When wildfires tore through neighborhoods across Los Angeles County in early 2025, the Y was already on the ground. Across 17 local branches, Y staff and volunteers opened their doors to displaced families, providing food, supplies, and a place to land in the middle of one of the most destructive disasters in California history.
When families needed help, Instacart moved. Through our Community Carts program, we joined the Y on the ground at all 17 branches — activating online donation drives that let people across the country easily send groceries and essentials directly to displaced families. Customers from all 50 states showed up, with 71,000 items delivered.
Today, we’re doing exactly that.
A Partnership Built for What Communities Actually Need
Instacart and YMCA of the USA (Y-USA) are announcing a new multi-year national partnership focused on three critical pillars of impact: disaster response food drives, sustained food access programming, and connecting Instacart's employees to volunteer opportunities in the communities we serve.
What we saw during that response — the Y’s deep community trust, their operational reach, their ability to activate quickly where families already turn for help — made something clear: this was a partnership worth building on.
Beyond a single program, this is a larger commitment to show up alongside Y-USA in the ways that matter most: mobilizing support when communities are in crisis, and lending a hand when families need ongoing food support.
“At the YMCA, we believe everyone deserves access to the resources they need to thrive. Through this collaboration with Instacart, we’re able to strengthen our work in communities nationwide, ensuring families have access to nutritious food and support during times of both stability and crisis.” - Stacey McDaniel, Director of Anti-Hunger Strategy, Y-USA
Strengthening How We Respond to Disasters
Showing up for our communities in times of critical need is incredibly important to us. From our Shopper Relief Fund, which provides financial support to eligible shoppers impacted by natural disasters, to our matching gifts program for employee donations, we’re deeply committed to supporting families when disaster strikes.
The Community Carts program has become one of the most powerful tools we've built to power this mission, reimagining the traditional food drive so anyone, anywhere, can donate exactly what a local organization needs. Every donated item is delivered directly by local Instacart shoppers, with all service and delivery fees waived**. The LA wildfire response serves as the foundation for how Instacart and Y-USA will respond to disasters together going forward.
Through this partnership, we're putting a formal national coordination structure in place so that when the next disaster strikes, Instacart and Y-USA can move even more quickly together. That means identifying and supporting the right Y locations, so they can support families in their greatest moments of need.
Meeting Families Where They Already Are
Of course, food insecurity isn’t limited to the wake of a disaster. Today, millions of families already rely on their local Y for summer meals, afterschool food programs, and nutrition support — not because they were directed there, but because the Y showed up for them first. While many Americans think of their local Y as a community hub, it is also an essential food and nutrition service provider, delivering more than 57 million meals annually across nearly 6,000 communities. That trust, built over decades, is exactly the kind of foundation that makes food access work.
Through this new partnership, Instacart will be supporting food security programming at up to 10 local Ys across five states — California, New York, Colorado, Florida, and Delaware — combining financial support with Instacart's technology to meet families where they are. That includes Fresh Funds, which lets organizations provide participants with category-specific online grocery stipends, as well as gift cards and EBT SNAP acceptance, so families can stretch both partnership dollars and their existing benefits online. We will also be leveraging our Instacart for Business platform, which local Ys can use to order urgently needed supplies and keep their shelves stocked.
Getting Our Teams Involved
We also believe the most meaningful partnerships are ones our team can be part of. In the coming months, Instacart employees will roll up their sleeves and volunteer directly with local Ys, showing up for food pantry activations, community giveaways, and the everyday work of keeping families fed.
What Comes Next
While the LA wildfires were the beginning of this relationship, today's announcement is the next step, and we don't expect it to be the last. We're grateful to Y-USA, and especially to the local Y teams in Los Angeles whose work during the wildfires showed us what this partnership could become.
