With food bank usage reaching unprecedented levels, Skip has expanded its annual partnership with Food Banks Canada to have Calgary and Winnipeg join Toronto for this year’s doorstep-donation program.

The sixth year of the partnership lands with food insecurity on the rise across the country. According to Food Banks Canada’s latest HungerCount report, there were 2,165,766 visits to food banks in March of this year, representing a 5.2% increase year over year and the highest number recorded for a single month since the HungerCount was introduced in 1989.

Erin Filey-Wronecki, chief development and partnerships officer at Food Banks Canada, tells strategy that the organization expected a similar number of visits food banks last month as well.

“Food bank use is at its highest in Canadian history,” Filey-Wronecki says. “Visits have doubled in the last six years, and [in November], we expect nearly 2.2 million visits – with one-third of those visits coming from children. It took decades to reach one million visits in a month and it has now taken half a decade to double those visits.”

After 2024’s pilot project in Toronto, the doorstep-donation program, which allows residents to schedule a non-perishable pickup gift through Skip, has expanded to Calgary and Winnipeg ahead of Giving Tuesday, an annual global initiative that encourages charitable acts for the holiday season. From Nov. 25 to Dec. 2, the Canadian food-delivery service has also committed to matching every scheduled pickup with a $100 donation to Food Banks Canada and to equal online monetary donations up to $100,000.

Last year’s campaign raised more than $1.6 million in donations, enabling more than 3.2 million meals.

Melanie Fatouros-Richardson, Skip’s VP of communications and government relations, tells strategy that the expansion reflects both the scale of need and the platform’s ability to mobilize communities quickly.

“We asked ourselves how we could make it easier for people to give back in a meaningful way,” Fatouros-Richardson says. “Expanding the program is our way of deepening our local impact while leveraging our national scale. It reflects our broader approach: use the tools we have – our people, our logistics network, our platform – to support Canadians in the moments that matter.”

In a first for the campaign, Skip employees will be volunteering across all three cities on Dec. 2 to collect donations and deliver them to local food banks. The company is also activating its Toronto-based “Skip Squad” community of creators, who be joining in to help collect donations and amplify the initiative by documenting the process and sharing behind-the-scenes storytelling with their audiences. Pomp and Circumstance is working on PR for the campaign.

While donation volume remains a key metric, both Skip and Food Banks Canada say they are also focusing on broader indicators such as households reached, awareness of food insecurity, community participation, the reach across the three cities and the total matching dollars unlocked.

“Ultimately, success is measured by the difference this makes for people who rely on food banks,” Filey-Wronecki says. “Every household reached and every donation made helps families facing extremely difficult circumstances – and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

Fatouros-Richardson says the rise in food insecurity has reinforced Skip’s belief that national brands have a responsibility to “show up locally.”

“For us, that means using our reach to create programs that are personal, local and meaningful,” she says. “Like doorstep pick-up, and employee volunteers physically collecting donations in their neighbourhoods, it’s a reminder that national impact is built through local action.”

Canadians can schedule a doorstep pickup for Dec. 2 or make monetary donations through a Skip microsite.

In October, Food Banks Canada launched “Let’s Feed Greatness,” a campaign collaboration with agency partner The Garden that highlights the crucial part a healthy diet plays in elite performance throughout workplaces, classrooms, athletic achievement and artistic endeavours.