The problem we work on
Billions of dollars in assistance go unclaimed every year. Not because people do not qualify — because the programmes are run by different agencies, use different words for the same thing, and are discovered mostly by accident.
Someone behind on rent is usually also eligible for help with utilities and healthcare, and will typically only ever hear about one of them. Our entire job is closing that gap in a single phone call.
What we are
Ask For Helping Hand is a privately held company and a free information and referral service. We are not a nonprofit, not a charity, and not a government agency.
We keep track of federal, state and local assistance programmes, work out which ones fit a caller's situation, and tell them exactly where to go. We do not pay bills, issue grants, or submit applications on anyone's behalf.
How we make money
The call is free. We earn through referral partnerships with a limited set of private service providers — when we refer you to one and you choose to use them, they may pay us a fee.
Government programmes pay us nothing and could not pay us if they wanted to. The free option is always named first, even when it earns us nothing, which is most of the time.
The rules we hold ourselves to
Published so you can hold us to them:
- We never present a paid partner as a government programme.
- We never sell caller information to lead buyers or data brokers.
- We say plainly when a free public service would serve you better than we would.
- We disclose any link that can earn us a fee, where it appears.
- We honour an opt-out immediately and permanently.
If anything on this site reads as though a paid referral is being passed off as a public programme, tell us and we will fix it.
Where we work
The United States, all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Programme rules vary enormously between states — the same household can qualify in one state and not in the next — which is why the first question on any call is where you live.