re: Phoenix, AZ Zoo - Food Stamp Entrance Fee

Here's a museum story for you'
The Museum in Memphis had an exhibit of Katherine the Great. To get parts from Russia, Memphis paid to restore IIRC her sleigh. We drove over to see it and got one of the early slots. We were half way through when the local school kids were dropped off. They rushed through the first three or four rooms, and zeroed in on the guns of Katherine and clustered there. Teachers finally herded them along.
Their only interest was the guns (rifles if I remember), nothing else even slightly caught their attention.
I still remember some parts of it, but the gun-interested hoards were also memorable in a bad way.

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What does any of that have to do with the zoo offering a discounted rate to bring in another demo during normally slow times?

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I assume catering to the low-income demo is probably one of the conditions of their non-profit status, so that would make sense. Otherwise, why offer a discount to one specific demo and not just offer it to everyone if the goal is simply to increase traffic?

I'm not implying that EBT is in any sense being used to subsidize a portion the entree fee. It isn't. It is just being used as a means to verify the low-income status of the user of the card.

But, given that the discount is offered only to the low-income demo, AND assuming that is a condition of maintaining their non-profit status, that still means that there is an indirect cost to the American taxpayer.

I underlined the word "assuming" because that is something that I can't validate without doing deeper research that isn't worth my time at the moment.

Just based on my knowledge of the rules under which non-profits are required to operate in order to maintain their non-profit status.