Lasagna Love Chefs Are Serving Kindness with SignUpGenius
Posted by Kate White
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Lasagnas delivered to families in need
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Volunteers spreading kindness in their communities
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Countries with volunteers making and delivering home-cooked meals
Somewhere in Detroit, a family is moving into their first real home after experiencing homelessness. The walls have been freshly painted. The furniture is arranged just so, chosen specifically with that family in mind. And thanks to a small army of volunteer chefs, a hot lasagna is waiting on the counter. That level of coordinated, layered kindness does not happen by accident. It takes the right tools.
The Organization
Lasagna Love was founded in 2020 by Rhiannon Menn, who was looking for a way to help neighbors struggling during the early days of the pandemic. She made lasagna, delivered it, and the response stopped her in her tracks. Word spread quickly, and what began as one person's act of kindness in one community grew into something no one anticipated: a global grassroots movement of neighbors feeding neighbors, no eligibility forms required, no income verification, no judgment. If you say you need help, someone shows up with a hot meal.
Today, Lasagna Love operates across four countries with more than 80,000 volunteer chefs who cook and deliver homemade meals to families facing hardship of any kind, whether financial, medical, emotional, or otherwise. The organization has delivered more than 530,000 lasagnas, reaching over 2.3 million people. The model is radically simple, and that simplicity is the point.
In Detroit, a Lasagna Love chapter found a natural partner in Humble Design, a nonprofit that has been transforming empty houses into fully furnished, custom-designed homes for families and veterans transitioning out of homelessness since 2009. Humble Design does not just drop off a couch and call it a day. Volunteers and designers work together to create personalized spaces that reflect each family's tastes and needs, right down to custom artwork hung above children's beds. The result is a home that feels like it was made for the people living in it, because it was.
These move-in days, known as Deco Days, are among the most significant moments in a family's journey from homelessness to stability. Lasagna Love Chefs saw an opportunity to make them even more meaningful.
The Problem
The idea was simple: have a Lasagna Love chef deliver a fresh, home-cooked lasagna to each family on their Deco Day, so that their very first meal in their new home would be a warm one. But executing that idea consistently, week after week, required a level of scheduling precision that good intentions alone could not provide.
Detroit coordinator Anne Belleau-Mills was responsible for making it happen. That meant maintaining a rotating list of volunteer chefs, creating delivery slots that aligned with each week's Deco Day schedule, communicating changes when families' timelines shifted, and making sure that no move-in day slipped through without a chef lined up and ready to go. The stakes were personal. A missed delivery was not just a logistics failure. It was a family's first night in their new home without the welcome that had been promised.
Anne needed a solution that could handle the rhythm of a recurring weekly program without requiring her to manually manage every moving part.
The Solution
Anne turned to SignUpGenius to build the scheduling infrastructure her program needed. With sign ups, she creates and manages delivery slots on a rolling basis, adjusting the schedule every four to six weeks as the Deco Day calendar evolves. Volunteers receive automatic reminders so Anne does not have to chase anyone down, and any updates to slots are reflected immediately, keeping chefs and families on the same page.
The platform gave the program a dependable structure without requiring Anne to be the one holding it together manually. She can see who has signed up, make changes when schedules shift, and communicate with her entire volunteer pool without a single back-and-forth email chain.
Genius Tip: Coordinators running recurring weekly volunteer programs can use SignUpGenius to set rolling delivery slots and automate reminders, so the communication happens in the background while you stay focused on the people you serve.
The Results
Over three years, Lasagna Love Chefs have delivered approximately three lasagnas every week to families through the Humble Design Detroit partnership, totaling around 450 home-cooked meals delivered on move-in days. The program runs with a consistency that reflects how much the families on the receiving end deserve to count on it.
For Anne, the practical impact is real and ongoing. Slot updates that used to require manual outreach now take minutes. Reminders go out automatically. And the visibility SignUpGenius provides means she always knows where things stand, even as the Deco Day calendar shifts from week to week.
Behind every lasagna is a volunteer who showed up because the sign up made it easy to say yes. That reliability is what allows the program to promise something meaningful to families on one of the most important days of their lives, and keep that promise.
Lasagna Love is a global nonprofit founded in 2020 that connects volunteer chefs with families in need, delivering home-cooked meals and a little extra kindness, no questions asked. Learn more at lasagnalove.org.
In Their Words
"SignUpGenius has made my job as the coordinator for Lasagna Love serving Humble Design Detroit so much easier. It's intuitive and user-friendly. I can update slots easily, and the reminders make sure no one forgets to help. I love that they keep improving the platform, and I always know what's changed. We couldn't have gotten here without SignUpGenius." — Anne Belleau-Mills, Detroit Coordinator, Lasagna Love
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Posted by Kate White
