Feeding America created Hunger Action Month in 2007, turning September into a dedicated season for talking about hunger before the fall push into the holidays. Food banks, pantries and hunger relief groups nationwide use the month to rally volunteers, run food drives and put a human face on a problem that too often stays invisible, even through Thanksgiving and the end-of-year celebrations.

Nearly 48 million people in the United States faced food insecurity in 2024, according to the USDA's most recent Household Food Security report. That’s roughly one in seven people forced to make impossible tradeoffs between groceries, rent and medicine in any given month. Hunger rarely looks the way people expect: it shows up in working households, in kids skipping breakfast before school and in seniors stretching a fixed income to the breaking point.

Meeting a need that size demands the attention of more than a single nonprofit. It takes food banks and pantries, yes, but also food rescue operations keeping good food out of landfills, urban farms growing produce where it's needed most, kitchens turning job training into lasting careers and school programs making sure kids don't go hungry between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. The nonprofits below are involved in all of it.

This article is part of our Breakthrough Nonprofits series, an extension of our monthly newsletter for nonprofit professionals. The series shines a light on organizations that refuse to accept the status quo, finding new ways to clear the path for the people they serve. Supporting any of the nonprofits below means contributing to a world that is more nourished, more stable and more food secure for families everywhere.

The nonprofits

The Give Lively member nonprofits featured below are leading examples of breakthrough work in hunger relief: from Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, saving surplus restaurant food before it reaches a dumpster, to Hot Bread Kitchen, training New Yorkers facing employment barriers for lasting careers in the food industry, to organizations running food pantries, delivering meals on wheels, funding regenerative farms and more.

Food Bank RGV

Food Bank RGV feeds up to 146,000 food-insecure people a week across Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties in South Texas. It coordinates a network of more than 275 partner agencies on mobile meal distribution, emergency food assistance and nutrition education across the Rio Grande Valley. The nonprofit also manages school-based support initiatives that meet kids where they are. Its programs treat hunger relief as inseparable from long-term stability, pairing food distribution with a path toward more consistent access to healthy meals.

ACCESS

ACCESS has served Jackson County, Oregon, since 1976, built on the belief that sustenance, warmth and shelter are the foundation of stability. More than 30 food pantries it operates distribute nearly 4.5 million pounds of food a year to families, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities. In addition, ACCESS provided energy assistance to roughly 9,665 residents and $9.1 million in rental assistance in 2025, plus weatherization, disaster relief and financial education programs. It treats hunger as one piece of a bigger picture, addressing the housing and utility costs that so often force families to choose between rent and groceries.

Hot Bread Kitchen

Through free culinary education that leads to real jobs in the hospitality industry, Hot Bread Kitchen turns professional kitchens into launchpads for New Yorkers facing barriers to employment. Since 2008, the Chelsea Market-based nonprofit has trained more than 3,280 graduates and placed them with more than 360 partner employers. It incubates food entrepreneurs as well, supporting more than 970 small food businesses from their earliest recipe tests through to real commercial scale. 

Nourish Up

Known for decades as Loaves & Fishes and Friendship Trays before merging under its new name, Nourish Up runs the largest network of food pantries in North Carolina. Based in Charlotte, it distributes groceries through that pantry network, delivers hot meals to homebound neighbors through Meals on Wheels and hosts pop-up food shares in communities that need them most. Its teaching kitchen pairs food access with the skills to make provisions last, showing families how to stretch what they receive into real meals. 

Gather

Gather has served the Seacoast region of New Hampshire and Maine since 1816, making it one of the oldest social service agencies in the country still focused on its founding mission. Through its Pantry Market and Mobile Markets, it distributes more than 1.6 million pounds of food each year, while Meals for Kids ensures summer and school breaks don't mean empty cupboards at home. Gather has cooking classes and gardening education too, treating skills as part of long-term food security. Its waste reduction initiative closes the loop, routing edible supplies that would otherwise go unused straight to neighbors who need it.

SALT Outreach

SALT Outreach drives mobile outreach centers into cities across Florida and California, extending showers, clean clothing, haircuts and hot meals to people experiencing homelessness. Teams led by young adults also connect people to mental health services, case management and job training, turning a single visit into a path toward stability. Since August 2020, SALT has assisted more than 2,100 individuals through drop-in centers in Orlando, Sanford, Tampa, San Diego and beyond. The organization's long-term vision is to put a comprehensive mobile outreach center in every major U.S. metro area.

Daniel's Table

Daniel's Table delivers consistent, dignified access to nutritious food for families across Framingham and Boston, Massachusetts. Believing that food security looks different for every family, it combines home food deliveries, community freezers stocked for anyone seeking supplies and a client-choice market where families select the groceries that actually fit their households. Child-focused programs and nutrition education round out the approach. A three-step outreach strategy identifies neighbors in need through community partnerships, informs them of what's available and then customizes assistance to their circumstances.

NETWorks Cooperative Ministry

NETWorks Cooperative Ministry pairs a food pantry with direct financial assistance for rent and utilities, addressing hunger and housing instability as the connected problems they usually are. The nonprofit supports neighbors across the Northlake, Embry Hills and Tucker communities near Atlanta, Georgia. Its cooperative structure brings together multiple congregations around a shared belief: that every person possesses inherent dignity and real resources to contribute to the community. That belief shapes how NETWorks partners with the people it helps, joining with them to create lasting solutions rather than handing down aid.

