For over 30 years, Robin Hood has engaged in impactful and scalable solutions to lift families out of poverty in NYC. Robin Hood partners with over 250 nonprofits to provide food, housing, education, legal services, workforce development and other services to people of all ages and backgrounds across all five NYC boroughs.

This grant provides support for Robin Hood as it seeks to meet the nutritional needs of the most vulnerable New Yorkers who continue to be impacted by the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Robin Hood will support essential emergency food assistance providers across NYC that continue to provide a critical lifeline to meet New Yorkers’ needs through pandemic recovery. Robin Hood is addressing these challenges by investing in neighborhood-centered programs that are targeting areas that experience high supply gaps in food access and providing online services that allow clients to reserve orders at food pantries and set up pickup times that work for them. Programs like this work to reduce the barriers people face when trying to access food, from stigma to difficulty physically accessing sites to the experience itself being unpleasant or challenging to navigate. Robin Hood will also target high-need neighborhoods with vulnerable populations, such as seniors, and undocumented immigrants and scale high-performing pantries by providing these agencies with management assistance via their in-house team. To strengthen the food infrastructure, they will also seed food system innovations such as replicating a successful discount grocery store model for low-income, food insecure families or leveraging the restaurant industry in the city to distribute emergency meals as needed. They are also supporting nontraditional models of food pantries such as bargain grocery stores, a hybrid between a food pantry and a traditional retail store, reimagining the food shopping experience.

For over 30 years, Robin Hood Foundation (Robin Hood) has engaged in impactful and scalable solutions to lift families out of poverty in NYC. Robin Hood partners with over 250 nonprofits to provide food, housing, education, legal services, workforce development and other services to people of all ages and backgrounds across all five NYC boroughs.

The Robin Hood Relief Fund is an impactful response to the changing circumstances of the COVID‐19 pandemic. As of March 2021, the Fund has provided over $65M through more than 800 COVID-19 relief grants to nearly 600 organizations across the city. This grant will support Robin Hood’s continued efforts to provide low-income New Yorkers with relief in the form of food, cash assistance, health and mental health support, and other emergency assistance.