A parent standing in the grocery aisle, calculating what can be put back on the shelf. A senior deciding whether to buy food or fill a prescription. A family wondering how to stretch one paycheck through the month while keeping their beloved pet fed and at home.
As the gap between need and available aid grows, more people are facing impossible choices that affect every part of their lives. The costs of food, fuel, and essential goods are steadily on the rise; federal aid is being cut; and hundreds of thousands of governmental jobs are being eliminated, leaving families, children, seniors, veterans, and differently abled people without the basic resources they need to get by.
As of December 2025, more than 1 in 3 families with children reported food insecurity, and about half of those experienced its most severe form: skipping meals or going without food entirely.
This crisis has many faces, and one of them is probably someone you know. The need is urgent, and it's not going away.
Community Relief Hubs: The Mission
That’s why we at Greater Good Charities launched our Community Relief Hubs. Uniquely positioned with wholistic, global aid and a partner network to mobilize support, we created these Hubs to deliver direct, tangible relief to struggling Americans.
Through regular free distribution events in under-resourced communities, we’ll provide essentials like food, hygiene products, clothing, gas and grocery cards, and pet food and supplies—all at no cost—to those in need. These targeted hubs will allow families to stretch budgets further, feed themselves and their children, and care for their pets.
Community Relief Hubs launched in August with a distribution event in East St. Louis, Illinois, and soon we’ll begin outreach in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Nashville, Tennessee; and Detroit, Michigan.
Read on for a closer look at the need in these communities and how we’re meeting it.
An Impactful Launch in East St. Louis
"I appreciate everybody who donated. Everybody who helped my community, my family, my people. Period." That's how one neighbor summed up our first-ever Community Relief Hub event in East St. Louis.
On August 4, we partnered with Gateway Pet Guardians and St. Louis Area Foodbank to bring free food, clothing, socks, hygiene essentials, and pet supplies to families heading into back-to-school season. For the hundreds of people who showed up, it might have meant the difference between a family choosing groceries or school supplies, and a pet staying in the home where they belong.
In a city where 1 in 3 people live in poverty and nearly half of children live below the poverty line—triple the Illinois state average—this kind of support means everything. Decades of factory closures and a lack of local investment have left East St. Louis with fewer jobs, diminishing tax money, and crumbling infrastructure. Greater Good Charities saw this resource desert and stepped in to fill the gaps.
Thank you to Gateway Pet Guardians, St. Louis Area Foodbank, Purina, Boehringer Ingelheim, MuttNation, Clean Simple Eats, Marco's Pizza, Simple Modern, Trevi, SunBum, Talking Rain, WASH Foundation, GreaterGood.com, Bombas, Polyconcept North America, and Coalition For Pet Progress for making our first distribution possible.
Tulsa: More Than Just a Hub, A Home
In eastern Oklahoma, 1 in 4 children and 1 in 10 seniors face daily hunger. Millions of Oklahomans live paycheck to paycheck, leaving them one missed check or medical emergency from financial collapse.
Increasingly, in Tulsa and across the country, people can’t afford things they used to afford, and this includes the necessities. Says Jeff Marlow, CEO and President of the Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma, “Our partners consistently tell us they are seeing new faces, including many people visiting a food pantry for the first time. Hunger exists in every community across the state, including communities considered more affluent.”
Oklahoma is more than just a place we operate—it's one we call home. Our Tulsa Distribution Center already serves as a supply hub, staged and ready to move resources quickly in the event of a disaster. We have staff on the ground and a strong force of consistent volunteers.
This presence shapes how we meet the state's needs. We're actively addressing limited veterinary access and shelter overpopulation in Oklahoma with spay/neuter clinics in Tulsa and Ponca City, while our transport team operates a flight route out of the state to the Pacific Northwest.
Now, that commitment is expanding through Community Relief Hubs. With an initial distribution on October 3, our Tulsa hub will provide essentials like hygiene products, clothing, blankets, and household items at no cost to community members. We’ll also partner with Oklahoma Alliance for Animals to offer a free pet vaccine clinic with pet food, supplies, and medications.
Together with your support, we’re weaving a web of impact in Oklahoma that both addresses immediate needs and their root causes in our communities.
Nashville & Detroit: Unique Needs, Tailored Support
For the next two cities soon to be home to Greater Good Charities Community Relief Hubs, food insecurity is severe.
In Nashville, 1 in 3 single mothers don’t have reliable access to enough food. More than a quarter of Nashville residents (nearly 200,000 people) live in spreading urban food deserts as costs rise and federal assistance is disrupted. Inflation has driven up food costs by 30% since the pandemic without matching wage increases, leaving families, veterans, and double the general U.S. rate of Black residents food insecure.
In Detroit, similar historical and economic factors to East St. Louis have left nearly 70% of households without access to sufficient affordable, nutritious food. Geography also comes into play here, as spread-out infrastructure and limited public transit make it difficult for residents without cars to reach traditional grocery stores.
Researchers point to Detroit as an example of a food swamp: an area where unhealthy food options like fast-food restaurants and convenience stores outnumber healthy food options like grocery stores and farmers’ markets.
At hub distributions in Nashville and Detroit this fall, we’ll show up to ease the burdens in these areas. Through food, fuel, and hope, your support can be the reason a family in Tennessee or Michigan stays together.
Your Support Makes Relief Possible
East St. Louis was the first stop. As we launch more Community Relief Hubs across the country, your support will keep making lifechanging moments possible for our neighbors in need learning “how to stretch a dollar and make it holler,” as one grateful ESTL recipient put it.
“The good thing is,” she told us, “in the struggle, it’s bringing all of us together, and that’s what I like about this. That means people care about us, and that’s a blessing.
Greater Good Charities cares, and we know you do too. Your support of our Community Relief Hubs, whether they’ll directly impact your community, will impact people like your friend, grandparent, cousin, sister, nephew—or you. Because real impact comes from solutions designed to change lives locally.
While the world may be uncertain, our mission remains the same: respond to urgent needs and fill critical gaps so communities can thrive. You are essential to making that possible, and we are grateful for your support.