About us
United Plates of America is a 501(c)(3) public charity. What is on your plate?
Our mission
United Plates of America is a volunteer-led nonprofit serving eastern Washington and North Idaho, starting in Spokane and Kootenai counties. Our mission is to bring fresh, quality meat to working families who struggle to afford it, and to help our neighbors live healthier, more secure lives through four programs: MEAT-ups, Essential Needs Assistance, Housing for Neighbors in Need and Hear the World. Our long-term goal is to reach families across the whole nation. What’s on your plate? We’re here to help with it.
Our approach
We start with what we know best: getting good food where it’s needed, quickly and efficiently. In 2025, MEAT-ups gave fresh meat or protein to 3 families, and Hear the World helped 3 people with hearing loss get hearing devices. Essential Needs Assistance and Housing for Neighbors in Need will grow as funds allow.
Our story
For more than a decade, Mike Conrad brought fresh meat to families in church parking lots, first with Zaycon and later with The Savory Butcher. Families drove up, the truck was loaded with chicken, pork and beef, and thousands of them went home with protein they could afford. Along the way he saw what that meat meant to people in need. He also saw that many food banks don’t have the cold storage to offer fresh protein at all.
United Plates of America grew out of that. It takes the same experience and skills and turns them toward the health, wellness and uplifting of people. Through MEAT-ups, our refrigerated truck brings fresh meat right to local food pantries on each pantry’s own distribution day, so families can take it home the same day. With our distribution model, pantries never need their own cold storage. We handle it for them. We also help with urgent needs, housing and hearing. Whatever’s on your plate, we want to help change lives.
Vision & values
Today we serve Spokane and Kootenai counties. Our long-term goal is to reach families across the whole nation, one community at a time. What’s on your plate? We’re here to help with it.
Leadership & Team
Mike Conrad has spent more than 15 years finding better ways to get good food to families. As a co-founder of Zaycon Foods, where he started as operations manager and later served as CEO, he helped build a farm-to-family model that sold fresh meat at wholesale prices straight from producers. Good Morning America featured that model, and it won an award for its low waste and small carbon footprint. He went on to lead The Savory Butcher, which brought fresh, USDA-inspected meat to families during the pandemic, and White Angus, which works to bring a heat-tolerant cattle breed developed at the University of Florida to market.
In 2023, Mike founded United Plates of America to put that experience to work for neighbors who need help now. Its vision is to supply food banks with fresh protein, along with the delivery logistics many of them can’t provide for their communities on their own. It also helps people who just need “a fish” today, covering urgent bills like rent, utilities and car payments for families who don’t have time to learn “how to fish” right now.
In 2024, Lizzie graduated from Eastern Washington University with a degree in Marketing. Logically, she then went straight into a full-time HR position, with no idea what career she truly wanted to pursue. Over the course of those two years, it was evident HR was not it. However, she knew that the purpose of work should be bigger than the individual. This drove her to join the team here at United Plates. She firmly believes that the world is full of well-intentioned people without the systems to provide the impact they desire. As a member of Gen Z, she has heard (and said) all too often the sentiment “I just want to help people” when it comes to career decisions. Now she can do just that and urge others to do the same in the way she couldn’t place until now.
Transparency
United Plates of America is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity. EIN 92-2960872.
Our 2023 and 2024 IRS filings (Form 990-EZ) are available on ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. For 2025 we filed Form 990-N (e-Postcard), as allowed for small organizations; we had no revenue in 2025.
We’re registered with the Washington State Charities Program. Look up our Washington charity registration #2013755 in the Secretary of State’s charity search.