All the Ways Thrive Market Is Helping Fight Hunger This Season

According to Feeding America, 40 million people face hunger in the U.S. today—including more than 12 million children and five million seniors. The holidays can be an especially difficult time for families who face food insecurity, which is why we’ve focused our Thrive Gives initiatives this season on helping people put wholesome meals on the table. From volunteer days to food bank donations, read on for all the ways we’re fighting hunger—with your help!

Big Sunday Thanksgiving Food Drive

The day before Thanksgiving is usually filled with last-minute meal preparations like baking pies, simmering cranberry sauce, and defrosting the turkey. But this year, our passionate Thrive Market staffers and their families spent the morning with Big Sunday, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that believes everyone can make a difference, and provides more than 2,000 ways to help each year, like sharing a skill, donating money or products, and volunteering.

“Everything we do at Big Sunday is about connecting people through helping,” said David Levinson, Founder and Executive Director. “Everyone’s treated and valued the same. We live in divided times, and think it’s so important to remember we’re all in it together. Everything we do is informed by that.”

We joined more than 1,500 volunteers and trucked in boxes of Turkey Day must-haves like pumpkin, extra virgin olive oil, cranberry sauce, green beans, sweet potatoes, and cornbread mix, then packed up Thrive Market totes to help low-income families—3,300 in total—enjoy a healthy Thanksgiving meal. “Food is expensive, and housing is extremely expensive,” David shared. “The dollar can only go so far. Especially in L.A., some people don’t know where their next meal is coming from.”

In addition to prepping bags filled with holiday goodies, we also jumped in to write “Notes for Totes,” and delivered the bags to more than 80 local nonprofits and schools. In total, $75,000 of product was donated to the cause.

Food Bank For New York City

The Food Bank for New York City has been addressing hunger in the Big Apple for 35 years, and this November we signed on to help with its annual fundraiser, “Checkout Hunger.” So far we’ve raised close to $35,000 at checkout! These funds are heading straight to the Food Bank where they’ll provide meals to those in need.

California Wildfires

Blazes tore through California in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, so we quickly mobilized to help those affected by the Woolsey and Camp fires. We’ve already made the following donations and are planning to do more.

• $30,000 in free groceries to shop on ThriveMarket.com
  300 free memberships
• $3,000 in diapers to Chip Housing, a community housing program in Northern California
• $5,000 in food staples to the North State Food Bank in Butte County
• We partnered up with Dr. Bronners, Sambazon, and Guayaki on a $10,000 donation providing emergency shelter and supplies to those who have lost everything in the Camp fire.

Sponsor a Family

For the month of December, Thrive Market has signed up for LA Unified School District’s Sponsor-a-Family Program. Our generous staffers will be gifting homeless families clothes, toys, and grocery gift cards to help support them through the holidays.

As always, we have so much gratitude for our members! Your donations at checkout help make events like this possible, and empower us to continue paying it forward.