Our Grocery Gift Card Program
We target childhood food insecurity.
All year long.
We started out trying to fill a gap in the food system: summer hunger.
But now we empower food-insecure children and families to feed themselves.
Our approach represents an innovative shift in how we support food-insecure kids.
We deliver our support by partnering with frontline service agencies who can target and distribute grocery gift cards to food-insecure families in greatest need. This approach strengthens relationships because caregivers recognize that we trust them to make good choices for their household. A simple plastic card becomes a more empathetic response to a very traumatic experience.
Research validates our shift to grocery gift cards
Researchers from the University of Calgary and the O’Brien Institute for Public Health conducted a robust study that explored the impact of our grocery gift card program on agencies and recipients. You can discover more about this research here:
Experiences and perceived outcomes of a grocery gift card programme for households at risk of food insecurity
Blog
Beyond access to healthy food: food-insecure families prefer grocery gift cards over food hampers
Research & evaluation
Check out a summary
of all the results
Why grocery gift cards work
Empowerment
Families can choose the foods they purchase to meet their unique personal, cultural, religious, and health requirements.
Access
Transporting food hampers poses many challenges. Grocery gift cards enable families to access stores close to home.
efficiency
It’s so much easier for agency partners to expand our reach and impact by distributing grocery gift cards instead of food hampers.
Dignity
Families experience no stigma, shame, or judgment from other people when using grocery gift cards.
How our program works
Grocery gift cards act as a bridge that help our agency partners form stronger relationships with their clients while providing families immediate relief from food insecurity. This collaborative approach offers children and parents access to a wide range of wraparound supports that address other serious life stressors associated with inadequate incomes, such as mental health struggles, unemployment, resettlement, unstable housing, high medical expenses, and domestic violence. Grocery gift cards are an effcient tool to build resilience, trust, and community belonging.
How we deliver our program:
We invest your generous donations to obtain grocery gift cards at a discounted rate from the retailers requested most often by our recipients.
Then we collaborate with our frontline agency partners who offer the cards to the families they know need them the most…
…while at the same time they provide critical support to address other complex life challenges.
Families are empowered with the dignity and confidence to shop in their communities for the food that meets their unique needs.
iCAN continually collects feedback from our agency partners and program recipients to ensure we provide the best service possible to achieve the greatest impact on children and families.
My husband lost his job and there is no work for him. Because of our financial situation, there are only a few dollars left after paying all the bills. By accessing support from I Can for Kids, we are now able to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables for our children. It may seem like a small act to you, but to us it can be the difference between food on our table or skipping another meal. Thank you!
Together, we’re making a major impact.
Since we started providing grocery gift cards in 2020:
34,000+
food-insecure kids supported – while this is a big number, many more need our help
200+
communities accessed our program through participation in more than 50 unique programs delivered by 23 frontline agency partners
$3.2m+
in grocery gift cards distributed to food-insecure families in greatest need
Your generous support empowers thousands of families with the dignity and confidence to plan, purchase, and provide fresh and healthy food that meets their kids’ unique needs.
None of that can happen without donors like you.