Crossroads Community Services

Crossroads Community Services focuses on warm meals, healthy groceries and safe shelter for food-insecure New Yorkers from its Midtown Manhattan location. It hosts breakfast and brunch on select mornings and, in partnership with the Coalition for the Homeless, serves dinner seven nights a week to anyone who walks through the door. Its pantry program distributes fresh produce, proteins and dry goods amounting to more than 300,000 meals a year. The organization welcomes people from all walks of life, treating a hot meal and a safe place to eat it as a baseline every New Yorker deserves.

Bread & Roses

Bread & Roses fights food insecurity and poverty across Massachusetts's Merrimack Valley from its home base in Lawrence, serving nearly 12,000 people a month as of 2024. Community dinners, grab-and-go meals and emergency food pantry function alongside food rescue efforts and on-site health services to meet more than one kind of need. What sets it apart is speed: donations typically move back out to the community within 2 to 36 hours of arriving, so the pantry rarely holds inventory overnight. Bread & Roses operates without government funding and asks for no ID, making sure cost or bureaucracy never stands between a neighbor and a meal.

Port Angeles Food Bank

Port Angeles Food Bank runs The Market, a community food resource offering groceries during set weekly hours to neighbors across Clallam County, Washington. Its Mobile Market carries that same access to other areas of the county that can't easily reach the main site. Its Comfort Cafe Meals add hot, prepared meals to the mix for people who need more than groceries alone. Community fundraisers like Empty Bowls and a rotating Food Drive of the Month keep the shelves stocked and the community directly involved.

Hidden Villa

Hidden Villa has spent more than 50 years teaching sustainable, organic farming on its working farm in Los Altos Hills, California. Through field trips, summer camps and community programs, it educates people about where food comes from and what it takes to grow it responsibly, rather than simply distributing it. Its farming practices are built around biodiversity, fair labor and animal welfare, modeling a belief in a better kind of food system. For schools, families and community members alike, Hidden Villa turns a single visit into a lasting sense of connection to the land and the people who till it.

Petaluma People Services Center

Petaluma People Services Center strengthens the social and economic health of its Sonoma County, California, community through actions targeting three groups: seniors, youth and neighbors seeking mental health support. Operating from its Petaluma headquarters and a satellite office in Rohnert Park, it designs every program around dignity and self-sufficiency rather than one-size-fits-all assistance. The center explicitly welcomes people of all backgrounds, abilities and identities, and leans on an active volunteer base to staff its operations. Facility rentals and community donations help this nonprofit meet more than one kind of need at once.

Rescuing Leftover Cuisine

Since 2013, Rescuing Leftover Cuisine has redirected surplus supplies away from dumpsters and toward people who need it. The model connects restaurants, caterers and other food businesses with local nonprofits, moving good meals to people experiencing insecurity before it ever goes to waste. To date, the organization has rescued more than 16 million pounds of food, translating into more than 13 million meals delivered. Every rescue also reduces the environmental toll of food waste, giving donors and volunteers a way to fight hunger and cut emissions at the same time.

Zero Foodprint

Zero Foodprint follows a different tack on hunger relief; it invests in the health of the land that grows food in the first place. Small contributions from farmers, food businesses and everyday diners are pooled into grants that fund regenerative practices like composting and cover cropping. To date, it has awarded more than $9.5 million across more than 825 farm projects;  its own estimates equate that to roughly 240,000 tons of carbon sequestered. By funding farmers directly, Zero Foodprint builds toward a system that can keep producing food reliably over the long term, not just this season.

Green Beetz

Green Beetz equips fourth- through seventh-grade teachers across more than 75 New York City schools (up from just eight when it started) with free, ready-to-teach lesson plans about the modern food system. Its STEM-based, hands-on curriculum walks students through how food choices affect their own health, the environment and social justice in their neighborhoods. Rather than stopping at the classroom, the program is designed to turn students into food advocates who bring what they learn home to their families. By reaching kids early, Green Beetz is establishing a generation more equipped than the one before it to navigate food access questions.

PACS

Portland Adventist Community Services oversees a food pantry that reaches more than 5,600 people a month in Portland, Oregon, plus a mobile pantry that extends access to eight neighborhoods across the greater area, including Estacada. A thrift store stocked with affordable goods and a dental clinic for people earning up to 300% of the federal poverty level round out its efforts, a recognition that food insecurity rarely exists in isolation. PACS relies on volunteers and community donations to keep its four programs running side by side. Its guiding principle – a commitment to treating every person with dignity while it nourishes their mind, body and spirit – shapes what it delivers, not just what it offers.

Appetite For Change

Appetite For Change uses food as a tool to build health, wealth and social change in North Minneapolis, Minnesota, treating a meal as the entry point to a paycheck. Its Youth Training & Opportunities program develops leadership skills in local teens, while Community Cooks Workshops teach nutrition and cooking to families and expecting mothers. Urban agriculture initiatives grow fresh produce right in the neighborhood, and a meal box delivery service gets it into homes that need it most. A unique quality of this organization is its programs led by the youth and residents it aids, not outside influences.

The Poverello Center

The Poverello Center has served people experiencing homelessness in Missoula, Montana, since 1982, and provided more than 2.5 million meals and 450,000 shelter nights over more than four decades. The emergency shelter sleeps around 150 people, backed by a soup kitchen, food pantry and grocery rescue program that together dish up more than 100,000 meals a year. Beyond food and shelter, the center offers laundry, showers, health clinics, bus passes, and job and housing placement assistance, plus dedicated support for veterans through the VA's Homeless Veterans Program and its own Housing Montana Heroes initiative. Finally, a Homeless Outreach Team meets Missoula's most vulnerable residents wherever they are to connect them to services.

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