The shidduch crisis is not news to anyone in our community. For years, askanim, rabbanim, and concerned parents have been sounding the alarm. Dating pools are unbalanced. Young men and women are waiting longer. Shadchanim are overwhelmed. And countless sincere daters are falling through the cracks.

A new chesed organization called Canopy Shidduchim is trying to change that.

Canopy is a free shidduch service currently in its soft launch phase, accepting mainstream torahdig and professional yeshivish daters between the ages of 20 and 35 in the United States. What makes it different is not just what Canopy does, but how it does it.

Above all, Canopy emphasizes the culture of chesed in shidduchim. Why is making shidduchim treated differently from every other chesed? In no other chesed context do we criticize or charge people in need. Hatzolah doesn’t respond to a heart attack and suggest the patient stop eating schnitzel sandwiches.

Canopy takes the same loving approach to our daters.

Rather than flooding daters with a barrage of suggestions, Canopy sends one carefully tailored idea per day, by sharing an anonymous profile. Only once both daters request more information are resumes exchanged and a shadchan is assigned to coordinate. There is no open database and nobody – not even shadchanim – can browse dater profiles. Privacy is built into the foundation. We believe in protecting people’s information. In a world where mainstream yeshivish publications don’t share photos of women, we are committed to maintaining the values of tznius within the dating context.

Our system also creates much more efficiency for overwhelmed shadchanim. We shift much of the work to daters for the initial screening. This opens the gates for everyone to take part in this important chesed. Our shadchanim commit to only 1 hour of volunteering per week, all online, from the comfort of home.

Canopy also addresses the gender imbalance that affects so many shidduch platforms. By requiring sign-ups in pairs and actively working to maintain a 1:1 ratio of men to women, Canopy ensures that its service remains genuinely effective, not lopsided.

We are a registered 501(c)(3) and we provide a free service, with no paid employees. We believe that shidduchim, like every other chesed organization, should run on a donation-based model and not by charging their clients.

We hope our organization will lead to many frum shidduchim and also inspire the community to take a thoughtful, values-based approach to shidduchim. Please join our team as a dater or shadchan and visit canopyshidduchim.com to learn more.

Signed,

Malka Levitin

The views expressed in this letter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of YWN. Have an opinion you would like to share? Send it to us for review.