. We do not tell you whether a specific household qualifies for a specific program, and we do not publish a price for anything. Eligibility belongs to the program, it changes, and a wrong answer about it costs a family real money. Where we do not know, we say we do not know rather than showing you a zero.