Join Instacart in Supporting Local Food Banks this Holiday Season with Community Carts

For many families across the country, the holiday season can be a heightened time of need. While financial stress is not seasonal, it can be more difficult during the holidays, with many families stretching budgets to put food on the table, pay bills, and take care of added holiday-season expenses. With rising food inflation and the end of temporary pandemic assistance benefits, food banks are experiencing particularly high demand this year.

At Instacart, we’re committed to helping food banks support their communities — and, with just a few clicks, you can too.

This holiday season, Instacart is leveraging our technology to fight hunger by launching our latest Community Carts campaign, designed to make it easy for customers across the country to donate items that food banks need most through the Instacart App. Starting today and running through the end of the year, we are encouraging everyone across the Instacart community to donate to one of our over 100 Feeding America® partner food banks. Instacart will be waiving all service and delivery fees on every Community Carts donation this holiday season. 

Click here to donate to your local food bank today 

To start giving, customers can go to www.instacart.com/donate. From there, they can select any participating food bank and shop as many items as they’d like from the food bank’s personalized wish list. Instacart shoppers will then deliver the items directly to the food bank. Whether people donate just a few cans of food or a whole cart, donations will add up quickly as customers come together nationwide.

As part of this Community Carts holiday campaign, we are hosting special food giveaway events with local officials at three participating food banks in New York City, Philadelphia, and Spokane, Washington. With these three food banks, Instacart will match every dollar spent on Community Carts orders – up to $30,000 total. Those participating in this additional activation include:

• We’re hosting a food giveaway event at Food Bank for NYC with Speaker Carl Heastie on December 14 in New York City, New York.
• We’ll be co-hosting an event on January 4 with Food Lifeline and Second Harvest Food Bank in Spokane, Washington featuring several local officials and celebrating the success of Fairchild Food Pantry in their fight against military food insecurity.
• We’ll be hosting a food giveaway event in early January at Philabundance in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, featuring several local officials and community leaders.

The Community Carts campaign is part of Instacart Health, our initiative to expand food access, scale food-as-medicine programs, and promote better health in communities across the country. At Instacart, we aim to create a world where everyone has access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together, and Instacart Health is a key part of that mission. To learn more about Instacart Health, please visit www.instacart.com/company/health.

We know that change begins at the local level, and we are proud to work with food banks and local officials to directly address hunger in the communities we serve. We hope you’ll join us this holiday season in supporting your local food banks during this heightened time of need.

Laura Anderson

Laura Anderson is the Director of Social Impact at Instacart. As part of her work, she supports the company’s Instacart Health initiative, overseeing strategic partnerships with nonprofits and foundations, as well as employee impact programs. Laura has 10 years experience building programs at the intersection of technology and social impact at both for profit and nonprofit organizations. Prior to Instacart, Laura spent five years at Airbnb.org, building the company’s nonprofit strategy, and identifying opportunities for nonprofits to use Airbnb's technology to book free, welcoming & safe accommodations for people in crisis.