Community Action Partnership of Orange County

Community Action Partnership of Orange County (CAP OC) seeks to end and prevent poverty by stabilizing, sustaining and empowering people with the resources they need when they need them. By forging strategic partnerships, we form a powerful force to improve our community.

For over 60 years, CAP OC has taken a comprehensive, wraparound approach to addressing poverty by providing both immediate relief and long-term empowerment for individuals and families alike. Through a wide array of integrated programs, CAP OC addresses the complex and interconnected symptoms of poverty—from hunger and housing instability to limited access to education, healthcare, and financial resources.

A cornerstone of CAP OC’s work is the OC Food Bank, which distributes over 26 million pounds of food annually, prioritizing access to fresh produce, protein, and dairy. Through its Farm to Family program, the OC Food Bank supports nutritional security while reducing food waste. In addition, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), or our Senior Food Box program, as it is more widely known, serves 25,000 low-income seniors each month, helping to stabilize health outcomes and reduce hunger among the county’s most vulnerable residents.

Beyond food access, CAP OC owns and operates three Family Resource Centers (FRCs) in high-need areas: Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Orange. These centers serve as centralized community hubs, offering holistic, culturally responsive services. Individuals and families receive case management, mental health counseling, youth empowerment programs (ages 7–24), food pantry access, financial literacy courses, and hot meal services. Each program is designed to educate, stabilize, and empower clients in their journey toward self-sufficiency.

Further expanding CAP OC’s impact are its Energy and Environmental Services, which provide utility assistance, home weatherization, asthma remediation, and other services that improve housing stability and reduce environmental health risks.

Together, these wraparound services represent a whole-family approach to poverty alleviation—addressing immediate needs while building long-term capacity for resilience and upward mobility.

Each year, Community Action Partnership of Orange County (CAP OC) serves more than 280,000 individuals and families, providing the resources and support needed to move beyond crisis and toward lasting stability. Through a whole-family approach, CAP OC addresses the complex challenges of poverty by connecting neighbors to food, housing stability, financial empowerment, youth development, and healthy homes. In the past year alone, the OC Food Bank distributed more than 24.6 million meals, delivered 289,473 senior food boxes, and provided over 10.4 million diapers and infant essentials to families across Orange County. CAP OC also helped residents secure $2.7 million in CalFresh/SNAP benefits, while more than 60,000 volunteer hours from dedicated community members strengthened our collective impact. Beyond meeting immediate needs, our Youth & Family Programs support participants through education, case management, and housing navigation, while our Energy & Environmental Services Department improves home safety and health through weatherization, utility assistance, asthma remediation, and accessibility adaptations. Together with our partners and supporters, CAP OC is building healthier communities and expanding opportunity—because this is where poverty ends.

Across Orange County, thousands of individuals and families struggle to meet their most basic needs as the cost of housing, food, and utilities continues to rise. While the region is often perceived as a place of wealth and opportunity, many residents live paycheck to paycheck and are one unexpected expense away from crisis. For low-income households, barriers to stable housing, food security, and financial stability can quickly compound, creating cycles of hardship that are difficult to escape without support. Community Action Partnership of Orange County works to close this gap by stabilizing families in times of need while connecting them to resources, opportunities, and pathways that help build long-term economic mobility.

CAP OC serves the working poor, low income and unhoused families, individuals, senior citizens and underprivileged minorities who reside in Orange County. We serve a very diverse population of people of African American, Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern descent. More than 70% of our participant base is Hispanic. The majority of our population lives in 12 red-zoned cities that include the Central Orange County cities of Anaheim, Garden Grove, Orange, Santa Ana, and Westminster all of which have high chronic disease, unemployment, and poverty rates and low educational attainment rates.