A Year of Giving Back — Our 2025 Foundation Impact
As we look back on the past year, we’re filled with gratitude.
At Rylee + Cru Collective, giving back has always been at the heart of what we do. Through our Foundation, 2025 was a year of meaningful partnerships, compassionate outreach, and tangible support for organizations doing incredible work for children, families, and communities across the country.
Together with you, we were honored to support:
November - Little Wishes
October - Operation Shower
September - The Children’s Charity International
August - Lighthouse For Hope
July - Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego County +
Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country
June - Down Syndrome Association of Orange County
May - Make-A-Wish San Diego
April - Olive Crest
March - Love Does
February - 804 Foundation
January - kNot Today
Each of these organizations represents hope, care, and action — and we’re proud to stand alongside them.
December Foundation Spotlight: Feeding San Diego
To close out the year, we partnered with Feeding San Diego, an organization working tirelessly to fight hunger and food insecurity throughout our local community. Their commitment to nourishing families, children, and individuals in need made them a meaningful recipient as we wrapped up 2025 — a reminder that caring for one another begins right at home.
Read our Q&A with Lisa Reynolds (Corporate Partnerships Officer) to learn more about Feeding San Diego's mission and impact.
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Q&A
Q. Can you share how Feeding San Diego got started and what drove the
mission behind it?
A. Since 2007, Feeding San Diego has been dedicated to serving our community with the belief that access to nutritious food is a basic human right. Founded by Gwendolyn Sontheim through the Aqualia Foundation, the organization began as a small, grassroots response to an urgent local need, ensuring that surplus food reached our neighbors facing food insecurity rather than going to waste.
Feeding San Diego’s first food distribution took place on October 9, 2007, at the San Diego Rescue Mission. Within weeks of opening its doors, the organization was tested by one of the region’s most devastating emergencies, the 2007 firestorms. Feeding San Diego quickly mobilized to secure and distribute more than 515,000 pounds of emergency food and supplies, becoming a critical food rescue partner in San Diego County almost overnight. Today we distribute more than 32 million pounds of food per year.
What started with just two employees has since grown into a leading force in the fight against hunger, now supported by a dedicated team of more than 80 staff members, thousands of volunteers, and generous community partners. While Feeding San Diego has expanded significantly in size and reach, the organization has never lost its “startup” spirit, remaining innovative, nimble, and deeply rooted in service to the community.
Today, thanks to the generosity of partners like Rylee + Cru and countless donors who believe in our mission, Feeding San Diego provides over 31 million meals each year, distributed through partnerships with more than 350 agency partners across San Diego County.
Q. I love that you aim to provide healthy food to these families/individuals in need. How does Feeding San Diego get the food that it distributes?
A. Feeding San Diego rescues food by partnering with grocery stores, farms, restaurants, and manufacturers to collect surplus, edible food that would otherwise be wasted, using a network of nonprofit partners to get healthy food to those in need, often the same day it's collected.
Our decentralized model allows us to collect food from hundreds of locations from across San Diego to ensure freshness and efficient distribution, diverting millions of pounds of food from landfills annually. Over 90% of the food Feeding San Diego distributes to our community is rescued food. As we like to say, we help feed people, not landfills.
Q. How has food insecurity changed in San Diego over the past few years?
A. Food insecurity in San Diego has risen sharply in the past few years, reaching pandemic-era levels in the middle of 2025. Today, 1 in 4 residents (25% of San Diegans) are experiencing this painful hardship due primarily to layoffs, low wages and the ever-rising costs of living in America’s Finest City. This includes higher housing, utility, gas and grocery prices straining family and individuals’ budgets and affecting children, seniors, and people with disabilities significantly.
In November 2025, the needs in our community rose to new heights when the longest government shut down in history began and SNAP benefits were frozen, driving even more families, including an increased number of military members and government employees who went without paychecks for an extended period.
From the first half of 2025 to today, Feeding San Diego has gone from distributing food to approximately 160,000 households each month to an average of 200,000 households each month, a 25% increase!
Q. What is the one thing people might not realize about hunger in San Diego?
A. The one thing people might not realize about hunger is that a significant portion of those facing food insecurity in San Diego County are employed and housed individuals who simply cannot make ends meet due to the region’s high cost of living. Nearly 400,000 San Diegans face hunger, including more than 100,000 children, even as 31% of all food produced in the United States goes to waste.
San Diego’s high cost of rent and everyday expenses forces many working families to make impossible choices each month, between paying for housing, utilities, healthcare, or putting nutritious food on the table. As a result, those facing food insecurity are not limited to those who are unhoused or unemployed; it includes working individuals and families of all ethnicities and life stages, including, surprisingly for many, members of our military and their families.
Q. How do donations (money vs. food) make the biggest impact?
A. Monetary donations make the biggest impact at Feeding San Diego by giving us the flexibility to turn every dollar into immediate, efficient hunger relief. As a nonprofit hunger-relief and food rescue organization that is almost entirely privately funded, we rely on just 2% federal support. We primarily depend on the generosity of corporations, individuals and foundations to sustain our programs. A financial donation allows us to maximize impact: every $1 donated helps provide two meals to neighbors in need. This is possible because of our strong buying power through the Feeding America network, enabling us to purchase food in bulk at deeply reduced costs, as well as our ability to support critical food donations and rescue efforts. Monetary gifts also fund the teams that coordinate large-scale food sourcing and rescue surplus food from producers, retailers, and farms, keeping food out of landfills and getting it quickly to families who need it most. While food donations are always valuable, financial contributions allow Feeding San Diego to respond faster, fill nutritional gaps, and stretch every dollar further to fight hunger across San Diego County.
Q. What are the biggest challenges Feeding San Diego faces right now
and goals for the future?
A. In fiscal year 2026, Feeding San Diego is confronting increasing challenges driven by reductions in federal nutrition assistance, rising food insecurity, and continued economic pressure on families across the region. Recent legislation significantly limiting access to CalFresh (California’s SNAP program), including stricter work requirements and benefit reductions, is expected to impact more than 80,000 San Diego County residents, many of whom will turn to Feeding San Diego as a critical safety net. At the same time, tight budgets and the loss of federal funding that previously supported local farm purchases are restricting access to nutritious food, even as demand continues to grow.
In response, Feeding San Diego is taking strategic steps to strengthen its network and ensure stability for the future. This includes building capacity among partner organizations affected by federal cuts, increasing access to food across the county, launching a locally sourced produce initiative to sustain fresh food distribution, and developing new programs with healthcare partners and nutritionists called Food is Medicine to provide medically tailored meals for individuals facing serious health challenges. These efforts are essential to meeting increased need, while continuing Feeding San Diego’s commitment to health, dignity, and long-term community resilience.
Thank you for being part of this journey. Every purchase, every share, and every show of support helps make this giving possible. We’re deeply thankful to our community for helping us create impact beyond clothing.
With gratitude,
Rylee + Cru Collective Foundation
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We are honored to support organizations that are making positive impacts in the lives of children (and families) across the nation who are facing food insecurity. Submit an application to recommend a 501(c)(3) non-profit making a difference in your community and each month we’ll select one to receive a $10,000 grant in your name.
Thank you for joining us in this meaningful work.
