This Hunger Action Month, DoorDash is marking a milestone in the fight against hunger: Project DASH has powered the delivery of an estimated 150 million meals on behalf of community partners across the U.S. and Canada.
More than 50 million people are in need of food assistance nationwide. Meeting that need takes more than food: it also takes a way to reach people who can't easily make it to a distribution, such as a senior who no longer drives, or a parent whose shift ends after the pantry closes.
Project DASH meets that challenge head-on. Today, it’s one of the largest social impact delivery programs in North America, serving more than 300 food banks, pantries, healthcare institutions, and other community organizations.
“Millions of Americans go to bed hungry simply because they don't have the means to get to a meal,” said Daniel Riff, Head of Food Access Strategy at DoorDash. “We believe it doesn’t have to be that way, and thanks to Project DASH, somewhere today, a box of groceries is landing on a doorstep for a family that couldn't make it to a pantry, or a patient whose care now includes getting the right food. We handle the delivery, and the rest is the incredible work of more than 300 Project DASH partners who know their neighbors by name. We’re honored to share this milestone with them.”
Where food meets care
What began as a way to move meals from a food bank to a doorstep has grown into something larger. Increasingly, community organizations and healthcare providers use Project DASH to bring nutrition into care itself, delivering critical resources like medically tailored groceries to people managing chronic conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension.
It's the model at the heart of the growing Food as Medicine movement: connecting a clinician's recommendation directly to a patient's front door. And in a growing number of programs, doing so through Medicaid-reimbursable benefits.
These programs only help when food actually arrives, and one of the biggest challenges in scaling Food as Medicine is operational: getting healthy, often perishable food to thousands of patients, reliably and on time, across dense cities and rural communities alike. That's the gap Project DASH is built to close, giving health systems, clinics, and community organizations an established delivery network and logistics technology to build on, rather than standing up a delivery operation of their own.
Investing in Food As Medicine
In recognition of this milestone, DoorDash is launching its first-ever Food as Medicine Impact Grants: a new, dedicated commitment to help Project DASH partners bring more nutrition into care.
It's the first time DoorDash has set aside funding specifically for Food as Medicine, and it reflects where the work is heading. As the movement grows, the organizations leading it need more than a good model — they need the operational muscle to reach patients reliably, at scale. These grants are built to help them do exactly that, supporting partners as they connect clinicians' recommendations to patients' doorsteps and get medically tailored food to the people who need it most. The details:
First-ever Project DASH grants dedicated to Food as Medicine
To mark 150 million meals delivered, establishing a new $150,000 fund dedicated to supporting our Project DASH partners' 2027 initiatives
Grants of up to $15,000 per organization to support any home-delivery related expenses
Interested organizations can learn more here.
The next 150 million meals
What began for many organizations as an emergency response to the pandemic has become permanent infrastructure — a lasting part of how nonprofit and public programs reach the people they serve. This month, DoorDash is proud to be a sponsor of the first National Home Delivery Summit, at which hunger-relief organizations from across the country will gather in California to discuss the future of food bank home delivery and share best practices, a sign of how central programs like Project DASH have become to broadening food access.
150 million meals delivered is something to be proud of, but it’s only the beginning. Hunger doesn’t stop at a milestone, and neither will we.
