About the Lazarus Council
The Lazarus Council is a nonprofit coalition of innovators, legal experts, and food recovery leaders focused on making practical, model food-donation laws freely available to governments worldwide. We work to help remove legal and logistical barriers that prevent safe, surplus food from reaching people in need. By turning proven local success stories into a voluntary global movement for policy reform, we aim to make food donation easier, safer, and more scalable across borders.
The Lazarus Council exists to remove the barriers that prevent safe, surplus food from reaching those in need
Our mission is to reduce the amount of edible food that goes to waste while people nearby — and around the world — face hunger. We do this by developing model legislation, supporting policy discussions, and helping align governments, nonprofits, and private-sector partners around common-sense solutions.
We envision a future where hunger is not driven by scarcity, but addressed through cooperation, efficient systems, and practical policy reform.
By adopting model food-donation laws, nations can align around shared best practices that reduce liability risks, empower food donors, simplify distribution, and strengthen long-term food security.
We believe that
Hunger is a solvable problem when legal and logistical barriers are removed.
Every country can play a role by adopting or adapting Lazarus model laws as part of a shared best-practice standard.
Collaboration between governments, nonprofits, and businesses is essential.
Food security strengthens not only health and well-being, but also global stability and peace.
Billions of pounds of food are discarded each year while millions go hungry
The Lazarus Council’s role is to support practical legal reform that helps reduce those barriers over time. Founded by John Cacciutti, a designer and entrepreneur known for creating systems that serve people, and Steve Dietz, the Vice President of Food Donation Connection — an organization that has rescued over 1 billion pounds of surplus food for more than 10,000 charities worldwide.
Their shared realization was simple: Hunger is not caused by scarcity but by policy failure. The Lazarus Council exists to help address that by supporting the adoption and implementation of Lazarus model laws, which remove fees, delays, liability fears, and labeling barriers that keep good food from being shared.
We really care about World Hunger.
A designer and entrepreneur dedicated to solving problems through practical systems and legislative action. John helps lead the Council’s international work to support adoption and implementation of Lazarus model laws as a shared best-practice standard.
John Cacciutti
Founder & Chairman
Steve Dietz serves as the Vice President of Business Development at Food Donation Connection (also known as foodtodonate.com and Founded by Bill Reighard)
Steve pioneered the modern logistics systems that make large-scale food donation safe, efficient, and reliable. His decades of work prove that once barriers are removed, generosity can thrive.
Steve Dietz
Founding Partner
Tax-exempt status: Lazarus Council is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 93-2091697)
Partners
Programs like Food Donation Connection demonstrate the scale unlocked when barriers are removed—redirecting hundreds of millions of meals from landfill to families.
Take the Lazarus Pledge
“We support the adoption and implementation of Lazarus model laws in our country to remove barriers to food donation and help reduce preventable hunger.”
